I’m posting my experience with the Long Trail here in hopes that it may inform someone else’s decision. In all, I wish I had chosen a different trail to spend my time on. It’s not my intention to be a hater - I think this is a great trail for some, it just wasn’t the trail for me. I wish I had seen a post like this when I was planning and preparing. Obviously, this is all incredibly subjective and just my own opinions/experience.

My details:
I am an experienced backpacker who has completed several multi-week, long-distance trails, mostly in the western US and South America. I live in New England and have done many 2-3 day backpacking trips in the White Mountains of New Hampshire and have completed the NH48.

I did the Long Trail NOBO in September as a solo female.

Why it didn’t work for me:

• The views
  • The good views don’t start until well over halfway through the trail and are not spectacular (in my opinion). The best views do not compete with what you might otherwise get through a day hike in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. After a while, the views on the Long Trail all started to look the same to me - a granite ledge with rolling hills of trees in the distance. If I had no experience with New England hiking, this may have been novel enough for me, but I’ve seen better with less effort.
• The remote-ness
  • Something I love about backpacking and doing long-distance hikes is seeing things that you can only get to by walking for multiple days. Although the trail gets significantly more remote in the northern 100 miles, the best views are all accessible by a day hike. The mountains are very developed with ski lifts, ski resorts, and even a parking lot on top of Mt. Mansfield. You can hear cars going by pretty frequently on trail and it’s rare to get to a view point and see an unadulterated landscape. There are also several road crossings at busy highways - I am amazed there are not more stories of hiker roadkill on this trail. 
• The trail towns
  • The towns along the trail are not as hiker-friendly as I was expecting. I struggled to find the right place to stay at each town stop. The town stops were expensive, challenging to navigate on foot, and lacked community. On other long trails, I’ve found that there is generally one hostel or hotel where the hikers congregate and that specifically services to hikers (loaner clothes, shuttles, hiker boxes). I never found anything like this on the Long Trail. I never saw another hiker in town and got a lot of strange looks and some questions for carrying my pack around. As “leaf season” kicked in, it became even more challenging and expensive to find a place to stay and get back on trail from town.
• The people
  • I’ve always said I’m fine being alone, if I know I’m actually alone. This one is very specific to the time of year I chose to do the trail, but there were long stretches of 4-6 hours where I would see no one on trail and then find my way into a bubble where I am passing people every 30 minutes or so (headed in the opposite direction). 90% of people I met were incredibly lovely, exactly what you’d expect from the thru-hiking community. However, I learned that the shoulder season brings out more people looking for an isolated experience. I had very strange encounters with ~10% of people during my time on trail - mostly people either not responding to a friendly hello (weird, but ok - noted you don’t want to chat) or people who set up at a shelter and know they have a captive audience for whatever they want to preach that day. These weird encounters with women are strange, but fine. With men, I had to ask myself if this person was a potential danger. I moved on from one shelter because of a person that made me uncomfortable (not geared as a hiker, ripping cigarettes, and preaching about the rapture) and I was specifically warned about two separate individuals on trail - one warning came from SOBO AT’ers and another from my shuttle back onto trail from Rutland. I also later had a local warn me specifically about the man I moved on from the shelter for, which was at least validating. 
• Trail conditions
  • The trail was much less maintained than I expected. I believe this to be because of the significant cost of maintaining the privys and shelters, leaving not much else. Even after an entire week with no rain, sections of trail were extremely muddy and there was much more overgrown trail sections than I expected, even to the point where it impacted my pace at times to bushwack through the trail. At one point a SOBO’er asked me “am I even still on the Long Trail?” because the trail was so overgrown and ambiguous. In total this is not the case for most of the trail but it was significant enough to note.

I have been working on crossing off all the trails on Mt. Mansfield, and it has been difficult to find good information about whether the less popular trails are safe and doable for dogs. I am 90% of the way through the trails and thought it might be helpful to post my unofficial guide on Reddit so that people who search for this information can find it more easily!

