Long Trail: Day 1

13 miles (13 Total)

Pine Cobble Trail Head to Congdon Shelter

42.84811, -73.10961

It rained somewhat on our ride up to North Adams from Springfield to start our Long Trail hike. Clouds hovered over the northern Berkshire Mountains hiding them from sight as we drove along winding Route 2. There were a lot of rafting places along a large river that paralleled the road, and people were out with life jackets on waiting to get going. I suppose it doesn’t matter much if you raft in the rain, since you are probably going to get wet anyway. This doesn’t apply to backpacking unfortunately.

My Mom dropped us off under cloudy skies and the rain had appeared to have stopped. (A quick note to say Thanks Mom for driving us up to the start. You are amazing!)

We grabbed our bags out of the car and were quickly on our way. We had to walk about 3 miles on an approach trail to get to the Vermont/Mass border, the official start of the Long Trail. There were some people eating lunch by the sign and they were kind enough to snap a picture of us at the border. With the obligatory start photo out of the way, we continued along into the incredibly dense and claustrophobic green woods of the North East.

 

The hiking was good, although quite muddy, and the rain never came again. I tried to remember the trail from hiking it in 2011 and 2009, but everything seemed new to me. I didn’t really remember much.

The only view we got was at a power line clearing. The clouds had appeared to lift and there were a few blue patches in between the white parts.

We made it to Congdon Shelter and are camped near it by a creek. The Long Trail has over 60 of these shelters along the path. They usually can sleep about 8 or so people, but it was quite full when we approached it. There was a large, overweight old man sitting out front and we knew from our Camino experience that he fit the demographic for epic snorer. Obviously we wanted nothing to do with it, and found a nice campsite across the creek in front of the shelter instead.

It was really humid and hot earlier but now it is cooling down. I’m immediately regretting brining our tent we used on the PCT last year, a Zpacks Duplex. On all the trips so far this year I’ve been using our other 2 person tent, from Big Agnes. It’s a little heavier but it is freestanding and so much easier to set up and use. I had also forgotten about all the zipper problems we were having with the Zpacks tent. Overall, a big mistake on my part. Carolyn wanted to bring the Big Agnes but I talked her out of it, thinking only about weight savings and not utility (usually we split the tent in two and each carry a part of the Big Agnes tent; whereas I can just easily carry the Zpacks tent by myself.) 

Oh well.

I almost lost a tent stake as well. And forgot to bring a trash bag. It was not a good start for me. It was almost as if I’ve never hiked before. Carolyn picked up the slack and helped me along. She knows what she’s doing out here way more than I do.