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V
ALONG THE SKY-LINE TRAIL

IN the midst of the Green Mountains a new trail had been born. Such news is ever an irresistible lure to one with the tramping habit. With him there is always "some­thing lost behind the ranges." The oldest trail, indeed, is a promising field of explora­tion till he has experienced it. No matter how many may have preceded him, the mysteries of the unknown are yet before him   lost and waiting for him  — he simply has to go. But here was a brand-new trail, its last blaze but lately made, and one leading through a forest region in large part un­scarred by axe or fire.

It seemed a far cry, though, to the Green Mountains for a man with only a week-end to spare   to steal might be a more truthful expression   until, in the light of the night-train schedules, even that two-hundred-miles­ off region appeared as but around the corner.

The sleeper train is the ever-ready accom­plice of the man in such a frame of mind. His desk is closed at night, and, presto ! breakfast is ready at "the jumping-off-place. "

Then, too, it is less trying to the nerves of the sensitive man, who perhaps does not feel that he looks his prettiest in his trail garb, when he can crawl, unobserved, into his berth, and can as easily escape the public gaze in the early morning. Truth to tell, though, the tribe of the tramper has so in­creased that the woodsiest apparel scarce at­tracts a glance, except one of envy, to-day. We "fell for it," and, breakfasting in Bur­lington, caught an. early train south that connected with the branch line for Bristol, whither the telephone's summons had in­sured the presence of a helpful "flivver "to cover the eight miles of valley to the journey's real beginning.

With more time at our disposal the choice would undoubtedly have been to spend a night in Lincoln village, about halfway be­tween Bristol railroad station and the trail, or at the Davis farm only a mile and a half from the "jumping-off place," where trampers mostly stay.

There still remained a full hour of morn­ing when packs were hoisted at the foot of the break-neck road up the Lincoln-War­ren Pass, where, at the height of land, at a point proclaimed by a Geological Survey bench-mark to be 2424 feet above the sea, the Green Mountain Club's Long Trail ar­rows bade us turn our faces northward up Mount Abraham.

Before us lay a trail on which we might follow, if so we wished, for three whole days without contact with civilization, yet with livable cabins and lean-tos handily located along the way, affording shelter against everything except the insinuating and boot-consuming porcupine. Should foul weather or other mischance so will it, escape to the western valley farms was easy by three side trails, with one farm so conveniently situated within a mile of the- main course as to afford most comfortable quarters for the night.

With three or four days more to spare, the trail leads on, to and across Mount Mansfield, and over the Sterling Range, a mere reversal of that midsummer trip "Over Vermont's Highest Spots." For us it was to be a three days' joy ride, with shoulders burdened with nothing but the barest nec­essaries. As dear old "Nessmuk" once put it: "We do not go to the green woods to rough it; we go to smooth it." Nothing takes the joy out of life along the trail more completely than a weighty pack slung upon unaccustomed shoulders. If a wool-wadding sleeping-bag, with its paraffined balloon-silk cover, weighing six pounds, will keep you reasonably warm, and that without turning in all standing, why tote more? If the night is chilly, you presumably have a sweater and dry socks to don. If still you think that you ought to shiver, it is a safe bet that it is because of the vagrant zephyrs stealing in around your neck, and that this can be easily cured by chinking the crevices there with a flannel shirt.

We started with an axe, but I left it in the train. It was the other fellow's, anyway. I am afraid he missed it, although I didn't. For grub-stakes our list was meager in vari­ety, but bountiful as to quantity. John Muir was wont to take to the mountains for weeks at a time with nothing but a bag of dry bread, sugar, and tea. Bread, too, was our reliance, but garnished liberally with two of Vermont's choicest products, good butter and soft maple sugar. All mountains have their genii, 't is said, but be they gods or demons that flourish at those altitudes, no Vermonter need fear their anger while lasts the secret of the ambrosial Green Mountain sandwich. Bacon there was also in our stores, likewise cocoa and sugar cubes, but the only kitchen outfit consisted of our belt cups and pocket-knives. Pork broils appetizingly on a forked stick, and a slice of bread held con­veniently at hand the while conserves the drippings.

