Day 26

Miles hiked: 7
LT miles: 205

Today was the best and worst day so far.

We summited Mt. Mansfield,  tallest peak in Vermont and made amazing time somehow.  It was a lot of uphill as usual but it was windy and COLD.  Got colder as we climbed, obviously, partway up I gave in and put long sleeves on.  Near the top I put my raincoat on just to block wind.

 We saw more people today than we've seen this trip.  Popular day hiking area.

The trail was more mud and running water but beautiful. At one point we had to wade thru a lake
We got the the first big climb and it just got more and more treacherous.  It was steep cliff on one side with a sheer drop. And nothing really, hold on to on the other side. And the rocks were wet in slippery. We finally got to a point where we had to turn around and it was just too dangerous. Thankfully, there was an alternate trail around that section And we met up with the other trail quickly.

We got up to the alpine section where it was very exposed and windy. We walked along that for about a mile before we hit the peak. The views all around us were absolutely breathtaking.
The wind and cold were sapping our energy very quickly. So we started the short decent down to the next shelter.

This proved to be the worst part of the day.  No cliffs, thankfully, but it was all slick wet rocks straight down for about a mile. We were moving so Painfully slow but it was so scary. I had a couple of big falls and this was where I hit a breaking point.  

We hobbled to the shelter and my God was I happy to see it.  We were soaked and shivering and aching all over.  We changed into dry clothes and hung up the wet ones. 

We have a big hard choices to make tonight.

View from the shelter.

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