#lt2020

Louis: "I think I should do a pot noodle range"

This is the first of two posts recounting our recent hike of the Long Trail, a 272-mile long hiking trail traversing the length of Vermont along the Green Mountains. The northern terminus of the trail is the Canadian border and the southern terminus of the trail is the VT/MA border. This post discusses the lead up and planning of our hike, including our hiker ethic in a pandemic environment. The next post will cover the trip itself (and will have the pics!).

We decided to do a 2020 LT hike back in 2019. The southern 100 miles of the LT are concurrent with the AT, which we did back in 2014. Since then it has always been in the back of my mind to complete the remainder of the LT. It’s also one of the three trails that make up the ‘mini triple crown’ (along with the JMT and the Colorado Trail). We already hiked the JMT, so it just seemed to “make sense” to hike the LT next.

Our friend (”TBD”) also decided to join us on our thru-hike. This would be his first thru-hike experience, which we were very excited to be part of. After considering our past experience on the southern section of the LT, particularly the infamous mud of Vermont, we decided a fall thru-hike would be the best time to go. The advantages were (hopefully) missing most of the mud, bugs would be at a minimum, crowds would be smaller, we would be hiking south with the changing of the foliage, and day time temperatures would be cool for some wonderful hiking. The disadvantages were that we would be limited in daylight hiking hours, and temperatures could dip which could become an issue if we encountered much rain.

Since we have had some considerable experience with thru-hiking, initially there was not much planning done for this trip other than deciding what shoulder-season hiking clothes to bring. We figured we would start out on-trail with a few days of food and just start hiking. However, in early 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic all of that changed. Now we had to evaluate hiking in a pandemic environment. The first hurtle we encountered was deciding if we would even go on the hike. A typical thru-hike would mean going into small mountain towns, most likely by hitch-hiking, and interacting with a lot of people in small mountain/rural towns as we traverse the state. Given the precautions we were taking to prevent the risk of spreading COVID-19, this type of behavior did not lineup with our hiker ethics. Additionally, if the number of cases did not reduce, then no matter our best-practices it might not be prudent to go. There was absolutely no reason for us to put others in undue risk for the sake of wanting to have a vacation.

As the time neared for the trip, we made the decision that the number of cases in New England, and in particular NH and VT, were at a level that we decided it was an acceptable risk to go as long as we followed some self-imposed guidelines. We were not going to go into towns and potentially risk being a spreader to what are generally insular towns. This meant that there would be no hitch-hiking or resupplying in towns. It made for some logistical hurdles to coordinate our food, but thankfully we were able to organize food drops by TBD’s partner. The major downside to this was having to carry at least 7 days worth of food at a time. Additionally, we would not stay in shelters (which we wouldn’t do anyways, but reaffirmed that decision) and would make sure to practice social distancing from other hikers we encountered.