Mount Ellen: June 14, 2015

Mountain: Mount Ellen
Elevation: 4,083 (Vermont's 3rd Tallest, New England's 47th Tallest)
Route: Jerusalem Trail/Long Trail
Mileage 8.4 miles Round Trip
Arya's Take: WHAT IS THIS ABOMINATION ON MY BACK


So spoiler alert, just like I said I probably would in the last post, Arya and I ended up doing Mount Ellen over the weekend, since it was closest to our new house (in Barre!) and wouldn't take up the full day.  My fiancee wanted to head into Burlington to do some furniture shopping and to swing my Lowe's (our lives are rapidly becoming some kind of home-improvement commercial), so we couldn't spend all day up in the mountains.  Though given how my knee ended up, that wouldn't have been advisable anyway.


We took the same trail I did a couple years ago, the Jerusalem Trail, which was a nice little test of my memory to see if I could get back to it since it's off to the side of a dusty country road up and over the Appalachian Gap.  To my semi-astonishment I was not only able to get myself out of bed at 5:15 on a Sunday, but we made it there no problem, and were on the trail by 7:30.  We weren't even the first car at the trailhead!


The morning was foggy, as was expected in the valleys of Vermont in the summer, and as we started up, I tried to find as many landmarks as I could so I could look for them on the descent to know how much trail we had left.  Arya also took the time to get used to the newest addition to my (or, our) hiking equipment, a dog backpack for her.  My old dog growing up had one, and it's great for two reasons:  they can carry their own damn food and water, and the added weight helps slow them down a bit, so they're not running all over the place.  Which is especially nice for Arya, since she's not off-leash ready and I'd prefer not to run through the woods after her.

She adapted eventually, but there was a learning curve for both of us starting out.  First, She reacted pretty much as you'd expect having an additional several pounds strapped to her back.  Trying to chew the saddlebags, running around to try and escape it, et cetera.  Once she settled in, though, I realized I'd done an exceptionally poor job of distributing the weight throughout the two bags, with her food (light) in one, and her quart and a half of water (heavy) in the other.  Eventually I swapped out the large water bottle for the two 32-oz Nalgenes I had in my pack, and that seemed to work better.  Her shoulder harness fit nicely underneath it, too, so after the first few minutes, she didn't even react to it anymore.

However, as we climbed, Arya started giving me a healthy dose of paranoia, as she acted out of character by repeatedly turning around and staring down the trail, as if someone (or something) was following us.  She even sat down a couple times and I had to coax her along.  This was especially unnerving to me, as we were the first ones on the trail that morning (we found out later on that the other car in the parking lot belonged to someone who was camping overnight) and I'm convinced that one of these days hiking alone I'll run into a bear or mountain lion or something that will eat me.  Also there are two convicted murderers that just escaped a prison in upstate New York and the authorities have widened the net to Vermont, so there's that.

Anyway, the first part of the Jerusalem Trail is actually on private property, and is actually used for servicing maple tap lines.  They string throughout the woods, with the trail being really more of an ATV track at first and we actually passed the Sugarbush itself.  Really impresses on you how many trees and how much sap are needed to viably make syrup. 

Eventually the Jerusalem Trail begins to rise and leaves the sap lines behind, following a brook up to the top of the Monroe Skyline.  This was nice for Arya, since she prefers to drink streamwater over water in bottles.  Well, she kind of eats the streamwater actually, biting it and bearing her teeth at it before barking at it and running away.  My dog is...odd.

I also had to remark on how incredibly soggy the woods still are, which I guess is to be expected given how much snow we got over the winter, but still.  In places the trail was actually more of a stream itself, and with all of the mud, it didn't take long for Arya's white front left paw to disappear (I hastily remembered that I had a towel in my car, thank God).  There were even a couple times when we came across a flooded section of trail and had to try and find the best way to navigate it without losing a boot.  It's one of the advantages of hiking with a dog I wasn't really expecting:  Arya's really good at finding the quickest route on solid ground (or which rocks aren't loose and are good to step on).  The clouds began to burn off as we neared the top of the ridge, and I did my patented "where the hell is that trail junction?!" mere feet from arriving at the trail junction.

From the top of the Skyline, we turned right for the 1.8 miles of ridgewalking to get to Mount Ellen.  We also encountered our first fellow hikers of the day, though since it was 9:00 and we were miles and miles from any other trailheads, I had to wonder where they had spent the night.  I always enjoy running into other people on the trail (though Arya's reception of them is rather hit-or-miss), since everyone you meet, especially when you get as remote as we were, wants to be there and is generally in a pretty good mood.  The major exception is kids, as you'd expect, but even they generally are having fun.

By the time we'd gotten to the top of the Summit Triple chairlift, I'd drank most of the water in one of the Nalgenes Arya was carrying and we had to redistribute things a bit before continuing, as she started to list a bit.  She didn't quite know what to make of the ski trail when we emerged onto what I now know is the top of Rim Run, a nice jaunty blue square (I hadn't skied at Mount Ellen when I hiked it last time, now that I have it's weird to see all the familiar trails without snow).  She seemed to like the space, I guess?  but it was confusing to her as well, as she didn't know which way we were supposed to go.  I took some pictures on the lift and generally wandered around for a bit, since once we went back into the woods, we'd run into the same problem that I'd had last time, ie, not being able to find the goddamn summit.