It was such a gypsy jaunt as makes old boys young. Never did skies smile more graciously upon a wayfarer. "Daylong the diamond weather, the high, unaltered blue," kept with us on our favored way. Credit it to the good weather if you will, the fact remains that, although the partners were here for the first time met (a rash experiment ac­cording to all woods lore), no human frailty intervened to mar one single hour. Nobody spoiled the cooking; nobody snored (so far as known); not even the owner of the axe complained at its loss, a fact in itself that is fraught with significance to every woods­man. A pet axe may not be carelessly treated by strangers or by friends with impunity, nor alluded to other than in terms of respect­ful consideration.





For my own part it was not altogether because of the newness of this particular bit of trail that the trip especially appealed. From time to time tidings had come from this sec­tion of the Green Mountains, the Lincoln and the Bread Loaf groups, telling of the charm of their unbroken forest mantle, and of the public-spirited idealism of the man who was their owner. The late Colonel Jo­seph Batten was a son of Vermont who saw values in his native mountains and their for­ests other than those that could be calculated in thousands of feet board measure. More than fifty years ago his vision showed him a day when fine timber would be scarce. Even then he began buying mountain lots along the main range, until people thought him daft and in need of restraint. In later years, as timber rose in value, his one-time critics began to think him shrewd. Little they suspected, though, that these purchases, that at the time of his death, 1915, had ex­tended for approximately thirty miles along the mountains, and aggregated thirty thou­sand acres or more, were not of a specula­tive sort.

He bought what he wanted when it of­fered, but he never sold. Now and again he parted with a little of the timber, when it did not interfere with his plans, but never to be butchered. Until his will was read it is doubtful if any one other than his lawyer knew what were his plans for these great forest holdings. After his death it developed that those plans were entirely in the interest of his heirs, and that, as a bachelor, he had elected that all who dwell or tarry within Vermont should be his heirs in this. As one of his executors has said, it was scenery, not timber, that he had been so persistently ac­quiring in all those years. For what reason? Let the language of his will explain.

"Being impressed with the evils attend­ing the extensive destruction of the original forests of our country, and being mindful of the benefits that will accrue to, and the pleasures that will be enjoyed by, the citi­zens of the State of Vermont, and the vis­itors within her borders, from the preserva­tion of a considerable tract of mountain forest in its virgin and primeval state," he be­queathed this property to the officers of Middlebury College, his alma mater, as trustees for the college and the public. A few years before his death all his lands on Couching Lion Mountain were given to the State of Vermont for public enjoyment and profit as a State Forest.

Taken as a whole, there can be no doubt but that the Batten forest is the largest and handsomest remaining tract of primeval tim­ber in this section of the country, and future generations will surely praise the name of him whose foresight and unselfishness saved for Vermont this splendid relic of that fea­ture which gave to the State its name. Thus, in one way or another, through such bene­factions as that of Colonel Bartell, through the establishment of public forests by the State, and through the trail-building activi­ties of the Green Mountain Club, Vermont is acting on the suggestion once made by Lord Bryce in an address at Burlington. He there urged that effort should be made "to spare the woods whenever they are an ele­ment of beauty, . . . to keep open the moun­tains, and allow no one to debar pedestrians from climbing to their tops and wandering along their slopes."

As an earnest of their desire to follow that counsel the people of Vermont formed their Green Mountain Club, to plan and build three hundred miles or more of footway throughout the length of their verdant hills. Year by year the trails lengthen out and im­prove in quality, and this bit is in truth a tramper's joy. Not only does it find every high spot where broad views abound, and that without incurring unnecessary steepness for mere climbing's sake, but it hunts out every intervening charming dell and glade and ravine, every picturesque cliff, every refreshing spring, that could possibly be brought within the line of march without undue departure from the course. Except for a mile or two at the northern end, a bit that probably will eventually be relocated to follow along the face of the southeastern cliffs of Couching Lion, there is not a monot­onous inch in the whole twenty-seven miles from the Lincoln-Warren Pass to the Duxbury valley.