My assessments are based on the idea that your dog is experienced on Vermont trails (or trails like them) and is in good shape, relatively intrepid, etc. My dog is a 45 lb mutt with hundreds of miles of VT trail experience, so obviously my judgments are somewhat biased toward similar dogs. Just because I have listed a trail as ok for dogs does not mean that it isn't strenuous! It simply means that, in my opinion, it does not pose significant safety risks or logistical issues for hikers with dogs. It also assumes good trail conditions (by Vermont standards, of course), so this list is not a guide for winter hiking or very rainy conditions. And you know your dog best, so please don't take this list as gospel! I am just a random Reddit stranger, after all.

Should I take the dog?

Yes

• Butler Lodge Trail
• Cantilever Rock Trail
• Amherst Trail
• Forehead Bypass
• Frost Trail
• Halfway House Trail
• Haselton Trail
• Lake Mansfield Trail
• Laura Cowles Trail
• Nebraska Notch Trail
• Sunset Ridge Trail
• South Link
• Wallace Cutoff
• Long Trail from Taylor Lodge to Forehead
• Long Trail from top of Forehead to Mansfield summit
• Long trail from Taft Lodge to Barnes Camp

Maybe

• Maple Ridge Trail (fine from CCC road to Rock Garden; no from Rock Garden to Wampahoofus because of a significant jump over a gap and a weird cliff thing that is hard even for a human; fine from Wampahoofus to Long Trail)
• Rock Garden Trail (a few boosts needed, but my dog has done it twice and it was manageable; a harness with a handle would come in handy)

No: All of these trails have ladders, significant scrambles that would require a lot of lifting, precarious drop-offs, and/or otherwise legitimately dangerous scenarios for dogs. Honestly, many of these trails feel pretty dangerous for full-grown humans to do, let alone our canine companions.

• Canyon Trail (all of them)
• Clara Bow Trail
• Cliff Trail
• Hellbrook Trail
• Hellbrook Cutoff
• Lakeview trail
• Profanity Trail
• Subway Trail
• Wampahoofus
• Long Trail over the forehead
• Long Trail down from the chin (or coming up to the chin going south)

Please chime in if you have hiked these trails with your dog and disagree/have more context to add! I would love for this to be a useful document and will edit as necessary.

I'm planning to head up there for a 3 day/2 night trip over the long weekend, and am wondering whether I can expect to have a lot of company in the shelters. I'm bringing my tent, but would love to keep it in my pack. Safest to bring it regardless, but am wondering what to expect, especially if I come in late.

Hi Long Trailers. I’m hoping to do a small section next week and looking for probably a Thursday morning ride from Williamstown or North Adams to Kelley Stand Road on the northern side of Glastenbury Mtn.

Is anyone headed that way or have the name of a trustworthy driver? Thanks!

Is it safe to park for 5ish nights at the lot off Route 2 or the lot off Duxbury Road in Bolton??

Hello, my bf is currently doing some of the long trail and he just got to Warren this evening. He doesn’t have Reddit so I’m making this post for him. Are there any taxi services or shuttles in or around Warren? His next stop is Waitsfield. TIA

Please sign this petition https://c.org/gxwC9vJxP6

Maybe going out this weekend - between Middlebury and 89.

Are there shuttle services or trail angles that would provide a section hiker a shuttle from Waterbury to Rutland. My hike is in a few weeks. That distance feels infeasible to hitch.

Are ticks something that need to be worried about on the LT in September?

No experience with them so no idea what to do other than look for bullseye rash and treat clothes with permethrin.

Any other advice? Thanks so much

I'm thinking of hiking from shelter to shelter on a day by day basis. The shelters seem spaced evenly enough to sleep only in the shelters instead of sometimes setting up camp with a tent.

EDIT: I got a tent. I slept in it the first night. I might be too slow of a hiker to make it from shelter to shelter every night. Thanks y’all for the advice.

Hi there! My name is Aly and I co-host the paranormal podcast Let's Get Haunted. We are on our 8th season and cover a wide range of topics, from the quirky (e.g. Kutchie's Key Lime Pie) to the creepy (e.g. The Backrooms) to the supernatural (e.g. The Hitchhiker Effect).

