We (Carole and Jay Furr) hiked up to Sterling Pond, north of Stowe, Vermont, on Saturday, July 14, 2007. The hike up from Smuggler's Notch is rugged, steep, but only a bit over a mile as the crow flies, and yet in ten years of living in Vermont we'd never actually done one of Vermont's most popular hikes. (By "most popular", we mean "the sort of well-known scenic hike that attracts everyone, even idiots in high heels carrying toddlers.") The hike starts at 2000 feet of elevation and ends up at 3000 feet of elevation. Nothing much by Western USA standards but for Vermont that's a pretty good climb. (Not surprisingly, we did see people carrying crying toddlers coming down the mountain as we were going up. One guy, carrying his toddler on top of his head stumbled and came this close to dashing the kid's brains out on a rock right in front of us. Please, people, get a clue.)
Our trail crossed a ski lift that (needless to say) was shut down for the summer, then took us on to the Pond proper and thence to the Sterling Pond shelter on Vermont's Long Trail. We'd planned to cook dinner and hang out for a while at the top but one of our frequent July thunderstorms was looming to the west and we decided to hasten back down before it could rain on our parade.