It turns out, however, that the summit itself is even closer to the lift than I thought it was.  Which makes sense, as when I'd been skiing there over the winter, there was a sign into the woods and I'd seen several people taking off their skis and tromping off.  At the time I thought it was really odd, since having hiked to what I thought was the summit over half a mile, it seemed like a terrible idea to do that in ski boots.  It turns out that someone had constructed a cairn on the summit of Ellen, with a ski pole attached to it, and the summit is like 200 yards from the ski trails.  You could almost still see the chairlift when we got there.

So after I felt like an idiot for hiking THAT MUCH FARTHER than I needed to when I climbed Ellen the first time, I broke out the dog food from Arya's backpack and a soggy PB&J from my own for lunch.  Well, more breakfast than lunch, since the side effect of me needing to be on the trail at the crack of dawn meant that we reached the summit at 10:05.  Good time, and it meant that I'd be able to go furniture shopping with time to spare, though part of me thinks I could have coordinated that a bit better.  Also it occurred to me that with a little more foresight, I might have been able to do both Ellen and Abraham and grab two peaks for Arya (since Abraham is a couple miles south on the Monroe Skyline from Ellen), but I digress.

Arya started whining as soon as she finished her food, and kept clamoring to keep moving the whole time I ate.  I really need to work with her on that, I think, since the times we've spent on summits has been primarily spent trying to sit and eat for two goddamn seconds while she wants to either explore, or start down the trail again.  We did some sit-waits and some down-waits (practicing the length of time before she was allowed to get the treat I laid out for her), but that was disrupted by some other hikers and I decided to cut my losses and head back down.  Mount Ellen is completely wooded on top anyway, so it's not like there were any views I needed to take in, apart from the ones on the ski slope.

As you might know from other entries, I kind of hate the descent.  First, all the exhilaration of summiting the mountain is over, and all you have left is the long slog back to the car.  This is especially bad when you're below treeline (which we were) and you're on a deadline anyway to get home, and you'd prefer to just get there already.  This is the main reason that I tried to memorize the landmarks from earlier, so I could know how close to quitting time we were

The other major problem we ran into distresses me more than somewhat, as we were juuuuuust making the transition from coniferous to deciduous trees, my right knee started acting up.  Have I mentioned my right knee?  I can't remember if I've gone through exactly why I have to wear my brace on the Blawg before, but anyway, my knee.  I injured it going on 5 years ago, whilst playing hockey.  I went to turn up the ice without knowing that my skate blade was caught in a divot.  My upper leg turned, my lower leg didn't, and I collapsed.  I actually had the good sense to call it a day and go home immediately (which I kind of had to do since I could hardly walk), and for treatment I went with the tried and true method of ignoring it until it went away.

Flash forward to now, and the right side of my right knee absolutely kills me whenever I walk for extended periods.  This is kind of an obstacle to the "Hike with my dog" plan, and I actually went and got an MRI on it last spring to finally see what the hell was going on, and what I could do about it.  Turns out that my right ACL is sprained, and my orthopedist says it's bad enough to need a brace, but slight enough to not really justify surgery.  So hence, the metal-reinforced brace.

This is why I'm nervous that my right knee started giving me problems on the way down Ellen.  I'd hiked all last summer with nary a problem, but even using my hiking pole as a crutch, I had to stop several times to wince and catch my breath, apologizing to Arya for being a slow poke.  It's been two days and I'm still walking funny, and this was only a hike of 8.4 miles, none of which was particularly steep or challenging.  It does not bode well for the more ambitious hikes I want to go on in the next couple months, but I suppose that I'll have to cross that bridge when I come to it.  Besides, going up is fine.  It's just coming down when it hurts.

Well, even if it took a bit longer than anticipated, we did make it down to the car at about 12:30, and we were back to Barre by 1:00.  Arya took the opportunity to pass out on the ride home (and incidentally, didn't make much of a fuss when we left for Burlington later in the afternoon).  I got to add another peak under her name on the big board, and we can officially call Hiking Season 2015 open.

-M

NEXT TRIP PLANNING: MOUNTS ABRAHAM AND ELLEN

Hi All!

So now we've reached a new kind of post:  where I look at the summer and start plotting out potential trips to go on, since it's June, Killington is finally closed and my skis are dwelling in the basement next to my hockey bag and cricket bats.  So what's on the docket?



Arya's already done two of the 5 Vermont 4,000 footers, and the only one we have left together is Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest.  However, some of our friends have expressed interest in doing Mansfield with us, and I don't want to start off the summer with one of the highest and possibly most challenging hikes, so I think a warmup is in order.  But even with a warmup, there are peaks to be bagged for Arya, and so that means a bit of a retread for me.  Which is fine, really, since it'll be nice to know exactly what I'm getting us into and what to expect.  So that leaves us with two real options, until Arya and I re-hike Camel's Hump (don't fool yourself, we're *definitely* re-hiking Camel's Hump this summer).  And both of those options are really right next to each other, on a part of the Long Trail called the Monroe Skyline.  Which sounds weird to me, but maybe I've just been playing too much Bioshock Infinite recently.

