Mt Killington is one of Vermont’s 4000-foot peaks. It’s on the Long Trail (LT), where the LT and the Appalachian Trail (AT) coincide before the AT veers east and heads toward New Hampshire. While you can hike Killington as a day hike by climbing the Bucklin Trail from the west, I approached the peak from the east and the south bagging another peak and some more side trails on my quest to finish hiking trails leading to the Long Trail from the east and the west. The Green Mountain Club awards an end-to-end patch for completing the Long Trail (which I finished in 2008) as well as a side-to-side patch, which is the goal of my current quest.
Let me restate that. The goal of hiking the side-to-side trail isn’t to get a patch or even to complete the spreadsheet used to track my hikes but to experience lesser visited areas of Vermont and to check out the small towns that border the east and west of the Long Trail which run south to north up the middle of the state. This project reminds me of John Steinbek’s Travels with Charlie in Search of America (1962), when he outfitted a camper and set off with his dog, Charlie, to visit small towns across America to connect with the people he met. I relish my interactions with people on these trips, and while I am “learning” Vermont in the process, those encounters are the high points of my hikes, in addition to the trails and mountains I climb.
My route for this 1-night trip was as follows:
- Park at Trailhead on CCC Rd (also called Shrewsbury Rd)
- Shrewsbury Peak Trail 3.8
- Long Trail North 1.8
- Bucklin Trail 7.0 down and up
- Tent at Cooper Lodge Campsite
- Killington Peak Spur 0.4 up and down
- Long Trail South 1.8
- Black Swamp Trail 2.2
- CCC Rd (Road walk) 1.5
- Trip Plan w/miles (19.5 miles w/5k elevation gain)
I journeyed to the Shrewsbury Peak Trail trailhead along the gravel CCC road in the Calvin Coolidge Forest. Built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, it is a marvel of construction: it’s nice and wide and looks to have a solid foundation. I’ve heard it said that most of Vermont’s roads are unpaved, and based on my experience, I believe it.
My plan was to hike up the Shrewsbury Peak Trail over Shrewsbury Peak and beyond it to the Long Trail before heading north to Cooper Lodge, a four-sided shelter just below the Killington summit. I parked at the trailhead and tucked my car into some foliage, so it wasn’t visible from the road. I then started up the Shrewsbury Peak Trail and soon passed a covered well. It was an off thing to find so close to the trailhead. Shortly after, I came to the Russell Hill Shelter, which was a surprise since it wasn’t listed on the Green Mountain Club map I had.
Unfortunately, the Green Mountain Club maps and guidebooks focus on the Long Trail but leave out a lot of information about the side trails that lead to it. This is a shame because the side trails, which constitute close to half the miles managed by the GMC, are probably used more by local Vermonters than the Long Trail itself. I like the process of ferreting all this information out, but I doubt many people are as obsessed with it or experienced at it as I am. It’d be nice if the Green Mountain Club published one map and guidebook covering the Long Trail and its side trails rather than the mishmash of information it currently provides.
I passed the shelter and continued climbing up the Shrewsbury Peak Trail, passing a junction with the Catamount Ski Trail and some obvious snowmobile trails before passing into the Shrewsbury Peak Natural Area. There’s a sign at the peak summit about the Natural Area and explained that it is home to several rare birds, including Bicknell’s Thrust, the Yellow-Bellied Flycatcher, the Blackpoll Warbler, Swainson’s Thrush and Philadelphia Warbler. I also liked the quote on the sign, which reads, “I came to this place to be quiet, to gaze out and to listen and let the business of life go on.” Yes.
The Shrewsbury Peak trail gets wilder in the stretch from the summit to its junction with the Long Trail, and I found myself skirting many blowdowns. This culminated in a particularly wild stretch just before the junction, where I had to bushwhack through a stand of fallen spruce and high grass. I was prepared for this, however, and had already learned to wear long pants or at least convertible hiking pants when hiking the GMC’s side trails.
