RoundTop Shelter

Roundtop Shelter is a log shelter built in 1994 by Tod and Wendy Jenner and other volunteers, with water reached by a hand pump on a short spur trail. The shelter was constructed as a memorial to Todd’s brother Jeff.

The project began in the early 1990s when the Laraway Section began identifying the permanent Long Trail corridor between Route 15 in Johnson and Route 118 in Eden.
The Roundtop relocation was scouted and flagged, and a new shelter site identified and approved. This work became necessary because the Club built Roundtop after the Barrows Camp landowner asked the Club to abandon Barrows and move the Trail off his land.

Between 1991 and 1993, volunteers flagged the trail relocation and cleared a site for the shelter. In spring 1993, Todd Jenner came along and wanted to give something back to the mountains. He decided to build a shelter in memory of his brother Jeff. That spring, Todd and nephew Ken Jenner with a dozen volunteers cut the trees and cleared the site. The trees were strategically selected from a beautiful, mature stand of white spruce with a vigorous young understory, slightly uphill from the shelter site.

Construction accelerated in winter and spring 1994. In February 1994, with temperatures hovering around ten degrees, over thirty-five snowshoers made their way up the mountain and skidded the logs, by hand and foot, over 700 feet to the shelter site. In late June, the shelter builders arrived: Todd and Wendy Jenner, Murray Jenner, and John, Barb, and Emily Caviglia. The painstaking task of peeling every log was begun, and the shelter began to take shape. The lower tiers of logs were joined with self-locking, half-dovetail notches, each custom crafted. Floor joists were set in and a plank floor was laid. The gable ends rose, the ridgepole was set, and the rafters were carefully flattened and notched into place. Roof boards went on, skylights were skillfully inserted, the tin went up, and Roundtop Shelter was ready for hikers in late August.

It is an L-shaped lean-to and sleeps twelve, located 1.4 miles south of the Plot Road in Johnson. Water, obtained from a hand pump is found at the end of a 150 yard spur trail which leaves the Long Trail a short distance north of the shelter.

The construction effort was remarkable in scale. Over eighty volunteers worked on the job from start to finish, including not only Laraway Section members but also boys from the Laraway School and the Woodside Juvenile Rehabilitation Facility. The shelter has remained in continuous use since 1994 and continues to serve hikers on the Long Trail.

Sources

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