Jay Wrap up
I've been delegated to write the trip report. But first here is the link to some pictures I took, which illustrate my report:
http://viewsandbrews.com/jay.html
Saturday, 4 VFTT'ers journeyed up to the top of Vermont, to hike the Jays. There was HarryK, Jean/Nat, and Tom Rankin (me). All of us are 115'ers, working on our next challenge(s). For me, it was bagging 2 more New England Hundred Highest Peaks.
I started out at 7:00 AM and got a pretty good view of Jay as I drove up from the Burlington area. The mountain's profile is unmistakable even from a great distance.
We met at the trailhead at 8:00 AM. It was mostly sunny, and below freezing. After getting ready, we headed up a fairly steep path to Jay. Around 3000', we encountered a slight amount of snow. We would see snow on and off all day, from a dusting to at most 2". After about an hour we were on the summit of Jay. It was sunny, windy, and mostly clear, with views in every direction. Jay is the top of the Green mountain chain, and you can look South quite a ways to Camel's Hump and other familiar peaks. Harry pointed out Montreal to us.
We left the summit fairly quickly, and headed down to the cover of the trees. Continuing on the Long Trail, we soon found the herd path to Big Jay. We almost missed it because there is a tree blocking the entrance. We assumed it should stay there, to keep Long Trail hikers from going the wrong way. The walk over to Big Jay was mostly easy, with a few muddy, but almost frozen spots. The view atop Big Jay is mostly blocked by trees. We struggled with the canister, but could not get it open. So, we took some pictures to record our visit to the summit. At this point, it was about 10:00 AM.
We retraced our steps, and continued North on the Long Trail. We descended down to about 2700' and came to a lean-to, called the Laura Woodward Shelter. There is water here. We stopped briefly and then started up Middle Jay. The summit of this peak is right along the path. We stopped here and ate lunch, while several Ravens soared overhead, seemingly croaking their displeasure that we were there.
After lunch, we headed over to North Jay. This is a true bushwhack. Jean took out his GPS and Compass and we started off into the woods. The going was easy at first, but the trees became increasingly thick as we went up. But we made it more or less straight to the summit. Just before the top there is rugged path, orange and blue blazed. We followed it for a while and came to a tent site. But we were heading back down the other side of the slope. We decided it was a property line when we saw a few yellow markers. Giving up on the trail, we climbed a short steep cliff and came out at the summit. There was a makeshift canister here (a peanut butter jar), crammed between 2 branches of a tree. The register inside was waterlogged. We put in some dry paper and signed our names. The old register had been there for at least 4 seasons, and was hard to read, but we thought we could read a few names. We decided to try the orange/blue trail going back down the other way, but while it was easier than going thru the forest, it was leading us slightly in the wrong direction and downward, so we eventually abandoned it and bushwhacked back to the trail.
From there, we retraced our steps back to the trailhead. It turned out to be about 12 miles, and 4000' of elevation gain. We had to climb Jay 3 times. We finished at about 4:30 and had a nice snack of beer, cheese, crackers, nuts, etc. at the trailhead, and then went our separate ways.
As I was driving home, the 3/4 moon was rising in the East. It rose higher as the sunlight faded, and eventually dominated the night sky. By its light, I could see the ghostly shapes of the Green mountains off to the East, as I drove back to New York. It was almost a perfect day.