The going got much easier once I was on the Long Trail and headed north, and I soon arrived at the Cooper Lodge Shelter just below the Killington summit. That four-sided building is very dark inside and uninviting, but there are three tent platforms you can camp on and a lot of open woods below the shelter where people pitch tents.
While I could have stopped there for the day, I decided to pick up another side trail, the Bucklin Trail, which descends the peak to the west, rather than coming back another day to climb it. I was tired at this point, but decided I’d rather hike down it and then back up again on the first day of my trip and not the second. It’d be a significant reclimb, but I figured I’d scope out wild campsites on the way down just in case I didn’t feel like coming all the way back up again.
As I headed down, I struck up a conversation with a woman named Caroline, who was with her dog, a mini-schnauzer. I’ve known a few famous mini-schnauzers (Atticus and Pepper) so I asked whether they had inspired her to get one too. It turns out she is from a town on the northern side of the White Mountain National Forest and knew exactly what I was talking about when I mentioned Atticus, who is featured in Tom Ryan’s bestselling, “Waiting for Atticus.” She was visiting Vermont to work on the Northeast 67 Highest Peakbagging List. Of course, it started to rain on the way down.
When I reached the bottom of the Bucklin Trail, I was pretty tired. I think I was affected by the smoke of the Canadian Forest Fire, which, unbeknownst to me, was exceptionally bad that day. I ate a bunch of food, filtered some water, and decided to hike back up the Bucklin Trail anyway. I hadn’t found any great campsites along the trail on the way down and figured I could manage another 2000 feet of elevation gain before calling it quits for the day.
That was a little optimistic because I started to bonk about 1000 feet below Cooper Lodge. There was no turning back at that point, so I simply counted out sets of 100 steps, resting for a moment between them, and made it up to the spot where I wanted to camp below Cooper Lodge.
There was a couple there when I arrived, and we chatted for a while. They were thru-hiking the Long Trail and were having a “safety meeting” when I arrived…a euphemism on the Appalachian Trail for getting high. They’d hiked 15 miles that day and obviously needed some pain relief. They’d pitched a tent on one of the tent platforms but were inside Cooper Lodge, filtering water in a gravity system and making dinner. I spoke to them through the door because it looked dark and awful inside. When I hiked the LT in 2008, I also tented outside Cooper Lodge rather than sleeping inside.
I set up camp and ate a big dinner before going to bed, cozy and warm in my quilt and tent. I slept in late the next morning and had another big meal before packing up and climbing another 250 feet up to the summit of Killington on the 0.2 mile spur that climbs the peak from Cooper Lodge. It was another smoky day though and the views were non-existent. I was just glad to be at the top of the Bucklin Trail.
It took me a few hours to hike back south along the Long Trail and back to Shrewsbury Peak, where I finished the other half of this lollipop hike. Instead of descending the way I’d come down the Shrewsbury Peak Trail, I came down the Black Swamp Trail, passing another lean-to not marked on the map. This one was condemned, however, and is not suitable for camping, so I can understand why it has been omitted from the GMC’s Long Trail map. It also doesn’t have an obvious water source.
I passed it and kept going down the trail, which terminated in a big field but not on the CCC road. It looked like there was a snowmobile trail headed to that road, so I started down it, walking in high grass. It would have been nice if there’d been a sign with some useful information to that effect! Still, I wasn’t worried, and I knew I’d get to my car eventually, but I had to chuckle at how poorly marked this side trail was. When I got to the CCC road, which took about 20 minutes, I turned right and headed another mile and a half to my car.
Despite my bickering about the lack of good signage or maps, I enjoyed this adventure because I got to exercise my navigation skills using the tools I had on hand and my intuition. I get a lot of satisfaction from that because I worked hard to master those skills, which were largely self-taught. While this hike had some physical hardships, I persevered and accomplished all my goals, letting the business of life move on without me while I enjoyed myself in the Vermont woods.
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