Tamarack Shelter was a frame Adirondack lean-to that stood for fifteen years at the junction of the Long Trail and the Shrewsbury Peak Trail in the Killington Section, 1.1 miles south of Cooper Lodge. Built in 1969 through an unusually cooperative effort involving an architecture firm, a paper company, a ski corporation, and a summer camp program, it served the Long Trail through a decade of relative peace before being overtaken by the ski development that eventually doomed it. In 1984, volunteers dismantled the shelter board by board in anticipation of a helicopter move to a new site. The helicopter never came. The lumber disappeared, and Tamarack Shelter became one of the Long Trail’s more poignant losses of the modern era.
Construction and Design (1969)
Tamarack Shelter was constructed in 1969, at Long Trail mile 88.3 (measured from the Massachusetts border), at the junction with the Shrewsbury Peak Trail in the Killington Section. Its construction was, as the Long Trail Guide Book described it, "a truly cooperative effort."
The shelter was designed by Robert Jutson of Pittsfield, Vermont. The building materials were furnished by International Paper Company, which owned the land on which the shelter stood. Sherburne Corporation, operator of Killington Ski Area, provided the use of its facilities and access roads to transport the materials to the site. The actual construction was carried out by campers and staff of Farm and Wilderness Camps, a network of progressive summer camps based in Plymouth, Vermont. Timberlake Camp, one of the Farm and Wilderness Camps located on Woodward Reservoir, was cited specifically in an early report as the camp whose campers built the shelter.
The resulting structure was a frame lean-to with bunk space for ten or more hikers. A good spring was located 300 feet to the east. The Long Trail News of February 1970 described the new shelter as "a frame leanto with bunk space for eight or more," built in 1969, at the junction with the Shrewsbury Peak Trail. By the time of the 20th edition of the Long Trail Guide Book (1971), the bunk capacity was listed as "ten or more."
The Shrewsbury Peak Trail, which departed from the shelter junction, was maintained by campers and staff of Farm and Wilderness Camps — the same organization that had built the shelter — a connection that would shape its maintenance for years to come.
Early Operations: The 1970s
From its opening, Tamarack Shelter was maintained by the Killington Section with ongoing assistance from Farm and Wilderness Camps. A 1973 Killington Section trails report noted that "the Farm and Wilderness people were contacted and they assumed responsibility for the care of Tamarack Shelter — a job they had been doing anyhow."
During the early 1970s, the Killington Section employed a caretaker in the Pico-Cooper-Tamarack area. A 1972 issue of the Long Trail News informed hikers that "a caretaker in the Pico-Cooper-Tamarack Shelter area" would again be present that year, and that hikers should "be prepared to pay a small fee (slightly less for GMC members who can produce a current membership card) to stay overnite at these shelters." Robert Jeffers served as caretaker at Pico Camp in 1971–1972, with occasional visits to Cooper and Tamarack.
The shelter was noted in 1971 as having no dump; hikers were "requested to pack out their unburnable trash," reflecting the section’s early adoption of a Carry In-Carry Out policy.
The 1975 trails report recorded regular checkings of the trail from Sherburne Pass to Tamarack Shelter by Harold Howard, noting that the Shrewsbury Peak Trail needed some clearing but that "the Farm and Wilderness Camp have assumed responsibility for this area."
By 1980, a letter from an overloaded-shelter correspondent had put a spotlight on a recurring problem: large Boy Scout troops from New York were arriving in numbers that overwhelmed Governor Clement Shelter on the same section. Tamarack, further north toward Cooper Lodge, provided useful overflow capacity.
The trails and shelters condition report for 1980 described the section between Governor Clement and Tamarack as the "worst segment" of the Killington Section’s 26 miles, scheduled for relocation under the Appalachian Trail Securing Act. The planned "Little Killington Relocation" would, if completed, take the LT/AT away from Tamarack Shelter and its spring entirely.
The Juggernaut Ski Trail Controversy (1982–1984)
In the summer of 1982, Sherburne Corporation — the same company that had helped build Tamarack Shelter thirteen years earlier — cut a new ski trail called the Juggernaut Trail down the slopes of Killington Peak. The trail came within twenty feet of Tamarack Shelter.
