Hiking Camel’s Hump
The Day of Charlotte’s Surgery | Hiking Camel’s Hump | Burlington, Vermont | April 2023
On the morning of Charlotte’s surgery, we got on the road by 6 and made the hour and a half drive up to Burlington (hotels and rentals were much more expensive up there, so we chose to stay in Rutland since we only needed to make this drive once for surgery day). Checking in went fine — while Charlotte typically hates going to the vet, it seemed like she knew that this was the place that would help her, so she seemed okay with being here. She even willingly walked right up on the scale, which has always been a struggle to get her to stand on and stand still. With one last look, we said goodbye for the day with teary eyes. We knew this was the right thing to do, but that didn’t make it easy.
Since we wouldn’t be able to pick her up until late afternoon, we decided to take advantage of being puppy-free by going for a longer hike, possibly the last long one we’d do together for a while. We told the vet our plans and gave them several ways to reach us, then took off heading a few miles East. Our peak of choice for today was Camel’s Hump, located not too far from Burlington, and 5 miles round trip. This is a prominent peak which we remember seeing/hearing about during our first visit to Vermont in 2016, and we were excited to return and be able to hike it today. The only thing I was nervous about was potentially not having phone service, but knew this was just something we had to do, otherwise we’d just sit around and be sad all day.
We made it to the trailhead around 9 and strapped on our microspikes, and Curtis also carried our snowshoes in his backpack just in case. There was only one car at the trailhead when we started our trek. For the majority of the trail, our microspikes got us through just fine. The trail and all surrounding area was still covered in snow. During our ascent, it was still cold and frozen enough to make walking on the packed down trail easy. But stepping off the one-foot-wide packed down trail could land us knee deep in snow!
The trail started off more level, with a gradual incline, making its way through a valley towards the start of the climb up Camel’s Hump. It wasn’t that scenic, just obstructed views of the hills surrounding us through the bare trees, though I guess that’s more than we would get if there were leaves on the trees. I didn’t take any pictures of our hike up, and between that and being motivated to finish in a timely manner, we made good time hiking through this part.
At about the halfway point, the trail became much steeper which slowed us down a lot. As I trudged on, I started getting more emotional, and my motivation to finish this hike dwindled. As I was falling farther and farther behind, I told Curtis to go on without me, and I sat down to take a break and catch my breath. I really didn’t intend on finishing after that, but then I pulled out my phone and noticed I had full service, which made me feel better knowing I hadn’t missed any messages from the vet. Then I logged on to PokemonGo and realized how close I was to finishing, and decided that I could make it. I resumed my trek up to the top with much more energy, and soon made it to the trail junction. The snow here was still high enough to almost completely be covering the sign, but luckily the word “summit” with an arrow was visible in the top corner so I knew where to go (though PokemonGo also showed the correct way). This part was the only part where snowshoes would have been optimal, but it wasn’t long enough to justify changing, and the rocky peak was more ice than snow which made microspikes better. As I was making my way around one of the last bends in the alpine section and up the last stretch towards the summit, Curtis appeared heading downhill, and was surprised to see me there. He joined me on that bit and we summited (or re-summited) the peak together.
The views at the top were incredible — it was a clear day, and we could see both the Adirondacks and the Whites very well. The snow cover just made the views even better since it helped to distinguish which peaks were bald, and where different ridges were and where there were ski slopes. It certainly made up for the lack of views we had when we summited a very cloudy Mount Mansfield over 6 years ago!
After taking some pictures and catching our breath, we turned around and began our descent. We ran into three other hikes on the alpine area (which Curtis had been the first to break through after whatever snow had fallen the night before — we had seen one other hiker on our way up, but she stopped at the last trail junction). Our hike down went much faster than our way up, with us both feeling confident in our footing thanks to our microspikes. There were a considerable amount of hikers heading up though, with almost all of them being seniors. We sure hope to still be summiting peaks when we’re that age! Everyone seemed to be in a good mood since the temperatures were warming up and spring was on its way, but mud season had not yet begun. We did notice the snow was much softer as we dropped in elevation, and the snow was melting fast and probably wouldn’t be around after a week. If you’re interested, here’s our AllTrails recording for this hike.
We made it back to the car around noon, and wasted no time heading West towards Burlington just in case. I heard from the vet as we neared the city, and she let us know that the surgery went very well and Charlotte was waking up. They told us to come pick her up after 4, so we drove downtown Burlington to Battery Park to hang out. We walked around, saw the Whispering Giant for our second time, and played Pokemon for a bit, then I retreated to the car to read and get out of the cold while Curtis did a little metal detecting.
Finally it was time to pick up Charlotte. We returned to the vet, waiting impatiently in the lobby to see our baby. The vet tech came out and went over how the surgery went — Charlotte did great, everything went well, and she had no complications with the anesthesia. She then went over post-surgery care instructions and answered all our questions. They had checked the pressure on Charlie’s eyes beforehand, which was again triple what it was supposed to be, which assured us that we made the right choice since the eye drops clearly weren’t working. And she told us that even when Charlie was waking up from surgery, she could tell what a difference the procedure had made — Charlie seemed to be in much better spirits right away, even to someone who hadn’t known her before she went blind!
We went to go pay and schedule her post surgery check up, and then we heard her: the click of her nails on the floor, her sweet little whine, walking with much more enthusiasm than we’d seen in a week. She came right over to us, almost not even needing the tech’s leading, and we got down on the ground to greet her, and she gave me kisses all over my face. She still had healing to do, but she already seemed to be 100% better than she was that morning. She was herself, she was adorable, and we were all so happy to be passed the worst of this. We loaded up in the car, with myself and Char in the back seat so she could have more room to lie down, and we made our way back to Rutland where we could begin the recovery and the “next chapter”: learning to navigate life with a blind puppy.