 


 
Trail signs of the Green Mountain Club

 In its construction also the trail is as near perfection as a mountain tramper has any right to expect. Not that it is a graded path, that horror of the pedestrian. Its excellence lies in the wide swamping of the brush and encroaching limbs, full six feet in the clear, in the painstaking grubbing-out of toe-tripping roots, and in the liberality of the direct­ing signs and blazes. For one who enjoys the mild excitement of uncertainty that goes with picking a way along a dimly spotted old woods trail, the frequent blazes on this route, with their three coats of white paint, until they literally blaze even in the night, might seem an affront to his woodcraft. If the beauty of the trail does not compensate for this, and serve to prompt the veteran's tolerance for that feature, he can find plenty of scope for his Indian instincts elsewhere. This trail was designed to open that moun­tain picture-gallery to every one, old and young, and especially to the tenderfoot, to conduct him through its mazes with cer­tainty and safety. For any one who has ever followed the trail of the Bennington Section of the Green Mountain Club south from Mount Equinox toward the Massachusetts boundary by the light of its coral-red disc markers, the impulse is strong to think of this one as the white pearl trail.

For this model in mountain trails the Green Mountain Club, and the tramping fraternity generally, are indebted to the idealism and unremitting enthusiasm of the President of the Club's New York Section, Professor Will S. Monroe, of Montclair, New Jersey.

In the course of his wanderings in many lands he had seen mountains galore, and had traveled the length of long miles of trail. In the Green Mountains he perceived great possibilities, provided that the original inspira­tion for a sky-line route could be realized.

It was James P. Taylor, of Burlington, Vermont, who first proposed making the great mountain range of the State available as a recreation field for walkers throughout its length, a thought that at once appealed to the fancy of many of his fellow citizens, and that led to the organization of the Green Mountain Club in 1910. The plan likewise met with the approval of the State Forest Service, because of its economic importance in the scheme of fire patrol and protection, and, in cooperation with the Club, the cut­ting of the way was almost immediately undertaken by the forest officers. Unfortu­nately, however, the necessities of the forest patrol did not fully harmonize with the ideals of the tramper. A route across the ridges was too meandering and laborious to meet the foresters' needs, and the trail that they ran on easy grades along the slopes was far too tame and unspectacular for those whose quest was scenery.

It was in the midst of this disappointing discovery in 1916 that Professor Monroe offered his services for the building of this trail south from the southern base of Couch­ing Lion by a route that should be the next thing to an aerial line. His labors began that very summer at Montclair Glen, and season after season, with unabated zeal, his vaca­tions were devoted to this work. It was a toilsome task and beset with many bitter dis­couragements. Camping in the mountains for weeks at a time, with all that that involves in the way of packing in supplies and the daily cooking and camp chores, in addition to the actual work of construction through weather foul and fair, and often under the torment of ravenous swarms of flies, calls for a degree of courage and persistency of an uncommon sort.

Professor Monroe's reward must be in the knowledge that by the autumn of 1918, after the equivalent of five months of arduous work distributed through the three years, he and his assistants, the latter mostly inex­perienced volunteers, had to their credit al­most forty-two miles of as perfect trail as could be built for the purpose. In recogni­tion of this service the Green Mountain Club has officially designated his route as the Monroe Sky-Line Trail. It was in the exploration of the northern half of that stretch of trail that we spent these three October days.

