Summary: start the trip at 09:20AM, reach AT by 1PM, bike 33 mi from the end to the start of the hike and hike 1.5 mi to the first shelter.
06:30 wake up at home and do Duolingo
07:30 conduct an important SQL meeting for work.
08:30 – my part of the work is complete, but the process will be delayed due to workflow misconfiguration. Contacting a responsible person on the other side of the planet
09:20 depart from home to Vermont
09:28 Golf gas station in Newton – 16.984 gal * $5.399 = $91.70 – that is the highest price tag I’ve had so far
Drive north-west using route 2 and then turn north towards Greenfield, MA
11:12 ODO 090.5 +24.5 °C – arrive to Big Y in Greenfield, MA. Buy 4 oranges ($5) and some white grapes ($7.06).
12:48 – 13:16 ODO 133.9 I’ve arrived at the starting point of the hike on route 9 near Bennington, VT. Here I will drop my backpack to return here on my bike in a few hours.
13:50 – 14:17 Arrive at the AT parking lot on routes 11/30 near Manchester, VT (Bromley Mountain, Long Trail) and place car in a shady spot under the trees.
Start rolling down at a great speed to the valley. With me I have an orange, a bottle of tap water, dark glasses and a bright yellow jacket folded on the back. And I turned on red warning light flashing for safety.
14:35 – amazingly I already completed 4 mi with 17 mph speed. 30 more mi to go. From a busy highway I am turning to a side street E. Manchester Rd. Now it will be flatter and slower going. There will be now more pictures for the next four hours while I am struggling through tough bike miles.
Riding along Richville Rd. I spotted and picked up a carpenter knife laying on the ground. So many interesting things can be found by the side of the roads.
16:00 I thought that I was over the inclines after departing Sunderland and entering Arlington. Then the road turned left towards route 7. To my surprise, the pavement ends and then road – first Maple Hill Rd. in Arlington and then East Rd. in Shaftsbury started climbing up and up and up from 750′ to 1500′. Many times I would quit the bike and just walked with it un the next impossible hill. Plus the bike started to make sounds like an offended machine – squeaking somewhere inside the pedal hub. It is probably from all the rainy nights waiting for me outside in the forest.
16:49 the incline is finally over, and I am rolling down again to cross under route 7 around 5PM.
16:59 – 17:20 – completed 23.11 mi – remains 11 mi. I am taking a break by the side of the road, eating ½ of a banana, an orange and some grapes, and taking the stock of the situation
18:08 – 18:16 after riding 30.6 mi, I’ve reached route 9 in Bennington and now I need to climb back to 1400′. I do not have energy to do that. Plus, it is getting late. So, I am dropping the bike in the bushes near Vermont Truck Chain-down Area (where truck can safely put on remove tire chains) on route 9 and begin to walk up the highway toward where I dropped my backpack this afternoon.
Very quickly I’ve got picked up by a brand-new salesman of recreational equipment and by 18:29 I was dropped by the AT parking lot on route 9.
Total distance travelled from the car (bike plus car ride) – 33.78 mi.
Ok. Backpack is waiting for me in the forest. It is still warm, so I am packing the yellow jacket, set the walking sticks to 115 cm and express my gratitude to universe for extending its welcome to me.
18:37 – start the hike. Now, all my worries are behind me. All I need to do is to climb 2455′ in 1.5 mi to the shelter today before dark and 40 mi all together in 3 days and nights. Quite doable. At this hour the sun is shining almost parallel to the ground producing unimaginable combinations of shades and splashes of light between the trees. The trail goes sharply up, but I have no choice but to walk up.
There is a temptation to stop the climb and just set the camp here, but FarOut app tells that there is only 0.8 mi remaining. So, no. I will keep going. And it means completing the hike already in twilight.
19:50 – Ok. After an hour and 15 min I am at the shelter. Using a flashlight, I am making pictures of the sign to Melville Nauheim Shelter. This shelter is structured as a sleeping compartment in a train. It has a table in the middle and 4 oversized shelves – 2 lower and 2 upper banks. It reminded me of one shelter before that – most likely Congdon Shelter where I received a phone call abought death of my great-niece on May 23, 2020, in a hospital in Moscow from a Kawasaki disease.
And I am completely alone here. It is great and it is strange.
20:14 Lira told me in a message that she had an alarm triggered by some power failures at home and she was able to guess the code “1111” to silence the alarm.
An innovation this time – I was doing Duolingo while walking up the trail so that I wouldn’t have to spend time on it in the camp.
My food this evening is porridge from home and a Lärabar with water.
There is a bear box here, but someone left a garbage bag with food waste in it, making it unusable. I even left a comment about it on FarOut app.
20:30 Every evening upon arrival to camp, I change all clothes to a dry set for sleeping. So, long thin track pants became very useful as they cover the legs from mosquito bites and preserve body heat.
Mosquitoes are not plentiful, but they are present. They are slow and small. I am planning to sleep in a mosquito net, and that is not very pleasant as it is still hot.
Navigate through the List
- 01 2026-08 First August trip to Vermont (2026/08/17)
- 02 2026-08-18 TU First day so full of driving, biking and hiking (2026/08/18)
- 03 2026-08-19 WE - second hiking day - jump over Glastenbury Mountain (2026/08/19)
- 04 2026-08-20 TH - 15 mi day over Stratton Mountain (2026/08/20)
- 05 2026-08-21 FR last 10 mi to the car (2026/08/21)
- 06 2026-08 AT VT trip lessons and overall summary (2026/08/22)
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