To celebrate the Green Mountain Club’s 100th birthday, I’ll be posting five days of GMC news this week.
The Green Mountain Club was founded 100 years ago this week by a group of men (women quickly joined and attained active roles in both the front- and back-country) who gathered in Burlington, Vermont to sign a charter. They promptly began bushwacking their way along the spine of the Green Mountains.
Their mission was, and still is, “to make the Vermont Mountains play a larger part in the life of the people by protecting and maintaining the Long Trail System and fostering, through education, the stewardship of Vermont’s hiking trails and mountains.”
The Long Trail is 273 miles long with almost 70 shelters less than a day’s hike away from each other. Trail runners (who are a little insane ) have run the trail in a matter of days, but the average person could plan for 3-4 weeks. I’d actually like to set the goal of taking the longest amount of time to hike the trail, maybe staying at every shelter along the way and taking all summer to do it. However, some folks also hike the Long Trail in sections, over the course of decades.
So the actual, real birthday of the GMC is Thursday, March 11th. There’s going to be a party at the DoubleTree Hotel in South Burlington at 6:00 pm. The suggested donation is $10 and you can RSVP by e-mailing [email protected]. I’ll be there. After all, how many 100th birthday parties does one get to go to?
And for the rest of this week, I’ll blog about the other centennial activities happening around the state to help us celebrate the Green Mountain Club and the Long Trail in Vermont!
Photo credit: UVM Special Collections