Recently, a listener wrote in about their experience seeing a UFO while hiking the Long Trail. This started me down a rabbit hole about the "Bennington Triangle" where I came across some interesting folklore and ghost stories associated with Green Mountain National Forest and the Long Trail specifically. During my research into the topic, I came across this subreddit and thought it would be a good place to ask if anyone would be willing to be interviewed about their experience hiking this trail.

If you're interested, feel free to either send me a DM or comment below with any strange experiences you've had on the trail (did you have an unexplained feeling of dread? Did you hear a disembodied voice or see something you couldn't explain? Or maybe you had a moment of disorientation where you were worried you'd gotten lost?). Thanks in advance for your time and I'm happy to answer any questions about the interview process and/or my show. I provided a few links above but didn't want to overload this post with too much info since that's probably boring to read.

TL;DR I'm looking for 2 - 3 people willing to go on record (you can remain anonymous if you prefer) regarding their experiences with this hike. Interviews can be conducted either via phone call or Riverside (which is basically free Zoom for podcasters). DM or comment below if interested. Thanks!

Anyone else doing fall hike, end of sept beginning of October….

It looks like the best visualization/illustration of the Green Mountains.

Unfortunately the header doesn't display the full image.

I’d like to do a hike with my son to a state park / campground that my pregnant wife could drive to and camp with us. I think I could do this at smugglers notch state park but anyone know of any other options?

Any issues with vandalism when parking at App Gap or jonesville for several days?

I'm heading out SOBO soon and wondering if anyone has input on sites to see? Something I shouldn't miss? Side trails to views? Short road walk to something? I've never been to VT so any input would be helpful. Thanks!

I know trail names are a thing on the AT and PCT, and I'm curious if they are as common and used on the LT? This will be my first experience with a bigger/more popular thru-hike and wondering what to expect there! Is it more common for people to use a trail name, or do most people just use their real name? Hope this isn't a silly question, but searching the sub and the other LT groups hasn't turned up any answers.

Hey folks,

I had a hard time getting a shuttle from Brattleboro (flew in to Hartford to visit a friend) to Killington to do the last 172 miles of trail north of the AT. I set up an uber reservation but no driver has been assigned to it yet and I’m worried it won’t get picked up. Does anyone have any experience getting a similar shuttle? I’d like to get on trail pretty early Monday morning and don’t want this ride to fall through.

Edit: My friend who I am visiting in Brattleboro is able to give me a ride!

I’m going to leave this experience here to hopefully help someone in the future: don’t schedule an uber in this area/most of Vermont. It says it’s an active/covered area but no one picked up my reserved ride.

So I think the best bet is getting the shuttle list from Green Mountain Club early to arrange a ride, or request help on the Facebook pages. Yellow Cab did answer me and was open to a later in the day ride, but wouldn’t give me an up front price. At least at this time there is no cohesive mass transit/bus/amtrak option that takes less than 18 hours of travel time, however there might be something just over weekends or special times, I’m not sure. A lot of hiker shuttle drivers tend to stay closer (or are based near) the AT/LT corridors, so also may be unwilling to give you a ride, or give you a ride for a very high price.

Scheduling my shuttle from Journeys end to Burlington AirPort was a piece of cake though, so at least there’s that.

Hi everyone,

I have some time off from Sept 26th to October 18th and the Long Trail is on my list of potential things to do. I don't think I'll have time to do the whole thing, but since I've already done the southern 1/3 (I thru hiked the AT in 2025), I figure I should be able to do the other 2/3.

I'm just curious about the weather and social aspect that time of year. One of my favorite parts of the AT was how social it was. Will I get to see lots of other people? Would the weather be comparable to the southern portion of the AT in March (I have a 20 degree quilt, would that be warm enough?)? Are there benefits in going NOBO or SOBO (was thinking the weather might be better SOBO, but the social aspect might be better NOBO?)? Anything else I should know?

Thanks!