October 10, 2007
Skyline Lodge to Sucker Brook Shelter
LT Miles – 9.6
Total LT Miles – 143.2
Extra Miles – 1

Skyline Lodge

I’m quick to rise this morning and hit the trail. Leaving the crowded shelter full of teens behind, I won’t see a soul for miles through the misty woods.

Boyce Shelter is an easy two miles from Skyline Lodge. It stands silent and empty.

I effortlessly fall into an introspective rhythm this morning, as last night’s rain still sprinkles down from the leaves.

Silent Cliff, at Middlebury Gap

I descend to Vermont Route 125, where there’s actually a bus stop at the trailhead for an easy ride into Middlebury. The temptation to board a bus to civilization passes quickly, and I cross to ascend through the Middlebury College ski area. Two women I meet in this area are the last people I’ll see today.

Middlebury Snow Bowl

Eastern Lookout, Worth Mountain

In his will, Battell directed the trustees of these lands to “Preserve as far as reasonably may be the forests of said park, and neither to cut nor permit to be cut thereon any trees whatsoever except such as are dead or down and such as it may be necessary to cut in making and repairing needful roads; it being a principal object of this [will] to preserve intact such wild lands as a specimen of the original Vermont forest.”

I descend Worth Mountain into what feels like a no-man’s land. The map shows a roadless block of mountainous terrain extending for miles to the east.

Sucker Brook Shelter finds me with an estimated three hours of daylight remaining. Great Cliffs is five miles ahead, and I consider the possibility of pressing on to camp there, but there appears to be impending rain. I’m also in no mood to hustle against the sunset, so it’s here I stay.

It feels good to be in camp with time to spare. The rain begins shortly before dark – I’ve been fortunate that the precipitation on this trip tends to occur overnight. There’s nothing quite like falling asleep alone in a shelter in autumn to the sound of rain.