Camel's Hump

With COVID-19 cases rising in Vermont, Gov. Phil Scott (who I'll say has been doing an excellent job managing the pandemic here with Vermont consistently reporting less transmission than just about anywhere else in the States) instituted pretty stringent guidelines around social gatherings. After completely banning any indoor or outdoor hangs with anyone other than folks in your household, he opened things up to allow outdoor hangs with one other household. Jillian and Nick had joined their household a few weeks back so we decided the four of us would get out and hike.

We met for a coffee and delicious pastries at Red Hen Bakery. En route, it had started sleeting/raining/boding poorly for our hike weather-wise. I was glad to see everyone brought their rain jackets. We caravanned in our respective vehicles to the trailhead in Huntington, hoping the forecast was correct in saying it should clear up as we headed farther West. This was the first time Jillian was going winter hiking and I was hoping to hook her. Luckily, she's pretty tough.

We commiserated with other hikers in the parking lot about how much of a shame it is to have to drive separately to hike due to COVID. Hikers (obviously) tend to be in the environmentally-conscious crowd so I think we're not alone in cutting down on the amount of hiking we've been doing given it's normally a bit of a drive and it's just ourselves we can whisk away in our vehicle.

Happily, the weather did indeed cooperate and seemed to let up on the cold drizzle right as we started hiking. We chose the right side of the mountain I suppose. At start, the trail was just beautifully dusted with light snow and soon after, we were walking through a humid winter wonderland.

We passed a few other groups on the trail and got into a bit of a leapfrog game with a larger one. Nick and Jillian were setting a good pace up the mountain — in fact this was my fastest (by a slim margin) hike up Burrows (thanks for the data, Strava).

Inclement weather meant no views from the summit, but we did get a sense of being out on an adventure up there. We circled around once before we found our trail down — the one that goes past the cliffs is tricky to spot on a clear day. The Long Trail and then Forest City were much quieter than Burrows, thankfully. We refueled on Sour Patch Kids. Jillian decided that jogging was just the thing her tired legs needed so we did that for a while in the flatter sections. Mainly we just enjoyed each others company after so long isolated in our separate household pods.