tucker johnson campsite to govornor clement shelter

miles: 12.0

last night was windy. though at tent level all was calm, the tops of the trees sounded like they were in a gale. all night tiny branches and twigs came down on the tent, sometimes in such quantities that it sounded like rain.

we woke a bit earlier today, though it still took us nearly 2 hours to get on trail. i was the exact same way my first few mornings. magz is already making plans for a more efficient exit, and not by any prompting from me.

we hit the trail and almost immediately arrived at maine junction, where the AT and the LT split going north. the forest was almost entirely maple trees. we noticed that every leaf was full of holes. magz dubbed it “swiss cheese disease”.

we continued on down to rt 4, where on my NOBO i took the bus into rutland for the very poor resupply where wal-mart was out of everything including fuel.

we started up the other side of the gap, through some extremely picturesque forest.

churchill shelter was our next stop to filter some water and have our morning snack.

we set off for the top of killington, hoping to be able to lunch at the top. at some point magz became fixated on gummy bears. she had very recently given me grief at a resupply request of sour patch kids. now she seemed to understand the need.

around noon we were hungry, so stopped at jingle junction and ate the remains of yesterday’s lunch, a bit of cheese and some pepperoni.

rejuvenated, we made it to cooper lodge at around 13:00hr. there was a NOBO hiker there who told us there was a snack bar on top of the mountain. when i was there last, it was completely socked in. i could barely see the cell towers through the mist. i expressed my skepticism at a snack bar, but she insisted and said she had called them.

magz, now convinced that there was a shack at the top replete with every candy imaginable, but most importantly gummy bears, refused to leave our packs at the shelter and started up the perpendicular .2 blue blaze to the top.

upon arriving at the top there was the familiar cell towers, again in the mist, but not as thick as last time. today however there was some kind of machine running nearby, but away from the cell towers. we started in that direction and discovered a trail marked “j”.

we followed it around and discovered the source of the noise, the killington gondola!

right next to the gondola was a building with a snack bar inside. sadly they weren’t serving cooked food, but they did have some snacks, and most importantly they had welches fruit gummies! we also each got some chips, peanut m&ms, and made a mocha at the coffee / hot chocolate bar.

though the indoor seating was set up for COVID, we opted to sit on a bench outside.

as we ate our snack, as well as our lunch it started to rain lightly. the hiker who had told us about the snack bar showed up with her hiking partner and we chatted over snackage.

eventually we realized we had to go, magz stole a bunch of TP, and we both emptied our trash ziplocks into the can at the entrance before disappearing over the top of the mountain and back down to cooper lodge where we rejoined the LT.

our little side trip was an extremely generous 2 hours, so we hustled down the mountain, stopping around 16:00hr for our afternoon snack. shortly after resuming hiking magz was lamenting some knee pain and coined the term “struckin’ fugglebus”.

we arrived at governor clement shelter around 17:30hr, set up camp nearby, had a wash, and made dinner. at dusk a whole cadre of people arrived and took over the shelter. there must have been at least 8 of them, but we kept to our little camp and didn’t chat.

some additional photos from today: