In a strong effort to procrastinate studying for finals, I decided it would be a great idea to do a 4K during finals week the day before I move out. Inconveniently, the perfect weather window occurred during my finals week and I was destined to take advantage of it. On Tuesday morning, I sent Emilie off after she’d slept over to recover from a long day of finals and as she journeyed back home I ventured towards Central Vermont.
I arrived at the Battell Trailhead around 9 am and for shits and giggles, I decided to read the AllTrails reviews of the hike. Uh oh. They were all horrible with complaints of ice, difficulty, and strenuous climbing; all things I did not have time for that morning. But, since I was already there, I headed up anyways and didn’t find the ascent too bad.
On the first 2 miles, the slope was steep but gradual enough that it wasn’t too strenuous for me and provided lots of gorgeous wildflowers and plants to look at. There were a handful of blowdowns but nothing that I couldn’t just hop over. Once I got to the Battell Shelter, which reeked of rotting wood, the microspikes did need to come out. The next mile up to the top was sort of a pain because there were enough normal rocks where I didn’t want microspikes but enough ice that I needed them. After taking them on and off three times, I got to the snow and ice-free boulder scrambles at the top which reminded me that I hadn’t done a four-thousand footer since December! Crazy!
The top was simply stunning and I had the whole skyline of Killington, Sugarbush, and Mansfield peeking out in the distance all to myself. There were some pesky black flies up top, but little enough where they could be swatted away to continue enjoying the scenery.
On the descent, I decided to keep my microspikes on from the bottom of the scrambles to the shelter. Though useful, keeping the spikes on certainly was not in favor of preserving the life of my microspikes.
Breaks included, the whole hike took me about 2 hours and 15 minutes and was a great way to spend a finals week morning!
-Izzy, 5/23/22
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