The thru-hiker’s mantra: rain spotted from inside a shelter always looks worse than rain spotted from outside

Typical Vermont weather

Its taken thousands of miles of hiking to realize the thru-hiker’s mantra: rain spotted from inside a shelter always looks worse than rain spotted from outside. As soon as I stepped out of the shelter, rain geared and umbrellaed, I decided the rain was mild enough that my rain get-up was unnecessary.

My morning started with floating bog bridges not too far from the shelter. These are those trick bog bridges that look like you can step on them to serve as a bridge across a swamp only to realize that when you step on them, they sink under your weight and get your feet wet. When these sorts of things happen, you can only laugh at how our eyes can play tricks on us and how fortunate we are to have bog bridges to keep our feet dry when the water is not swelling.

I was slightly dreading the steep, rocky downhill to the VT 9 Bennington road–two trips on the AT reminded me that section is hard on the knees and is a potential place to slip. It turned out not being that bad. The memorial bridge across a river right by VT 9 seemed high enough that it wasn’t damaged by all the flooding in Vermont–I wonder when I will see damage or if the LT/AT was spared or, like many things, experienced the Miracle of Vermont and repaired quickly.

Supervisor keeps the rain out on the Long Trail

The big climb from VT 9 was also not as bad as I remembered. I’m certainly not doing the mileage I was doing before–and that isn’t my goal on this trip–but it bodes well for my enjoyment if the climbs are not bad.

I ran into some section hikers with two dogs. The cat-sized one had an adventurous last night—it got into a fight with a porcupine and had to be dequilled.

My snack at Goddard Shelter was postponed because it was quite cold up there. I was shivering.

I ended at Story Spring shelter with two AT hikers, which was fun to swap stories with them.