NE 100 Highest - Jay Peak and Big Jay, Vermont

Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017 - The New England "100 Highest" - Jay Peak and Big Jay, Vermont:

There is always "another list". Having finished with the New England 4000 Footers (67 peaks), the "next list" is the New England Highest 100 - it consists of the "next highest" 33 peaks in New England. If you have been following my blog, you know that it is a "list I will not complete" - there was NO TRAIL to Fort Mountain 2 weeks ago!

(It has a black X on the above map.) The other 4 I have done (South Brother, Mount Coe, Mount Bigelow-South Horn, and The Cannon Balls, NE Peak) are marked with red X,s, and today's peaks Jay Peak and Big Jay are in the purple circle. Today I hiked 5.4 miles in 3 hours. This is what the gps-track looks like when MapMyWalk dies, and then is revived by plugging it into my car charger:

NOTE: I DID NOT BUSHWACK DOWN FROM BIG JAY!!!!

This is what the 2.7 mile one-way hike looks like::

The return is just back down the same trail.

It was a beautiful-but-cold morning - 36º as I drove through Reading at 7:15 AM! Four hours later, even with some clouds moving in, it was a beautiful day in Vermont:




On Route 242, just down from Jay Peak in Vermont, I stopped and saw a pretty little waterfall:



The trail up to Jay Peak is lovely - looking up the trail:

and looking back down the trail:

(the leaves are all turning/have turned here in Northern Vermont.)

You don't often see stairways while hiking in the mountains:


The stairway opens onto a ski slope:

with a really nice view east:


You continue up the ski slope:

, past the ice on the tree branches:


and get to the summit of Jay Peak:




The "mile" trail over to Big Jay (sorry - "herd path") is ok:

but it still took me about 45 minutes to get through the bogs and branches to get to the summit:



AND THAT'S WHEN MY iPhone Battery DIED!!!! I figured that I didn't need an extra battery for a hike of only 6 miles, but I guess I was wrong. An extra battery will always go with me in the future (one more thing to think about).

I retraced my path back down the mountains, and I finished the hike at 3, and with a stop to pick up a pizza and gas in Concord, NH, made it home a little after 7. THANK YOU GOD for all these wonderful hiking adventures!!!

Today, it was "music" in my orange nano:

I burned a copy of the 7-cd set A Call to Conscience: The Landmark Speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

and listened to cds 3-through-7 today, beginning with his "I Have A Dream" speech (August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC) and ending with "I've Been to the Mountaintop" (April 3, 1968, Memphis, Tennessee, on the eve of his death). pretty powerful stuff, and maybe just as applicable today as it was then.

and of course I had to ROCK OUT on my way home!!

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Hurricane Relief: Houston '78, 1978

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Boston Aug. 27, 1999, 1999

I was there that night in Boston. EXCELLENT SHOW!!