The two mountains are on the low end of Vermont's 4,000 footers, Mounts Abraham and Ellen.  Abraham is actually the shortest of the bunch, barely registering at 4,004.  I hiked it a few years ago with a friend of mine from college; we were actually up at Middlebury for our 5-year college reunion and were looking for something to do during the day when there wasn't a whole lot of interesting stuff offered on campus.  I hadn't been planning on hiking that weekend at all until he suggested it, and having not heard of the mountain before, I actually didn't know it was an official 4,000 footer until we got to the top, emerging from treeline eeeeever so slightly, and I saw the USGS capstone.

Abraham also bodes well for a warmup for a couple of reasons beyond its relative low profile.  Having not planned on hiking, I hadn't packed any suitable clothes or boots for reunion, and I hiked it with my friend whilst wearing sneakers.  Granted  my feet weren't in super great shape when we finished and I wouldn't recommend it, but it's not like my feet were bleeding, and we were able to get out, get up, get down, and get back to Middlebury in time for the class dinners that evening.  It's nothing that Arya couldn't handle.

Now the problematic thing is, there are two main trails to take up Abraham and I have no idea which one my friend and I used.  Complicating matters is the fact that they're both listed as being rather moderate/strenuous according my my guidebooks, and that doesn't really mesh with what i remember.  Both are around 5 miles round trip, so I guess it doesn't matter which one we take, but I'd like to maximize our time and not pick the one that will keep us up there all day, since unfortunately we'll be driving for a little bit from Montpelier to get to the trailhead.

The other mountain on the Monroe Skyline that we could use as a start is Mount Ellen, which I climbed in August of 2013 once I got the hiking bug back.  It was really a lark, and it's what actually got me back into this whole mode, since I had a fantastic time hiking by myself and remembered all the things that I love about hiking that I'd been missing since I stopped doing it a decade ago.


Mount Ellen is, unfortunately, one of the main peaks of the Sugarbush Ski Resort, and the summit is a stone's throw from a triple chairlift.  You even have to traverse up a base ski slope for a couple hundred yards to get to the point where the trail to the summit slips back into the woods, which is a bit odd.

The other thing that I really want to harp on with Mount Ellen really isn't about the mountain per se, but with the Green Mountain Club.  See, having grown up hiking in the White Mountains, with most trails kept up and maintained by the Appalachian Mountain Club, I came to expect a certain level of specificity and clarity when it came to trail junctions and signage.  See, in the White Mountains, each trail junction is marked with clear signs for where each trail goes (sometimes there are rather a lot of them at once, especially in the Presidentials).  Mileage is included, so you know how far you have to go to get to either the next junction, or the summit of the mountain you're on, and the White Mountain Guide that the AMC puts out (and continually updates every few years) builds on those signs and has detailed descriptions of each and every trail with landmarks to keep an eye out for.

The Green Mountain Club, to put it bluntly, does not do this.  They have a couple of guidebooks I picked up (the very fact that I had to buy more than one book to cover the hiking trails in Vermont was its own frustration) but the detail of the trail descriptions varies wildly, depending on how close or how important the trail is to the Long Trail, which is the GMC's crown jewel.

I don't know if I've specifically mentioned the Long Trail on the Blawg before?  Basically, it's 270-or-so mile trail tharuns the length of Vermont, from Massachusetts to Quebec.  It hits all of the major peaks, since they're all on the same spine anyway, and it's a popular destination for those looking for some endurance overnight hiking but aren't sure they're insane enough to try the Appalachian Trail yet.  It's a neat thing to have, and I've thought about giving it a go before I get too old, but the problem with its central importance to the GMC is that everything else suffers at its expense.

The signs on the Long Trail are impeccable, showing you exactly where you are and how far you need to go to the next trail, peak, or gap (notches in Vermont are called gaps. For some reason).  The whole trail is marked with clear white blazes, so it's basically impossible to get lost.  But it IS very possible to go too far.  I ran into this when I did Ellen, because once the Jerusalem Trail puts you on top of the Monroe Skyline ridge, you know how far you have to go to get to the peak of Ellen, but what it doesn't tell you is that there's a spur you need to take to get there.

In the Whites, this spur would be noted in the guidebook, and there would be a very clear wooden sign noting that the Mount Ellen Summit Spur is here, and it's 0.1 or whatever to the summit itself.  In the GMC book, though, while it does tell you it's 1.8 miles to the summit of Ellen, no mention of the spur is in there at all, and I ended up going PAST it for about a half mile before I started descending and realized something was up.  For the GMC, the Long Trail is the attraction, and the fact that there are some mountains on it is an afterthought.

Anyway, there are some nice views up Ellen, and it is dramatically closer to home for me, so I'll probably end up doing that with Arya in the next couple weeks.  Maybe even this weekend, if the weather holds.  After that?  Well, there's still Abraham and Mansfield to have her do, and then there's the whole swath of New Hampshire she hasn't seen yet.  More to come!

-M