Some years ago Colonel Battell cut a buck­board road up the west slope of Mount Abraham to an elevation within five hun­dred feet of the summit, and there built a commodious cabin of logs. That was in the summer of 1899. A trail ran thence three quarters of a mile to the top, and three and a half miles farther along the ridge to Mount Ellen, the highest point of the Lin­coln group, with a spur trail down the west­ern side from that summit for half a mile, where another lodge was built in 1903 at the edge of the big timber. Although these cabins have been sadly abused by unappreciative humans and by hungry porcupines, they are still reasonably sound and tight. Elsewhere along the trail, comfortable lean-tos have more lately been built, some by the Club, others through the generosity of Miss Emily Proctor, a member of a distin­guished Vermont family. One of these camps is located in Birch Glen, a charming ravine a trifle more than seven miles north of Mount Ellen, and another close under the out­stretched granite paws of the Couching Lion in Montclair Glen.

The Long Trail reaches Mount Abraham cabin, not by the Batten road, though that, too, is still usable by pedestrians, but by a route of its own over a southerly spur, an easy two hours' stroll. Another half-hour from the cabin puts one on the open summit at 4060 feet above the sea.

In the neighboring valley folks refer to this summit as "Potato Hill," and this not­withstanding that it was the citizens of the town of Lincoln, at its western foot, who, back in '60, gave it the name of "Abra­ham "in recognition of the great emancipator, for whom the town went solid in that memorable year. Mount Ellen, the highest point of the group, one hundred feet above Abraham's dome, was named by Colonel Batten himself. Subsequently, when the Coast and Geodetic Survey had determined the fact of Mount Ellen's greater stature, the Colonel's ideas of the human fitness of things is said to have rebelled at having a woman bigger than the heroic Lincoln, and, for his purposes, at least, he transposed the names of Abraham and Ellen. Until the work of the Geological Survey produces a completed map of the region, all names are unofficial, and those that have been accepted or applied by the Green Mountain Club will be as authoritative as any. As to the name "Potato Hill," that will soon be merely lo­cal history, inasmuch as "Abraham" seems to have the call.

 


 
A camp on the Long Trail  

Looking north from Mount Abraham's summit, Mount Ellen looms up across a deep and heavily forested bay, with a bit of Stark Mountain behind, the lesser inter­vening high points of the connecting ridge, over all of which the Long Trail runs, being Little Abraham, 3860 feet; Lincoln Peak, 3980 feet; Mount Boyce, 3880 feet; Batten Peak, 4060 feet; and then Mount Ellen, 4160 feet. Southerly the eye follows across the group dominated by Bread Loaf Moun­tain to Mount Carmel and Killington Peak, the latter nearly forty miles air-line away. East and west the range of vision reaches, on the one hand, to the White Mountains, and on the other into the Great Punch Bowl vale, wherein lie the farms of Lincoln, and through the nick in its western wall to the gleaming expanse of Lake Champlain and the close ranks of the Adirondacks with Mount Marcy and Whiteface bulking high above the rest. Close at hand on the eastern side one looks down into the valley of the Mad River, its cultivated lands nipping into the wooded slopes on either side, a peace­fully pastoral bit sharply contrasting with the rugged surrounding heights.

Nothing but the realization that four good mountain miles lay ahead to camp at Mount Ellen lodge could serve to hurry one from that outlook. But the view follows one along the trail; the frequent vistas from the ridge, now east, now west, with impressive plung­ing glimpses into deep valleys, and the broader outlooks from some of the minor summits, fully compensate for the regrets with which Abraham is left behind. Mount Ellen itself, being wooded at the top, com­mands no wide horizon, but that defect will one day be easily remedied by the construc­tion of a timber tower that will clear the tree-tops.

Forewarned that no handy spring had yet been located near Mount Ellen lodge, canteens were filled at the copious and con­stant spring just north of Mount Abraham, where, about 1878 or 1880, R. D. Cutts, of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, had his camp. This spring needs to be remembered by all who pass that way, as it is the last drinking-place in a three hours' walk. As one of the avenues of retreat from the ridge to the settlements lies through the ravine below the Mount Ellen lodge (via a rough, abandoned logging road), this cabin will doubtless serve a valuable purpose in that connection, despite the want of a reliable water-supply nearer than half a mile down­hill.

