October 18: Laura Woodard Shelter   Miles Today : 10 Total Miles : 41.4

The one area that I really wasn’t prepared in was the footwear department. I was wearing my standard backpacking shoes, New Balance 804 sneakers. Within just a few minutes of wading through over four inches of snow, my shoes were wet and my feet were cold. Clearly, I could have used a pair of boots here, but I wasn’t worried. Then, about a mile into the hike, I put my foot on a root and slipped. I planted my hiking pole for balance, and my hiking pole BROKE! Boom, down I went, hard. I was really upset at my situation now. Wrong footwear, broken pole, I should just turn around. However, after last week I was determined to get to Canada.

There was still more bad news to come. At the first shelter I came to, Hazen’s Notch Camp, I discovered that I had banged my knee pretty hard on that fall, hard enough to cause bleeding that covered the front of my leg. I cleaned it up as best I could with snowballs, but it didn’t look in great shape. Still, I refused to quit after last week, so I pushed on. For the next few miles, I climbed a couple of 2900-foot mountains with limited views here and there. Jay Peak was getting close, I could see that, but walking in all this snow was taking its toll on me. The higher I climbed, the more snow I had to wade through.

The day was actually turning out pretty nice, however. When I first started hiking, the shy was gray and I had a strong chill in my bones. As the day went along, however, there were breaks in the clouds and, eventually, the sky cleared and the sun shown brightly and warmed me right up. All the while I was walking over fresh snow. There was no footprints, no people, no sounds. Just Bear and I moving through the woods on a cold autumn day. It was a weird sensation, but one that I quickly learned to enjoy.

It wasn’t long before I crossed route 242 and started my ascent of Jay Peak. This was a good, tough climb that seemed to go on forever for me. Part of the problem was the snow depth, it got be over a foot as I neared the summit. The other problem was how steep the climb was becoming, since I only had running shoes. It also was getting to be quite cold. All this was nothing when I finally popped about treeline. The snow was mercifully gone, having long since been blown off the summit, but it was cold and windy, and very hard to find the white blazes marking the trail. Most of the markings were on the rocks, and very hard to see even with the little bit of snow that did not get blown away.

The view from Jay is just amazing, but because of these conditions I really wasn’t able to sit up there and enjoy it. I dropped down off the summit rocks and ducked into a corner of one of the buildings on the summit. There were all covered in ice and snow, and there was no sign that anyone had been up there in years. It was a very Mad Max type of feeling being there. I didn’t hang around too long before heading down the ski slopes and off the mountain.

Here is where the day took a turn for the worse. Leave the summit, the trail follows the skit slopes for a while, then goes behind a fence and then heads north in the woods. Well, right behind the fence, I missed the turn for the LT and ended up on another trail. I was convinced this was the LT, since it was clearly a maintained trail (there were saw cuts and blowdowns that had been moved aside), but after 10 minutes of not seeing a trail marked, I turned back. What I was actually on, I believe, was a side trail to Big Jay, since it appeared as if I was approaching that mountain the further I walked on the trail.

So after wasting almost a half an hour, I was back on the LT with only a mile and a half to go to get to the shelter where I am now. The snow was still deep, and I was starting to get really cold, so I resolved myself to move as quickly as I could to reach the shelter. It was difficult, since finding the trail was always an adventure, and just walking at this point took a significant amount of energy and concentration. When I got really worried was when, about halfway to the shelter, I reached down to brush something off my leg. I discovered that from the bottom of my calves down, my legs were numb along with my feet. This really worried me, and I started to move very quickly down the trail. I needed to get into my sleeping bag and warm up.

I got to this nice, new shelter just before 5:00, and I was focused. I needed to get a few things done before I crawled into my sleeping bag. I got water down at the spring, I put out food and water for Bear, and I brushed the snow off the floor of the shelter as best I could. Having done all that, I quickly set up camp, got out of my wet shoes and socks and jumped into the bag. Now I was really shivering, but I could feel my feet and legs starting to warm up. I ate a Powerbar and drank some water, but I knew I was going to have to cook dinner soon. I just wasn’t that hungry.

The problem was that I got myself all worked up. I was nervous about how cold it was, I was nervous about how numb my feet were, and I was nervous about spending the night out in these kinds of conditions. I almost ended up talking myself into hiking back up Jay Peak and then walking down the ski slopes. I would much rather be doing something than lying around. However, that was impractical given the late hour, so I started to cook dinner. Cooking was extremely difficult since my hands were shaking so badly, and I wasn’t even hungry to boot. It took about 20 minutes to get my Lipton dinners ready to eat, and I had to force down the first few spoonfuls. After about five or six, however, I started to feel much better. The wet, hot food had made its way to my stomach and it was warming me up. My hands stopped shaking, I stopped worrying and all of a sudden it was a little too warm in my sleeping bag.

Now I am lying happily in my bag, with stomach full, body warm and mind ready for a long night of sleep. Darkness will last over 12 hours tonight, and I am not sure how I am going to handle being asleep that long. I guess I will find out. For now, though, I am warm and I am happy.

-Chomp

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