Few Long Trail shelters have a stranger origin story, or a harder-luck run, than Lost Pond Shelter. It began as one Cape Cod man’s personal gift to hikers he’d never meet, survived a legendarily grueling three-mile haul by tractor and wagon, drew porcupines hungry for its salt-cured lumber, burned to the ground not once but twice, and today stands as a third structure — a hand-built log lean-to raised in 2009 after two arsons in six years nearly ended the site for good.
Shelter by the Wagon Load
The story starts not on the Long Trail but on Cape Cod, with a Massachusetts man captivated by a shelter he’d seen in Vermont. In 1963, Louis J. Stare Jr. of Bass River saw the new U.S. Forest Service shelter at Little Rock Pond and was struck by its design and its wilderness setting. He decided, on his own, that he would build a shelter just like it and give it to the Long Trail.
“This all began when Louis J. Stare, Jr., of Bass River, Mass., saw the new USFS constructed shelter at Little Rock Pond in 1963. Impressed [by] the excellent design of the shelters and the beauty of their wilderness settings, Mr. Stare decided that HE would build such a shelter and donate it to the LT.”
— Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1965
The Forest Service granted permission for Stare’s shelter to be erected on national forest land, and the timing worked out neatly: the Long Trail had recently been relocated over Baker Peak, creating an obvious need for a new shelter along the reroute. In October 1964, Stare and Rolston scouted a site together — two miles north of Baker Peak, a mile and a half south of Big Branch — and Stare approved it immediately. Over that winter, working to U.S. Forest Service specifications at his own home on Cape Cod, he built the entire shelter himself, then had it dismantled into thirteen sections for the trip to Vermont.
Three Miles by Tractor and Wagon
The disassembled shelter arrived by truck on USFS Road No. 10 on May 8, 1965, accompanied by a huge Timberjack tractor, a heavy-duty wagon, and twenty GMC volunteers who had come from four different states. What followed became one of the most retold ordeals in Long Trail shelter history. Rolston, writing the account for Long Trail News that August, gave up trying to fully capture it:
“Describing the trials and tribulations of moving a shelter three miles is like describing the beauties of the Grand Canyon to someone who has never been to Arizona. It just ain’t possible! I could tell about fording Big Branch; about the mud; about the rocks; about the shifting load; about the continuous side-hill lean; about the unloading and loading and unloading and loading; about the use of the winch to pull the wagon out of a hole so deep that one volunteer still insists he heard Chinese voices under the wheels.”
— Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1965
The crew’s success rested almost entirely on one man: Lee Hewes, the tractor operator, whose skill Rolston credited without reservation. Saturday’s push ended in near-exhaustion and a dwindling fuel supply, still short of the goal, and Stare had by then privately resigned himself to picturing his carefully built shelter “tumbling down the mountain in splinters.” Hewes came back the next morning anyway.
“WE REACHED OUR GOAL JUST BEFORE NOON ON SUNDAY! Due to Mr. Stare’s precise construction the sections just fell together, and the shelter was complete by suppertime.”
— Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1965
When Stare hand-painted the sign reading “BUILT BY L.J. STARE, JR., 1965” and mounted it on the finished building, he reportedly felt sheepish about it — “he felt guilty applying his name to the shelter after so many volunteers had worked so hard to make the completion possible.” The following Sunday, seventeen more volunteers finished the remaining details, and Curt Garfield lit the shelter’s first cooking fire using flint and steel. The shelter was formally dedicated on May 30, 1965, with thirty-one GMC members present, and newly elected GMC President John Rohrbaugh christened it not with champagne but with “Green Mountain Champagne” — pure water carried up from the stream in the ravine below.
A First Birthday, and a Pond That Stayed Lost
The shelter’s name came almost by accident. The site had been chosen in part for its proximity to a small pond that Stare and Rolston had gone looking for during their original October 1964 scouting trip and simply couldn’t find. A year later, at an anniversary gathering on May 7, 1966, the volunteers who’d built the shelter went looking again — and this time, they found it.
“The ceremonies completed, we set out to find Lost Pond (which had eluded its original ‘discoverer’ the previous fall). We found it! Someone suggested renaming the shelter ‘Found Pond Shelter,’ but the vote was NO.”
— Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1966
What they found was worth protecting: a small open pool ringed by a quaking bog mat thick with pitcher plants and other rare bog vegetation. The group made a deliberate decision, on the spot, not to build a trail to it:
“Since this rediscovery of Lost Pond, serious consideration has been given to NOT building the Lost Pond Trail to the pond. We who have seen the pond feel that the unusual plant life there should be protected… Thus, the pond, in name and reality, will remain LOST POND.”
— Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1966
That decision held for decades. A 2008 retrospective feature in Long Trail News confirmed no maintained trail had ever been built, and that finding the pond still required a genuine bushwhack through the saddle between Buckball Peak and South Buckball Peak — a fact the author treated as a feature rather than an oversight, especially now that the area lies within the federally designated Big Branch Wilderness, established by Congress in 1984.