For those who pack their shelter with them, no finer tenting-ground could be de­sired than that beside the spring at Glen Ellen, the saddle between the Lincoln and Stark Mountains, less than two miles north of Mount Ellen's summit. From the Lin­coln-Warren Pass to this point, eight and a half miles, would be a comfortable day's tramp even with full camp outfit, allowing ample time for enjoying all the outlooks by the way. From this camp-site in the glen is yet another route to the western valley, a trail leading down through the forest for half a mile to the junction with a good wood road which passes through the Hallock farm, not far from South Starksboro, where night quarters may be had.

The Stark Mountains, though not so high as the Lincoln, ranging up to 3675 feet, are no less beautiful in their dress of mag­nificent old forest, and the outlooks are frequent and interesting. From the southern end of the main summit the trail emerges upon a shoulder, the Champlain Outlook, commanding an unobstructed prospect of fully one hundred and fifty degrees, from Whiteface in the Adirondacks on the west, to Couching Lion, the Chin of Mount Mans­field, and Jay Peak on the Canada border at the north, and to Mount Washington in the east.

Another hour, or a little more, of winding among the trees and moss-draped ledges, steadily dropping down a northern spur the while, and the top of Stark Wall is reached, the longest and steepest pitch of the entire trail. On the whole, the grades, which are far from difficult anywhere, are easiest when this walk is taken from the south, as in our case. There is no denying that Stark Wall is steep, and to one toting a goodly pack up that hill on a warm summer day it would as certainly seem long. Going north, one rat­tles down the pitches at a rapid pace, and comes to rest in a narrow east-and-west pass through which, once on a time, a highway ran. The old road location may be followed westward into Starksboro to-day.

Baby Stark and Molly Stark summits, each about twenty-eight hundred feet in ele­vation, have yet to be crossed before Birch Glen camp is reached at the edge of the settlement, the usual stopping-place for the night. During those last few miles the first traces of the lumberman seen since the be­ginning are encountered, but the cuttings are old, and are crossed only for short intervals by the trail. For those who, like ourselves, are not in full camping panoply, but another mile to the valley's edge brings one to Beane farm, where wanderers on the trail are always welcomed, even by the dogs.

As the trail runs it is fourteen and a half miles from the pass just south of Mount Abraham to the Beane place, and exactly a like distance if the old Battell road is followed up the first summit. Over this distance two youngsters once established an unpremedi­tated record, in the accomplishment of which they must have experienced not a few sur­prises closely akin to thrills. It is doubtful, though, if they would care to repeat it even as a lark, but it will serve to indicate the clearness of the trail when it is known that these boys tramped all through a moonless night, and without a lantern or torch of any kind. Their plan had been to gather in a stock of food at the last house, but luck was against them here, for the family larder hap­pened to be too low to help them with so much as a crust. Banking on a rumor that the Mount Abraham cabin had lately been vacated by the trail-building crew, who were supposed to have left some supplies behind them, the boys, banishing prudence, took a sporting chance.

Dusk was settling when the cabin was reached, but the last flickering gleams of daylight served to show that old Mother Hubbard never was more certainly up against a bare pantry. There was plenty of meat about, but it was on the claw, so to speak, in the form of live porcupines. Men lost in the woods and starving have saved their lives more than once before now by eating raw "porky," but our heroes were not starving, thank you. A hurried account of stock pro­duced one banana, the remains of a dim and distant lunch, plus one broken match. Should they go back? Not for them. They had come from Massachusetts to go over that trail. With the aid of the match they examined and memorized their map, a mere sketch, and started. All night they traveled by the beacon light of white-painted blazes, and at breakfast-time pulled in to the Beane farm, famished and tired, conditions that Mrs. Beane, with youngsters of her own, knew how to cope with. Even if they did not see much of the trail, or anything of the landscape, they had had a grand adventure and voted it "some trip."

