My good friend Dana just finished hiking the entire Long Trail last week. Congratulations Bud! You deserve a cold Long Trail Ale (or several!).

It's been a nine-year odyssey for Dana that began in 1995. That's the year the two of us hiked 200 miles of the Long Trail from the Massachusetts border to Smuggler's Notch over the course of twenty very hot, very rainy days. But that's when we both ran out of time (and energy, if the truth be known). It was a tough slog, but then, that's the Long Trail.

I went back later that fall and finished the final 65 miles to the Canadian border. Dana (a 1991 veteran AT thru-hiker) has made at least four more attempts to finish the LT since then, but has been rebuffed each time for a variety of reasons. He's got that 'stick-to-itive' mentality, though, that doesn't let him quit a project once he's begun. So he kept going back to Vermont and hiking a few more miles north.

And this year, he and his wife Janet hiked the last 15 miles over Jay Peak to the border in beautiful weather. It must have felt great! Way to go.