Planning for the Long Trail

The Long Trail is 272 miles of hiking in the Green Mountains of Vermont. It shares the southern 100 miles with the Appalachian Trail. When True Friend and I thru hiked the Northville Placid Trail in 2017, I shared my plans to hike the Long Trail. I warned her that many people say it is as rugged, or even more so, than the Appalachian Trail. She was all in and we made a plan.

True Friend and I started planning our southbound end to end hike of the Long Trail by dividing it into 5 sections. Each section ended at a road that would lead to a town where we would pick up resupply packages that we mailed to ourselves before the journey began. Our first section would be from North Troy to VT 108. There are 64.8 miles in this section and at a pace of 13 miles per day we should be able to hike it in just 5 days. Our resupply package was sent to Stowe.

The next section would require True Friend and I to hike 45.2 miles between VT 108 and Appalachian Gap. Looking at the elevation profile for this section we thought it best to only plan to hike an average of 11 miles a day and finish in 4 days. We mailed a resupply package to Clearwater Sports in Waitsfield, VT.

From Appalachian Gap, True Friend and I would hike 58.7 miles to Rutland, VT. Our goal is to hike 12 miles per day until we made it to the Long Trail Inn, making this another 5 days on trail. We had our third resupply package sent here.

Just north of Rutland the Appalachian Trail meets the Long Trail. I am really looking forward to seeing if the trail has changed any since my southbound AT thru hike in 2016. The fourth section True Friend and I will hike takes us 49.8 miles from Rutland to Manchester Center. We plan a hiking pace of about 13 miles per day which should allow us to arrive at Manchester Center about 4 days out from Rutland. 

The fifth and final section for True Friend and I to hike would be from Manchester Center to Williamstown. At a pace of 13.5 miles per day this section should take us 4 days to complete. We will have a car waiting for us. This plan will take 21 days of hiking to execute but we figure we may need 2-3 rest days along the way.

I found these resupply maps incredibly helpful for making our plan!

Unfortunately things did not go according to plan. In the upcoming weeks I will be sharing what happened instead.

If your planning your own trip, I highly recommend checking out sectionhiker.com as it is full of valuable information about planning your own Long Trail hike.

2 thoughts on “Planning for the Long Trail

  • January 10, 2019 at 1:37 pm
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    Love reading these post…..This was definitely a great adventure, even though it did not turn out how we planned 🙂

    Reply
    • January 10, 2019 at 6:39 pm
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      I’d love for you to write a guest post!

      Reply

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