 


The ascent of the cone of Burnt Rock Mountain

From Beane's to Burnt Rock Mountain, on the trail toward Couching Lion, it is a little less than five and a half miles of easy going through the woods. The ups and downs are only trifling, just sufficient to cross a few side ravines, though the rise is steady all the while. Toward the end of the first hour the Fayston-Huntington Pass is entered through which the official road map of the State shows a secondary highway as running. The so­journer on the trail will hunt here in vain for any sign of civilization beyond the bench­mark of the Government survey (2217 feet), for that road was abandoned to the wild things more than sixty years ago, after the railroads came to offer easier outlets for the settlers in the Mad River valley to the east.

After skirting two intermediate wooded summits along the upper edge of a cut-over slope, across which the view to the New Hampshire mountains is unobstructed, the bare ledges of the cone of Burnt Rock Mountain come in sight, the trail ascending to its summit by a series of natural stairways, galleries, and terraces. Three hours from the farm will suffice to put the tramper on this 3100-foot viewpoint. Just ahead Mount Ethan Allen rises with just the topmost rocks of Couching Lion appearing around the spruce-covered shoulder. In another two hours and a half the series of summits of old Ethan's namesake will have been circled and passed, the Lion's head will loom up just beyond, his massive paws spread toward you, and Montclair Glen be reached, with its cabin latch-string hanging outward to every fol­lower of the trail.

For those who find an added zest in the experiences of camping along the way, these cabins that the Club has built and equipped are an especial joy. They are likewise a boon to any who, through stress of weather or other mischance, may be in need of tempo­rary shelter. It should be an unwritten law of the trail that in departing the guests should leave behind no trace of their occupancy in the shape of unextinguished fires, unwashed utensils, or litter of any kind, and that a rea­sonable supply of dry wood should be pro­vided in a sheltered place to cheer the next party, which, for aught one can tell, may ar­rive fatigued, after dark, or in the rain. A good woodsman needs no law to compel atten­tion to such details. He knows instinctively the etiquette of the forest road, and observes it unfailingly. Neglect in such matters marks the delinquent as a greenhorn and a boor.

Montclair Glen camp-site is charming despite the fact that it lies on the edge of an old burn. A terrific fire, fed by the fresh slashings of a lumbering job, swept the east­ern and southern slopes of Couching Lion during the summer of 1903, and its devas­tating effects are even now apparent in the stark gray crags, and in the gaunt and ghostly forest of dead spruce, now bleached by weathering. Where soil enough remained to furnish lodgment for seeds, the inevitable cherry and birch jungle has sprung up, Na­ture's machinery for the rehabilitation of the forest. The State Forest Service has been endeavoring to hasten the process by the planting of thousands of spruce and cedar seedlings, and with great promise of success, so that one day the glen will be as bowery again as are the opposite virgin slopes of Ethan Allen Mountain. The camp is perched upon a little knoll, beside which flows a lively brook of purest Vermont vintage, and looks up at the black-capped Ethan on the one side and upon the steep, bare granite of Couching Lion on the other, while to the west, between the two mountains, is framed a wide vista that reaches to the Adirondacks.

From the camp to the summit of Couching Lion, or to Callahan's farm at its Duxbury base, it is just two and three quarters miles, two miles of the way to the summit being across the burn. In following the Long Trail en mute for Mount Mansfield, a fork in the logging road, a mile or so from the camp, leads to the left and into the Callahan Trail to the top, where throughout the summer the Waterbury men maintain their modest hut in charge of a keeper.

For us the furlough was up, and, having telephoned from Beane's in the morning to have a motor sent from Waterbury to meet us at the base, we slipped down the moun­tain and made connections with the sleeper train for home.


 
 
The Cone of Crouching Lion over the forested spurs of Ethan Allen Mountain

 
THREE DAYS IN THE OLD FOREST

First Day                                             MILES HRS. MIN.

