Vermont 4000 Footers in Two Days 9/8/12-9/9/12

This past weekend my brother and I did the 5 VT 4000 footers in a weekend. What fun it was to do this in a weekend. We completed the task doing two hikes Saturday, and two hikes Sunday, going North to South. The two short hikes first, two longer hikes second. The driving directions were most direct that way.

Mt. Mansfield and Camel's Hump we're very similar hikes, except the views were just a bit different, and Camel's Hump's profile was really cool on the hike, and to look at as we drove towards it. To us, all of the trails compared to certain other White Mountain trails, yet the surroundings might also give you a feel like your'e hiking in MA too. I was surprised at how few Long Trail hikers I saw, and that the shelters we passed were mostly empty. We did speak to one on Mt. Lincoln who had to hunker down early because of the storms on Sat afternoon.

Ascending Abraham for sunrise and an overall uplifting hike in great time was the highlight of the weekend. We finished around 6pm Sunday on the summit of Killington.

The cumulative stats for the 4 hikes:
Distance: 29.2 miles
Elevation Gain: 11,021 feet
Book Time: 17hrs 34min
Driving distance: 455 miles (home to home near MA/NH border)
Approximate driving time/in car time: 10hrs

The individual hike stats are shown on my blog. We now have 11 peaks in Maine to complete for the NE67.

An overcast and breezy summit greeted us on Mansfield, as we took in our first 4000 foot view in VT.


After we did Mansfield and Camel's Hump, we car camped at Lincoln Gap. During the late afternoon, a band of storms came through including a tornado watch. Afterwards, we poked around the trail head area, and were treated to a wet Lincoln Gap sunset.


This here was the highlight of our trip, reaching Abraham to this sight. It was a very cool morning where jackets and gloves were brought out for the summit.


For our last hike, we did a direct route to Killington via the Bucklin Trail. We celebrated and looked back on the adventure over a nice cold VT beer on the summit. What a weekend, and we were home in bed by 11:30pm.


For a more detailed account on this trip, visit my blog. I've laid each of the four hikes out in a single report.

Excellent TR and blog. A very enjoyable trip....

One thing to note: I think you shorted yourself a bunch of elevation on the Abe/Ellen hike. The elevation of 1,600 feet is from Lincoln Gap to Abe only. The whole hike out to Ellen and back, is around 3,000 feet, if I recall correctly.

In any case, great job!

Thanks,
Marty

marty said:

Excellent TR and blog. A very enjoyable trip....

One thing to note: I think you shorted yourself a bunch of elevation on the Abe/Ellen hike. The elevation of 1,600 feet is from Lincoln Gap to Abe only. The whole hike out to Ellen and back, is around 3,000 feet, if I recall correctly.

In any case, great job!

Thanks,
Marty

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Thanks very much, Marty. Indeed it was. Every hike was enjoyable. We questioned that elevation, but found most online sources to indicate 1,600. We only had the GMC Long Trail map. It seems I've just found some trip reports that say 3500', so I've put it at that for now. Thank you for noting that correction, that's double what we thought we did, and I guess our second day was much more grueling that we had anticipated!

Google Earth says 3500+



Tim

Dan,
WOW! Another impressive series of hikes. We've never hiked in Vermont yet; but hope to one day. You'll enjoy the 4000 footers in Maine; especially in Baxter State Park. Look forward to the next chapter of your 67 NE four thousand footers.

Donna

Excellent. I will be doing the same thing next week sans Camels Hump as I've already hiked that

Tim - Thank you for posting that. Very interesting to see it that way. I've got to do more of that. Makes me remember the last section, where it goes down, then back up a little bit to the road. The top parts are pretty flat, and we almost missed the sign(s) for Nancy Hanks Peak because we were going at a good pace. Its a really nice hike.

Jimmy Legs and Little D said:

Dan,
WOW! Another impressive series of hikes. We've never hiked in Vermont yet; but hope to one day. You'll enjoy the 4000 footers in Maine; especially in Baxter State Park. Look forward to the next chapter of your 67 NE four thousand footers.
Donna

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Thanks Donna, we'll be headed to Baxter once more for North Brother, and probably the whole North Brother loop. Then hopefully just a few more hikes. The question is, which of our 11 left to finish on? Saddlebacks? Bigelows? I would prefer not to finish on a mountain with ski trails.

Daxs - Thanks - I hope you have great time and the weather's great.

Very cool, congratulations!

Impressive stuff, Dan! Wishing you well with foliage season just a few weeks away.

I just hiked Abe and Ellen going up the Bartell Trail. It seems that most of the elevation was to the summit of abe. I made great time to and from Ellen. It did not seem like there was any maor elevation changes between these two.

Thanks Owen, as always!!

Jake - Thank you, and for taking the time to comment - appreciate it!

daxs said:

I just hiked Abe and Ellen going up the Bartell Trail. It seems that most of the elevation was to the summit of abe. I made great time to and from Ellen. It did not seem like there was any maor elevation changes between these two.

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When we hit the Battell Trail from the Long Trail, it appeared as if the Battell Trail was an old logging route to the summit. If it was the same from the trail head, I imagine the gain and hike is similar to something like Carrigain. You are correct, there is very little gain on the ridge and no feeling of pointless-up-and-downs (PUDS) along the way to Ellen.

The trail features on the Long Trail to the Battell trail (rock slabs, roots, winding around a ridge, etc, which are similar to Whites) seemed to break up the ascent for us, so until Tim mentioned something, it just didn't feel like it was most of the gain. For that, there's no complaints here! Abe & Ellen were the highlight of Vermont, for us.

I had a bluebird day for my Mansfield hike. Killington was completely socked in; it was raining and very windy on top. i did not linger. Up and down in a little over 3 hours. i was the only person on the trail.

daxs said:

I had a bluebird day for my Mansfield hike. Killington was completely socked in; it was raining and very windy on top. i did not linger. Up and down in a little over 3 hours. i was the only person on the trail.

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Glad to hear that you got one great day for Mansfield (that was a fun first hike on our trip), and were still able to get both despite the icky conditions. It sounds like Killington was a nice rainy hike with some solitude to me. Thanks for sharing!

Even though the weather was bad, Killington was a nice quiet hike. Abraham and Eleen were to. There were only 4 other people on the trail. Mansfield, however, was swarming with school kids.