Trails and Tribulations 2013: Day 6: Thursday

Hazen’s Notch to Belvedere Mountain

This morning was bliss. We woke up late (at 7am) to sun streaming into the tent. Hooray!! No more rain walking. We snacked on some muesli then headed off – delaying our coffee and hot food until we’d reached a scenic spot.

Another morning of up. This place does great rugged trails and steep slopes, that’s for sure. Once again I found myself semi crawling up the track as we made our way up Haystack Mountain. Along the way, we came across a second group of Summer Campers – these guys were looking more weary than the group from last night, and the first in line was nursing a broken arm.

The views were well worth the climbing effort! We emerged onto a small platform that looked South over the rest of the day’s hiking. It didn’t look as bad as the section we’d just completed, so we sipped our coffee in the sun and relaxed contentedly. Happy Place Fever rating back down to 0.

A great spot for breakfast

We're heading that way!

After an hour or so, we had contemplated the scene sufficiently and started down a much more manageable slope. It even allowed us to chatter away for most of the time. A few more rises and we were at the next camp – Tillotson’s.

I made it this time!

Beaver ponds

Both of us were feeling good, so we decided squeeze a few extra hours out of the day and aim for the next mountain – Belvedere. The map showed an interesting looking fire tower, so we thought we could check that out.

Another 2.8 miles – I was getting pretty weary and solely thinking about dinner by this point. But thoughts evaporated as we climbed higher and higher up the 70ft fire tower and took in the incredibly 360deg view. There were the mountains we’d just walked over – losing themselves in the haze of the horizon - we picked out Jay Peak with its gondola, Haystack mountain with its double hump top and our campsite from the night before on the side of Sugarloaf mountain.

Climbing the fire tower

Views of the Green Mountains - Jay Peak is the highest in this view

We turned and took in all that was to come – a daunting looking Mt Mansfield was the next highlight (we think about a week away on our trip). We’ve come so far and have so much further to go!