Bristol Station (Rutland R.R.)

by auto to Lincoln Pass                      8.60         0      00

Lincoln Pass to Mount Abraham

summit                                               2.75         3       00

To Lincoln Mountain summit             3.75         3      30

To Mount Ellen summit (cabin

54 mile more)                                     6.25         5       00

To Glen Ellen camp-site (side

trail west to South Starksboro

5 miles)                                                 8.00        7       30


Second Day                                   

Glen Ellen to Champlain Out

look                                                      1.50           0          45

To Appalachian Pass (side trail

west to Starksboro road 3

miles)                                                   4.00           2          15

To Birch Glen camp .                        5.50            4          30

To Beane farm                                   6.50            5          00

Third Day                                       

Beane farm to Burnt Rock          

Mountain                                             5.40           3           00

To Mount Ethan Allen                        7.50           5           00

To Montclair Glen camp                   8.80           5           30

To Couching Lion summit (or to       

Callahan's farm in 15% hours)       11.55           8          30

 

* The mileage and elapsed times are cumulative for each day, dis­tance and time being figured from point last named in previous line. The times here given are sufficient for leisurely walking. The sec­ond day's walk may be done easily in five hours, but the scenery is worth prolonging it to ten.

MAP: Monroe Sky-Line Trail, surveyed by Herbert Wheaton Congdon, and published by Green Mountain Club, Burlington, Vt.

 

AN ADDITION FOR GOOD MEASURE

The southerly half of Professor Monroe's trail lies over Bread Loaf Mountain and its satellite heights, and is twenty miles in length, from the Lincoln-Warren Pass to Middlebury Gap, through another great area of the Battell forest. With ten days to de­vote to a semi-camping trip the route might begin at Middlebury Gap and, taking the Long Trail there, continue over the Sky-Line to Couching Lion, Mount Mansfield, and out to Johnson on the north.

From the railroad at Middlebury an auto­mobile stage runs thrice daily via Ripton Gorge to Bread Loaf Post-Office, somewhat less than three miles from the beginning of the trail in the depths of the Gap, and quar­ters for the night may be found at Noble's farm, or at the inn a mile or more beyond at the end of the stage line.

Three approaches to the ridge are avail­able from this base, one from a point not far from Noble's farm and which intersects the Club trail close to the summit of Bread Loaf Mountain, one from near the inn, or the main trail which is farther east in the Gap. All these are shown on the Rochester topographic sheet of the United States Geo­logical Survey, edition of 1917.

Few would care to attempt the passage of the entire chain of peaks in the Bread Loaf group in a single day, for it is nearly twenty-two miles from the Gap to the Davis farm at the westerly end of the Lincoln-War­ren Pass, and with many ups and downs. For that reason the Club has located one of its lodges beside a brook in an attractive glen just north of Bread Loaf summit, where all the comforts of a forest home, save food and blankets, await the wayfarer. The second night may be spent at the Davis farm, or in camp at the Battell lodge close under the summit of Mount Abraham; the third at Birch Glen lodge or at the Beane farm, within another mile; the fourth at Mont­clair Glen lodge, or at the huts on the sum­mit of Couching Lion three miles beyond the Glen; the fifth in Bolton village; the sixth at Lake Mansfield Trout Club; the seventh on Mount Mansfield; the eighth at Barnes' Camp in Smuggler's Notch, or at the lodge on Morse Mountain; the ninth in Johnson at the northern end of the trail.

The length of the daily stages of such a programme would be as follows:

                                                                 *MILES
Middlebury Gap to Emily Proctor lodge                    
(Bread Loaf Mountain)                                       8.75
Thence to Lincoln-Warren Pass.                    10.50
(To Davis', 12 miles; to Battell lodge, 12.50 miles.)
Thence to Birch Glen.                                       13.50
              Montclair Glen.                                   7.80
              Couching Lion summit                      2.75
              Bolton village                                     4.50
              Lake Mansfield                                11.25
              Mount Mansfield                                 6.25
              Barnes' camp.                                    2.33
              Morse Mountain camp                               
(estimated)                                                          7.00
              Johnson (estimated)                         9.00
Total for eight or nine days                              83.63
 

* One mile an hour is considered an average leisurely traveling time in such country for one with a moderate pack.


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