elhefe007a
New member
What was supposed to be a Mendon/Killington/Pico trip on Saturday turned into a Mendon only trip. The weather woudn't give us a break then entire day, but of course that didn't stop the fun.
Headed from Burlington to Rutland around 5AM Saturday, in the pouring rain with my friend Randy to meet another of our friends, Tony. We met him in the AT/LT parking lot on RT. 4, where we left his car in the hopes that we would get some sort of agreeable weather. We headed down to the Bucklin trailhead, (first car there, haha), parked and commented on how we figured it woudn't be very buggy today.
No break in the rain, so we suited up in some rain hear, and headed up the logging road. The water crossings were difficult to navigate, especially the first one. We got creative with the next one, shimmying over a downed tree a little ways up the brook. The 3rd and 4th we managed to cross dead on. From here, the logging road heads up steeply, and eventually hits the first cairn on a switchback. We kept heading up, passed the 2nd Cairn and proceeded to the 3rd cairn, at the hight of the land. We took a break here(no rush to beat the weather, it was still raining at this point), ate some food, and got ready to head into the woods.
According to my GPS, we were right around 3430 feet at this point.
I've heard a couple different variations of what direction to head into the woods at from this point, but we opted to set a compass bearing due west. We headed into the woods following a rough herd path and some pink tape on the tree's. We lost the herd path pretty quickly (rainy, crappy, everything looks the same), and eventually it seemed like the pink tape trail was leading us away from our destination, so we essentially reset our bearings, and started heading hard West, slight SW. Side note - LOTS of moose crap all around. Probobly the most difficult way up, we hit very thick shrubs and swung around the side of a knob with some cliff type areas. Eventually we hacked our way to the top of a bump just below the false peak. We kept hacking, and a few min later reached the top of the false peak. Had we not known ahead of time the true peak was a little further, there was no way to tell as we coudn't see it at all. We tried to locate the herd path to the true peak and coudn't find it at first, so, we started hacking our way over, when we came accross it. A downed tree right at the top of the false peak is blocking the herd path, FYI for anyone going up there. Once on the herd path, we flew to the true summit in a matter of minutes, and found the canister.
On the way back down the herd path, there is an offshoot path to an open rock face, which we chilled at and ate some food before heading back down. Back on the false summit, we located a herd path down, (which we lost again), but ended up on the logging road between the 2nd and 3rd cairns. From here, we headed back out to the road. Ironically enough, on the way out we ran into two other guys headed to Mendon, enjoying the weather!
We reached the parking lot shortly after (still raining) and headed to the nearest chinese food joint for lunch. I'd love to get back up to Mendon on a clear day, I imagine you get some pretty fantastic views from the rock ledge...anyone have any pictures of this? When I eventually get to Killington, I'll have to swing back around.
Sunday rolled around, and I headed down to Manchester with my father to hike Equinox. Maybe it was just the rough day earlier in the rain, or the 950 ft. Elevation where you park your car, meaning you gain roughly 3000 feet in under 3 miles, but this climb felt like a ball buster. Beautiful day for a hike though, hard to think 24 hours earlier it was as messy as it was.
Thanks to all the reports of Mendon I had read ahead of time, in particular the information on Bob and Geri's page.
Pictures of Mendon trip at:
http://www.forthoseabouttorock.net/climb/NE/mendon/mendon.html
Headed from Burlington to Rutland around 5AM Saturday, in the pouring rain with my friend Randy to meet another of our friends, Tony. We met him in the AT/LT parking lot on RT. 4, where we left his car in the hopes that we would get some sort of agreeable weather. We headed down to the Bucklin trailhead, (first car there, haha), parked and commented on how we figured it woudn't be very buggy today.
No break in the rain, so we suited up in some rain hear, and headed up the logging road. The water crossings were difficult to navigate, especially the first one. We got creative with the next one, shimmying over a downed tree a little ways up the brook. The 3rd and 4th we managed to cross dead on. From here, the logging road heads up steeply, and eventually hits the first cairn on a switchback. We kept heading up, passed the 2nd Cairn and proceeded to the 3rd cairn, at the hight of the land. We took a break here(no rush to beat the weather, it was still raining at this point), ate some food, and got ready to head into the woods.
According to my GPS, we were right around 3430 feet at this point.
I've heard a couple different variations of what direction to head into the woods at from this point, but we opted to set a compass bearing due west. We headed into the woods following a rough herd path and some pink tape on the tree's. We lost the herd path pretty quickly (rainy, crappy, everything looks the same), and eventually it seemed like the pink tape trail was leading us away from our destination, so we essentially reset our bearings, and started heading hard West, slight SW. Side note - LOTS of moose crap all around. Probobly the most difficult way up, we hit very thick shrubs and swung around the side of a knob with some cliff type areas. Eventually we hacked our way to the top of a bump just below the false peak. We kept hacking, and a few min later reached the top of the false peak. Had we not known ahead of time the true peak was a little further, there was no way to tell as we coudn't see it at all. We tried to locate the herd path to the true peak and coudn't find it at first, so, we started hacking our way over, when we came accross it. A downed tree right at the top of the false peak is blocking the herd path, FYI for anyone going up there. Once on the herd path, we flew to the true summit in a matter of minutes, and found the canister.
On the way back down the herd path, there is an offshoot path to an open rock face, which we chilled at and ate some food before heading back down. Back on the false summit, we located a herd path down, (which we lost again), but ended up on the logging road between the 2nd and 3rd cairns. From here, we headed back out to the road. Ironically enough, on the way out we ran into two other guys headed to Mendon, enjoying the weather!
We reached the parking lot shortly after (still raining) and headed to the nearest chinese food joint for lunch. I'd love to get back up to Mendon on a clear day, I imagine you get some pretty fantastic views from the rock ledge...anyone have any pictures of this? When I eventually get to Killington, I'll have to swing back around.
Sunday rolled around, and I headed down to Manchester with my father to hike Equinox. Maybe it was just the rough day earlier in the rain, or the 950 ft. Elevation where you park your car, meaning you gain roughly 3000 feet in under 3 miles, but this climb felt like a ball buster. Beautiful day for a hike though, hard to think 24 hours earlier it was as messy as it was.
Thanks to all the reports of Mendon I had read ahead of time, in particular the information on Bob and Geri's page.
Pictures of Mendon trip at:
http://www.forthoseabouttorock.net/climb/NE/mendon/mendon.html
