Killington

October 11, 2015

Katharina and I drove about two minutes from Gifford Woods State Park to the Sherburne Pass trailhead where we started hiking up Pico mountain on a cool, but beautiful autumn morning. The golden leaves gave a lovely light to the well maintained trail. After about two hours of climbing we hit the summit station of the Pico ski hill, where a porcupine had made a big mess of the porch. We scampered up to the summit, which was an unimpressive rock nestled amongst communication towers, and then quickly descended back to the shelter of the ski station where we took a break on the chewed up porch. We descended back down to the main trail and traversed around the mountain to the Appalachian trail. The walk along the ridge for the next five kilometers was very windy, but the trees provided fairly good shelter. At the base of the Kilington summit cone we found a somewhat decrepit stone sleeping hut, and we chatted with a fellow having his lunch inside before continuing. The climb up Killington was steep with a few easy scrambles. At the top we encountered hordes of people in street clothing, screaming babies, and lots of selfie sticks. We got our summit photos and pushed our way through the throngs down to the gondola and restaurant. We went in, bought a beer and a coffee (just because we could), and came back outside where it was a little more quiet on some picnic tables. After a bit of relaxing though, we got annoyed enough of the crowds, so we reclimbed the summit and dropped back down the scramble trail and back to some relative solitude. We sped along the ridge in the sunshine, stripping down to t-shirts as it was now quite warm. At the Sherburne trail junction, we decided to take the long way down via the Appalachian trail, as the day was still young. This trail is quite pretty as we passed through some new birch forests and the occasional lookout towards the west. At one place we found the largest ever split rock, where I scrambled through the 10m long split and out the other side by stemming across the gap. Finally we reached route 4 where I hiked down the highway a couple of kilometers to get back to the car while Katharina tried to hitch a ride from the trailhead parking lot. She caught a ride as I was climbing the final bit of hill, and then picked me up only a couple hundred meters from the Sherburne pass. A lovely nine hour hike.

Early morning light on an autumn trail.