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13.4 miles

Battell Shelter Trail to Skyline Lodge

Local scenery.

Signs are a welcome landmark, as oftentimes,
what's on the  map is not marked on the trail!

The trail from Battell Shelter to Skyline Lodge crosses what is known as the Breadloaf Wilderness. It's always interesting, while backpacking, to distract the mind and ponder just how certain places get their name. All kinds of scenarios come to mind. Does it look like a breadloaf??? Did ancient inhabitants have some ritual involving it??? Were more recent settlers sustained in heavy winters by bread loaves they made??? Is there a peculiar smell, like a bread loaf??? Is the ground spongy, like.... a bread loaf. Heck, I don't know and google didn't turn up anything easily! But here it is and a sign to prove it!

This morning I said goodbye to Gabriel. On his tight deadline he's gonna have to pull 20 mile days from here to the end if he wants to make it, which is not my plan. Sure was nice to have company while it lasted though. The trail has gotten easier but the blazing still sucks. Walked for almost an hour today with out seeing a blaze! I finally passed some day hikers who confirmed I was indeed still on the Long Trail (phew). Felt like I was being attacked by pine trees on and off today as they were growing into the trail at numerous points and you just had to push through.

View from Sunset Ledge, overlooks the Adirondaks
and Lake Champlain.

When I arrived at the Skyline Lodge I was greeted by a very enthusiastic little girl asking me my trail name (looking disappointed when I didn't have one) and introducing herself as Hummingbird and her dad as Goose. Humming bird is 10 and her and her dad are through hiking the long trail northbound. Also her pack weighs 15-20 lbs! Positive, Negative (a retired couple who had through hiked the AT when they were younger) and their dog were also at the shelter along with a few other people. They were all great company and Goose even shared some of the Long Trail IPA he hiked in, with me! All in all it was a great evening at a great shelter with some great people. It made me a little sad to be hiking in the wrong direction. Not too sad though because they still have all the hard stuff to look forward to.

At this point, the Green Mount Club Long Trail Map, which is folded into 7 sections, is flipped. Three down and 4 to go! The last few days have been fairly sunny. Yippee!