Climbing.

I woke early to drive over an hour to the trail head. The night before I had found there was a Renaissance Faire in the area which led me to swapping my plans from Mount Abraham, the smallest 4000 footer of Vermont, to Mount Mansfield the tallest! I didn’t really intend to go for the tallest first, but the 2.5 miles from trailhead to peak seemed reasonable.

I drove through Smuggler’s Notch, first time in my life, and that was really cool. It felt very short compared to other scenic routes, but the road went from two lanes to strange shared lane sometimes wide enough for two cars, and sometimes wide enough for just one. A few switchbacks with tight turns and a grand cliff looming above. Read the rest of this entry »

Walking.

One foot in front of the other. An act many people across the world do daily without even thinking about it. Today I took a walk in the woods along a path weaving through the trees, winding up a mountain. One step to a time.

This summer I plan to climb as many 4000 foot peaks in the north east as possible, there are 5 such summits in Vermont, 14 in Maine and 48 in New Hampshire. The New England 67. There are also 46ers of the Adirondacks in New York. This should keep my weekends busy for quite a while.

Today was meant to be the smallest peak in Vermont, about a 2 hour drive away. I was warned about the trailheads getting too full by 10am, and I didn’t wake up early enough to be confident I’d get to park. So plans changed. Instead I did a small loop that Dizzy and I took Indie on several times through the winter. We never visited this without snow and I wanted to see how it was. This was a 1 mile loop and had a few spots to look out into a bog. Not the prettiest of views, but nature is healing, I guess. Read the rest of this entry »