Monday June 3, 19.7mi/31.7km

Little Rock Pond shelter (1672.7) to Governor Clement shelter (1692.4) (VT)

I had a cold start to the day, it was only 39F/4C when I woke up! But, it was sunny, and with the uphill climb I quickly warmed up.

After an hour I passed a random spot in the woods, and it was hilarious to see. Cairn-ville!

Someone (probably many someones) built a rock garden.

The trail was really nice today, with almost no mud, and lots of bridges over little streams. Dry feet are happy feet!

The Green Mountain Club (trail maintainers for this section) even have special signs at road crossings, haha.

I cruised all morning, seeing almost no one else, and enjoying the verdant forest.

And the occasional wildlife. Some kind of toad?

After lunch, we got to walk a ridgeline, so there were occasionally viewpoints into the valley below. I believe this is Rutland airport.

Then we descended into the Clarendon gorge, and everything was very green and moist.

The swingbridge over the river was my favorite so far, the boards were new and smelled like cedar.

The climb up out of the gorge was steep, and surrounded by rock walls to navigate around.

At the top of the climb, we had pretty much the same view again… of the airport.

There was also an interesting sign, it was really old. It gave the trail distances, but also the estimated travel times. I’ve seen this on the Te Araroa, but nowhere else.

And at the end of the day, we saw another fun sign. 500 miles to Katahdin!

We arrived to an empty shelter at 5pm, and quickly layered up and made a warm meal. It was getting colder, and expected to be a frigid 38F/3C tonight. A couple other section hikers showed up at 6pm, and we all went to bed early, hiding in our warm sleeping bags!