Remember how I said that the wind on Mt. Mansfield earlier this week was intimidating? It was absolutely nothing compared to what things were like at the summit of Camel's Hump. The good news is that less than a quarter mile of the Burrows Trail is fully above the tree line. But the bad news was that today there were 40MPH winds up there with even stronger gusts. I knew it was going to be windy when I checked Mountain Forecast this morning (which, btw, is a site that has never steered me wrong) and it was sufficiently windy on the drive from Stowe to the Burrows trailhead that I wondered whether I should skip the hike today. That, however, would mean doing double hikes this weekend because I'm not sure when the heck I'll be able to get back to New England before the October 31 deadline for the challenge. Saturday has already been carved out for Chocorua and my best bet would then be to do Sunday on Monadnock… but I don't know if my body will want to do two hikes in a row… AND Monadnock is so popular that you have to make a reservation, and for all I know it's already booked up.

So I told myself I'd give Camel's Hump a shot. If it got bad, or if I encountered hikers telling me the summit wasn't safe, I could turn back. I also told myself that if there was no one else at the trailhead — which wasn't out of the realm of possibility given that it was a weekday — I wouldn't hike. The idea of being the only person on a mountain with unusually high winds didn't seem like a great idea. So I kept driving and, thankfully, when I got to the trailhead shortly before 10AM the parking lot was nearly full with more cars still arriving. (Side note: I also recommend having an SUV or other rugged vehicle for the drive to the trailhead. There is quite a bit of mileage on dirt roads and near the end it gets fairly steep.)

Like most New England mountains, the trail up Camel's Hump is very rocky. It was also, unlike Mansfield, very muddy and a bit slippery, which didn't entirely make sense given that it hadn't rained this week, but whatever. It was otherwise very lush and humid, lots of ferns and moss — maybe I'm noticing these things more than I would otherwise after months of living in Southern California. The trail was a bit easier than Mansfield, but harder than Welch-Dickey with the exception of the latter's big granite slab scrambles. (There's almost no scrambling on the Burrows Trail.) True to reports, there aren't a whole lot of views until you are almost at the summit. But by the time I got up there, the clouds were clearing up enough that you could see Lake Champlain in the distance.

That said: The summit, sure enough, felt dangerously windy. I spent about ten seconds there before I decided the best choice was to get back down ASAP. A couple hiking ahead of me told me on their return that they'd originally planned to do the Burrows-Long Trail loop, but decided on an out-and-back instead because they did not want any more above-treeline exposure beyond the summit itself. As I descended, I looked back briefly and saw another solo hiker nearly get knocked over by a gust of wind.

So, on that note, I may have cheated a little bit. The Camels Hump summit is pretty wide, and I did not actually find the USGS summit marker (nor did I look for it) because it was clear that staying up there any longer was getting unsafe. So I may have been a foot or two of elevation off from the actual summit, but while there's a lot I'll put up with to complete this Six Pack, dying at the top of a mountain is not on my list. I think it still counts.

Camel's Hump is one of the most popular hikes in Vermont, and even on a Thursday in the fall with high winds in the forecast, there were quite a few people on the trail. I'd say I was running into another hiker or group about every 10-15 minutes, counting the ones I came across multiple times because we'd intermittently pass each other. I can't imagine how packed it must be on a summer weekend. So if you're making Camel's Hump part of your New England Six Pack next year (assuming it's on the list), I highly recommend choosing a day midweek.

So now I've got ONE MORE to go! Can't wait to finish my first of two Six Packs of 2021.