Day 30 of a Long Trail thru-hike was supposed to be about miles logged. Instead, it turned into a logistics problem — and a lesson every trail trip planner should hear: never make life-changing decisions mid-crisis, and definitely not when you're exhausted.
The hikers behind this journal — the writer (known as part of a trio with trail names Rock Rabbit and The Historian) — were holed up in a friend's restored antique house off Duxbury Road in Vermont, at roughly mile 183 of the trail, trying to work out what to do next. An injury had changed the maths. Rock Rabbit was still physically able to finish and had the time reserves to do it. The Historian had a damaged arm and, honestly, a bruised heart — walking away from a trail that 'betrayed' him felt tempting. And the writer had hit their own wall: the hand-over-hand scrambles in the alpine sections had become genuinely dangerous for ageing knees.
The options on the table were bleak. Quitting outright felt like the worst outcome — Rock Rabbit didn't want it, and everyone knew regret would set in later. The writer going on alone with Rock Rabbit wasn't smart either: with daylight now compressed to about 12 hours a day, a technical 10-mile day could swallow the entire window this late in the season, pushing them into risky territory. Even sending Rock Rabbit ahead solo — the obvious fix — stung, because the writer realised that while skipping the alpine climbs above Mansfield was emotionally survivable, missing the monument at the Canadian border was not.
So they took the advice of a Triple Crown friend: skip the dangerous alpine section, let it heal, then rejoin. The practical key was a rental car, found in Lebanon, New Hampshire — conveniently near another friend — which makes the shuttle back from the northern terminus straightforward. Their Vermont hosts even drove them over to pick it up. The new plan costs money the trio hadn't budgeted, but families signed off, and everyone agreed the extra spend would be clawed back over the coming months.
Why should a traveller care? Because this is what real trail planning looks like when it goes sideways. Vermont's 270-plus-mile Long Trail is one of America's toughest long-distance routes — older than the Appalachian Trail — and its northern stretch through the Green Mountains includes exposed scrambles that aren't forgiving of tired legs or bad knees. If you're dreaming of a long hike, the takeaways here are solid: build rest days into your itinerary, don't decide anything big within 48 hours of an injury or a brutal day, keep shuttle and rental options in your back pocket, and accept that a modified itinerary (finish the trail in stages) beats a bailout you'll regret. The trio's revised approach — following the trail to the end of the alpine section, then rejoining, each finishing in their own way — is a genuinely useful model for anyone whose body votes against their ambition mid-trip.
The journey continues north, with the Canadian border monument still the goal.
Story from The Trek.