Porcupines and Creosote
The shelter’s Cape Cod origins created a problem nobody had anticipated. Lumber that had spent months absorbing salty sea breeze proved almost irresistibly appealing to the local porcupine population, who set about eating the shelter nearly as fast as it had been built. The Killington Section’s newsletter marked the standoff with a tongue-in-cheek article written, ostensibly, from the porcupines’ own point of view — “Pork U. Pine, Jr.” narrating the arrival of “some sort of structure, somewhat dismantled,” and the discovery that its floor joists and sills tasted “delicious,” having “soaked up some of that salt in the air at Cape Cod.”
“Then, assured of our privacy, we investigated this new delicacy. The brown stain didn’t taste too bad, neither did the brush that the stain had been put on with. Then we sampled the floor joists and sills. Delicious!… Say now, those studs don’t taste bad either. And those nice big fat center posts! This is real dining.”
— Pork U. Pine, Jr., Killington Section newsletter
The porcupines’ narrator tracks the escalating countermeasures with mounting indignation: chicken wire nailed around the “dinner,” then a heavy coat of creosote brushed onto every surface they’d been chewing, then creosote on the rafters they’d found next, then on the nearby beech tree they’d used as a lookout perch, and finally on the outhouse. The piece ends with the porcupine narrator plotting to retreat to nearby Big Branch Shelter, on the theory that the U.S. Forest Service — builders of that shelter — didn’t creosote their structures. Whatever the porcupines’ literary opinion of it, the creosote treatment worked; the shelter served hikers without further rodent incident for the rest of its thirty-six years.
The First Fire
Lost Pond Shelter stood on Wade Brook — sorry, in the Big Branch Wilderness near Baker Peak — for thirty-six years, maintained across the decades by GMC caretakers (a 1994 photograph shows caretakers Elyse Bradley and Steve Sunday restaining the building that October) and visited by generations of hikers. Then, in November 2001, it burned to the ground.
“Unfortunately, Lost Pond Shelter burned down in November [2001].”
— Long Trail News, Spring 2002, p. 12
No official cause was ever publicly confirmed, but the club’s own language consistently pointed toward arson rather than accident. A 2003 Long Trail News piece used the word directly: the shelter had “mysteriously burned down in November 2001.” A 2009 retrospective was more blunt still: “It succumbed to fire in 2001, however, when the shelter was burned by arsonists.” No investigation record, insurance claim, or named suspect for this first fire turned up in any source searched — only the club’s own characterization of it as deliberate and unexplained.
Rebuilt by Draft Horses
Rather than simply mourn the loss, Manchester Section volunteers began planning a replacement almost immediately, working through a year of review with both GMC’s Trail Management Committee and the Forest Service’s wilderness program and engineering staff — a lengthy process required by the site’s location inside a federally designated wilderness, where power tools and mechanized equipment are prohibited. Tom Abbott, who had donated the Laura Woodward Shelter to GMC the previous year, stepped up to build a second post-and-beam lean-to, this one for Lost Pond.
Getting the materials to the site was, in its own way, as memorable as the original 1965 haul. Karl Pfister donated the use of teams of draft horses, which dragged thousand-pound loads on stone boats nearly four miles up an abandoned forest road to within a thousand feet of the shelter site — first hauling sakrete for the foundation piers, then returning the following week with all the lumber and tools needed to raise the shelter itself.
“Karl Pfister donated the use of teams of four draft horses that hauled 1,000-pound loads—they dragged the loads on stone boats nearly four miles uphill on abandoned Forest Road 30 to within 1,000 feet of the shelter site… one of the draft horses birthed a new foal shortly after taking her turn with a stone boat!”
— Long Trail News, Spring 2003, p. 8
True to the wilderness restrictions, the entire shelter was built with hand tools and no power equipment. The pace was remarkable: piers were poured and sills set before Columbus Day, and once Abbott arrived on site that October weekend, the shelter went up in a single twenty-four-hour push. Nearly seven hundred volunteer hours went into the project altogether, with a crew that included Marge Fish, Joe Okarmus, George Roy, Paul Austin, Max Carlton and his Boy Scout troop, Bill Clark, GMC Field Supervisor Val Stori — who made sure every broken cinder block from the original shelter’s foundation was hauled out, leaving no trace — and Ann Mausolff, whose suggestion to use plastic sleds for dragging eighty-pound bags of sakrete through the woods became something of a running joke in the club’s own account of the project. Both Marge Fish and Paul Austin later received GMC President’s Awards specifically for their work rebuilding Lost Pond Shelter.
A Second Fire
The rebuilt shelter lasted four years. In late November 2006, almost exactly five years after the first fire and, strikingly, in the same month, it too burned to the ground.
“Some time in late November 2006, Lost Pond Shelter burned. This was the second time in six years that Lost Pond Shelter… burned down in November.”
