Camel's Hump (Vermont)

It's the new year, and I've already fallen behind on posting. I'm trying to get a writing schedule going this year. With a little diligence, I should get a post up each week. Here's a hike I did over the holiday break.

The Long Trail is a trail network that stretches from the Canadian border to the Vermont-Massachusetts border. I was treated to a Boxing day snowshoe up a small portion of it consisting of Camel's Hump (4083 feet). We took the Monroe trail (6.1 miles round trip) and it took about 6 hours.

We were lucky enough to have received enough snow to mostly cover all the rocks. Being that this was the first time I'd gone snowshoeing all winter, it was rough going. The first 1.7 miles probably felt the longest even though it is a fairly gentle climb up to the junction with the Dean trail. Of course, we were also breaking trail.

The next 0.8 miles to the junction with the Alpine trail wasn't too bad. Now the next 0.6 miles to the clearing before the summit was brutal and consistently steep. I was drenched in sweat and exhausted by the time we reached the clearing and had lunch. The final 0.3 miles to the cloud enclosed and wind swept summit required a gear change. We exchanged the snowshoes for crampons and grabbed our mountaineering axes. Maybe we looked a little over-prepared.

At the top, there were no views to be had. In fact, the clouds did not part until we were most of the way down. But the accomplishment of my first real witner hike of the season was enough for me. The way back was a lot of fun. We met numerous people on their way up while we were heading to the parking lot. We barely made it back to the parking lot before the sunset.

In all a great and challenging experience. It took about two days to recover from this one. A sleet/rain shower nixed the planned hike up Mansfield. Next time...

 

PS. For the few readers who come across this blog. How is the load time? I'm worried the number of pictures or their size is causing the page to lag. Let me know.