Good night sleep in the shelter last night. Was able to get a good hang inside. Started out a bit after 6am which was decent.

Saw several day hikers and a few thruhikers..

Camelback was a strenuous climb and there were several fairly aggressive climbs during the day…and didn’t get much for views unfortunately.  As we got close to the road, the weather turned quite good and we started to see sun. I’d say that today was some of the most difficult hiking , though the previous days were no cakewalk.

The first car that we held a thumb out for picked us up and brought us to Waitsfield. We resupplied, had some great pizza, beer and ice cream…a very nice small town. Sitting on a picnic bench enjoying our pizza, drying out some gear and answering questions from the locals – felt like a thru hike – classic town stop.

Hitching out was a bit slower and our first hitch only brought us part way. It was a pickup truck with a bumper sticker that read; “grass, cash or ass, no free rides”. We gave him two bucks as we were not going to supply the other requests.. Unfortunately Phenix’s water bottle fell out of the back of the pickup as were jumping in.  He dropped us off part way to where we needed to go. In all honesty, that was a pretty lame hitch, we’d have happily given him a 5er to take us to the pass where we got off the trail, but we wasn’t up for that. Within a couple minutes we got our second hitch up to the top of the gap where the LT meets the road.

It was a good climb up to the first shelter ,where we are now at. It has a beautiful view to the north and we could see much of what we had walked through in the last day and a half. There are two other guys here as well – they are out for a section hike.

18 miles