Fumbling Around In The Woods: Mendon Peak (3,840 ft) & Killington Peak (4,235 ft) 5-26-18

Distance: 11.23 mi.
Elevation: 2,362 ft (overall) 3,192 ft (total)
Time: 2:51 (Mendon Peak) 5:07 (Killington Peak) 6:57 (Total)
Trails: Woods Roads, Bushwhack, Long Trail, Killington Spur, Buckling Trail

The route for Mendon Peak starts out by using the gated road next to the Bucklin trail head. As it leads to the camp that is a short distance up the road, it could easily be driven by most vehicles.
Past the camp, the road gets a bit rougher, but is still wide and easy to follow. A little further past the camp the road leads into a small clearing. From here recent vehicle tracks headed right, but you'll want to continue straight. The roads narrows up here and you'd be lucky to get much more than a tractor or ATV down it.
Soon after this, you'll come to a fork in the trail. Currently straight ahead is partially blocked by broken tree top or branch. There is also a rock in the middle of it. Thinking the fork to the left looked like it would be the route I wanted, I started up it. But just a few feet up it you'll see the it turns left and heads away from the brook. I went through the trees to the other path.
This route leads to the brook and the first crossing where the road on the other side is a bit obscured by bushes. I was able to easily cross here on mostly exposed rocks before going around the bushes and trees to the right. On the other side of the bushes there is a yellow sign letting skiers (and hikers) know to cross here to get the Wheelerville Road.
The path now heads left and follows nearby the brook on the southern side of it. Today the path was muddy in spots. It was easy to walk along the side or the mud wasn't deep enough to really come up your boot very far.
Further up the path you are one will fork. To the right the woods road will head uphill. To your left is the path you want to take to get down to the brook so you can cross it. If you start down to the brook, you can make out a path from past hikers. You cross the brook right in this area to a well define woods road on the other side. I crossed upstream about 50 or so feet above where the road actually crosses on some good rocks there. Looking back I could see another yellow sign for skiers on a tree down stream where the road does cross.
The well defined road follows the north side of the brook until an obvious crossing further up. The brook is narrow here and there were good rocks to cross on. There is a sign on the other side of the brook reminding skiers to ski through the trees, and that cutting or pruning them is a bad idea.
The path climbs steeply at first through a stand of softwoods. Eventually leading to the last brook crossing. At this crossing there was actually a cairn on the other side of the brook. This is NOT the first cairn that other trip reports mention during the switchbacks.
The switchbacks now start and were easy to follow. There wasn't much debris on them which was nice, other than one blowdown completely blocking the path just before the second cairn. I was able to go around to the right pretty easily though.
At the second cairn there appears to be a bit of a herd path from hikers venturing off the road here. I continued to the third cairn though, which isn't very big and is the easiest to miss. If you make it to the skier rescue sled, you have gone just a bit too far.
I started out heading on a herd path that started about 20 feet past the third cairn. It was faint in places, but I was able to follow something of a herd path all the way to the summit. There is some flagging in the area. It appears to be from two different people as some is pink and some is orange. The colors seem to follow different routes and the herd paths might be more or less obvious depending on the route.
The herd path becomes more obvious as it starts to climb more steeply and you get to the small subpeaks just before the summit. The second subpeak has a path that heads to the left to a rocky outcropping that provides some nice views to the south.
After making it to the peak, taking a few pictures, and signing the summit register I headed back to this view point. It was nice watching 6 turkey vultures soaring around just to the side of me and sometimes coming by quite close.
On the way back to the third cairn I thought it would be pretty easy to stay on the same route I took to the summit. But as I got further into the route, I was actually on another herd path that wasn't as well defined. I hadn't even noticed there was a split. This happened one more time, but routes were still close to each other and the woods were open enough you could try going between the two paths.
Back on the woods road I headed off to Killington Peak. Pretty quickly there is a fork in the road where there is was looks like old metal runner from something used to pull logs or something else off the mountain. I took a right here as I believed the left to be the route that leads to a wet bog like area others mention in trip reports.
The route to the right ended up being correct and easily lead me around the valley towards Killington. There were a couple very small brooks to cross through here and a few blow downs. All in all this section went quicker and easier than I thought since it stays pretty flat for a long time.
The woods road starts to go away and becomes a herd path for a bit. The path then turns to the right and heads mostly straight up the mountain. It was still pretty easy to follow and eventually heads through some thick spruce you will have to push though. After that it opens up again and the path goes left and right some as it comes up to the Long Trail.
From here it is a short mostly flat trail walk to Copper Lodge and the steep spur trail up to Killington's summit. I spent a fair amount of time on the summit as it was pretty nice up there (other than being hazy) and it was the first place the bugs weren't bothering me all day long thanks to the nice breeze.
After coming down from the summit I quickly stopped at Copper Lodge again before then heading down the Long Trail to the Bucklin Trail.
The hike down went pretty quick and just as expected. I've been on this route before and it was nice to have a clear trail to hike on.