— Ben Rose, Long Trail News, Spring 2007, p. 18
This time the response was far more forceful. The U.S. Forest Service and the Vermont State Police opened a joint investigation focused on activity in the area between November 11 and November 23, and both agencies offered cash rewards for information — the Forest Service up to $500, with the State Police adding a reward of its own. No arrest or resolution of that investigation appears anywhere in the record searched. Marge Fish, who had led the 2002 rebuild and by then was GMC’s vice president and Trail Management Committee chair, put the loss in plain terms: “It makes me very sad to see the efforts of so many volunteers who worked to build the shelter destroyed.” A separate year-end GMC report described the fire more cautiously as one where “vandalism is suspected,” a slightly softer framing than the reward notices implied.
A Third Shelter, Built to Last
GMC did not give up on the site. Rebuilding took longer this time — nearly three years — as the club worked through wilderness-appropriate design options with the Forest Service. When the new shelter finally went up in the summer of 2009, it was a deliberate departure from the two wood-frame lean-tos that had preceded it: a three-sided log structure modeled on the historic Civilian Conservation Corps shelters built across Vermont in the 1930s, using locally sourced logs cut by the Forest Service and peeled by a Yale University volunteer service trip.
“The design for the three-sided log structure was based on historic Civilian Conservation Corps trail shelters. Special care was taken in choosing local materials for construction. The logs were cut by the Forest Service and peeled by a Yale service trip.”
— Long Trail News, Winter 2009, p. 4
The crew credited with the 2009 build included John Newton, who designed the shelter; John Ogden, the lead builder; John Mowry, Jonathan Bigelow, Dave Ratti, John Oliver, George Roy, Ben and Katherine Ogden, Bob and Marge Fish — back for a second rebuild of the same site — and Dale and Mike Malekoff, along with GMC field staff and numerous volunteers from that year’s Appalachian Trail Conservancy Festival. A hiker who visited that October found it standing solidly against the weather it was built for: “We reached Lost Pond Shelter and found it still standing. As we ate lunch, it began to pour, and we noted that the shelter would probably last at least a few days because it was so ‘moist.’ The shelter is very well built with a high platform and plenty of hooks for hanging gear, as well as a large overhang.”
That third shelter is the one that stands at the site today.
Sandy Stare’s Longer Career
Louis “Sandy” Stare Jr.’s 1965 gift to the Long Trail turned out to be the beginning of a much longer relationship with the club, not a one-time act of generosity. In 1969, Stare and Killington Section volunteers built a replacement for Sunnyside Camp — after that earlier shelter burned in 1968 — which became Minerva Hinchey Shelter; a companion account of that project wryly notes that “like Stare’s first porcupine-plagued project, Lost Pond Shelter, Sunnyside also suffered from unanticipated mishaps,” including a lumber delivery accidentally dropped at the wrong address. That same year, Stare also worked on Tucker-Johnson Shelter, built by the Long Trail Patrol and Killington Section volunteers to replace the old Tucker Lodge near Sherburne Pass. In September 2015 — the fiftieth anniversary of the original Lost Pond haul — GMC recognized Stare at its annual volunteer appreciation picnic, presenting him with a framed set of photographs of all three Lost Pond shelters as thanks for the project that had, by then, quietly launched a decades-long career of volunteer shelter-building.
“In 1963 Sandy saw the new U.S. Forest Service shelters at Little Rock Pond, and was inspired to build one. Using a Forest Service blueprint, he constructed the shelter at his Cape Cod home in the winter of 1965… GMC did not give up, and built a third shelter in 2009. It stands firmly today in Big Branch Wilderness.”
— Jocelyn Hebert, Long Trail News, Winter 2015, p. 5
Sources
- -Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1965.
- Ben Rolston, Long Trail News, August 1966, p. 10.
- Long Trail News, 1975, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Spring 2002, p. 12.
- Long Trail News, Summer 2002, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2002, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Spring 2003, p. 8.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2003, p. 14.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2006, p. 7.
- Ben Rose, Long Trail News, Spring 2007, p. 18.
- Long Trail News, Summer 2007, p. 15.
- Long Trail News, Winter 2007, p. 31.
- Long Trail News, Fall 2008, p. 8 (“Finding Lost Pond,” Dick Andrews).
- Long Trail News, Winter 2009, p. 4 (“Every Long Trail Shelter Has a Story”).
- Jocelyn Hebert, Long Trail News, Winter 2015, p. 5 (“Sandy Stare: Builder of the Original Lost Pond Shelter”).
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), issue 29, p. 2.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), issue 50 (1997), p. 10.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), issue 153, p. 5.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), 2003 (V05 N03), p. 6 (“New Lost Pond Shelter,” Roma Pulling); 2003 (V56), p. 20.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), 2006 (V59 N03), p. 2.
- Smoke and Blazes (Killington), 2009 (V62 N04), pp. 3–4 (“Lost Pond Shelter, Mt. Tabor,” Allison Henry).
- Long Trail Guide Book, 18th ed. (1966), pp. 27, 29.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 19th ed. (1968), p. 29.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 20th ed. (1971), pp. 29, 31.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 21st ed. (1977), p. 37.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 22nd ed. (1983), pp. 34, 87.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 23rd ed. (1985), pp. 36, 38, 88.
- Long Trail Guide Book, 24th ed. (1996).
- Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. (1999), pp. 68, 69, 74, 162.
