Our second stop in Vermont was in Stratton. Needless to say, there was an early morning hike brewing in my mind. Stratton Mountain is the highest peak in southern Vermont and it's where James Taylor first began thinking about the Long Trail. The Long Trail was the inspiration for the Appalachian Trail and thus was born the first of the country's long distance trails. (Of course, the Pacific Crest Trail is still my favorite for obvious reasons.)
The lowest part of the trail was much like Mount Killington just a few days earlier. The trees were sparse, all deciduous, and old leaves covered the ground. The trail was better maintained with a more measured slope, but otherwise it wasn't much different. And just like the Bucklin Trail, the deciduous trees gave way to evergreens near the summit.
What was different was the weather. While Killington had teased me with sun breaks only to give me a true Northwest welcome on the summit Stratton was not such a tease. The sun was out when I left the trailhead and filtered through the trees all the way to the summit.
Stratton has no open summit of rock like Killington, but it does have an old 70 foot tall fire tower. There were several through hikers already in the tower, but they invited me up to join them. The views from the tower put the surrounding mountains on display.
In every direction the rolling green hills extend to the horizon. With the sun still relatively low in the sky (it was about 8am when I got to the summit) the Green Mountains were more light blue than green and they blended together.
Not being a through hiker or even a section hiker on this trip, I left the others to drink their camp coffee and talk about where they'd find their next food cache. On my way back to the trailhead I passed numerous through hikers laboring under heavy packs and I no longer felt bad about the light pack I had or the comfortable bed I'd have that night.