The November 1982 Long Trail News placed the controversy on its front page:
"A controversy over the construction of a new ski trail on Killington Peak this summer — a ski trail which closely parallels the Long Trail/Appalachian Trail, crosses it twice, and comes within twenty feet of Tamarack Shelter — threatened to become a major confrontation between the Vermont hiking community and Sherburne Corporation, operator of Killington Ski Area. The controversy became a public issue when the Vermont Appalachian Trail Committee, joined by the Vermont Agency of Environmental Conservation, filed an appeal of the Act 250 permit granted to Sherburne Corp. for construction of the ski trail."
At a GMC Board of Directors meeting that autumn, Killington Section member Robert Badger passed around photographs showing the ski trail within twenty feet of the shelter and "expressed his very strong concern that the shelter would be much abused this winter. The general consensus was that the new ski trail did, indeed, represent a serious encroachment of the LT/AT and would adversely affect the Trail."
A work party in October 1982 described reaching the shelter on a cold, drizzling day with a dusting of snow: "We all gazed at the new ski trails put in by the Sherburne Corp. in the vicinity of the shelter. Not a pleasant sight, but what can you expect nowadays?"
The GMC entered negotiations with the ski area on behalf of the National Park Service. In September 1983, an easement document was signed. When the NPS released its Environmental Assessment in January 1984, the public outcry was intense: the easement permitted eight ski trails and one ski lift to cross the LT/AT within an easement only 700 feet wide (compared to the 1,000-foot standard used elsewhere on the AT), and also allowed construction of two warming huts, picnic tables, and gladed clearings within the easement corridor. The GMC Board voted in May 1983 that "no other organizations volunteered to help with legal costs for an appeal of the Act 250 permit for the ski trail at Tamarack Shelter. The agreement allows eight ski trails 35 feet wide to cross the Long Trail in 1.2 miles."
The controversy was not over. As late as 1989, the Long Trail News ran a major feature recounting the full history of the Killington easement negotiations and a reversal by the Park Service in the final days of the Reagan administration that the GMC and ATC called "a complete reversal of the Park Service’s position of 1985." The Tamarack Shelter episode had become a touchstone in the broader struggle to protect the Long Trail and Appalachian Trail from ski development.
Dismantling and the Helicopter That Never Came (1984)
Even before the easement controversy had run its course, the GMC was planning to relocate Tamarack Shelter to a site away from the ski trails. The February 1984 Long Trail News guide book update noted simply: "Tamarack Shelter will be moved from its current location in 1984."
At the Killington Section Annual Meeting on March 31, 1984, GMC President Preston Bristow discussed "the difficulty of trying to protect the trail from ski developers, and finally, the relocation of Tamarack Shelter." At the GMC Board of Directors meeting in September 1984, the Board approved a new site for the shelter: "at an elevation of approximately 2,900′, located on State Forest land southwest of Little Killington," subject to Act 250 and local approval.
That summer, volunteers went to work. The November 1984 Long Trail News carried this account:
Tamarack Shelter has been dismantled for airlifting to a new site. Hikers camping in the Killington area should plan to stay at Cooper Lodge until further notice. As some may recall, two years ago Tamarack Shelter found itself facing a brand new ski trail. Since then a new shelter area has been found, and we were told that a helicopter would be available in September to move the shelter to its new site. Four volunteers and one staff person spent a full day taking the shelter apart. First the shingles and tar-paper were torn off. Next the roof joists were cut near the ridge and the siding removed. Finally the roof was separated from the back wall. Later in the week several other members rebundled the lumber. As of this writing the helicopter has not been available to move the shelter.
The February 1985 Long Trail News guide book update confirmed the anticlimactic outcome: "Tamarack Shelter has been dismantled in preparation for reconstruction at a new site in the future."
The future never arrived. In the summer of 1988, hikers checking the trail between Shrewsbury Peak Junction and the former shelter spring reported seeing "no sign of the Tamarack Shelter lumber pile — though lush undergrowth could have hidden it." By 1991, Killington Section historian Roma Pulling wrote in Smoke & Blazes:
"In the early 80s a nordic ski trail was laid out in front of Tamarack. Hoping to find a more remote location on a relocated Long Trail, members of the Killington Section dismantled the shelter in 1984 and bundled it up in anticipation of its removal. While various parties argued over the best route for a relocation, the parts of our shelter disappeared."
Legacy
Tamarack Shelter left a lasting impression on those who had used it. The AT through-hiker Cynthia Taylor-Miller, writing in Smoke & Blazes around 2002, recalled: "Tamarack Shelter, where I took refuge from an afternoon thunderstorm, no longer exists." Roma Pulling’s first overnight as an End-to-Ender in 1979 had been at Tamarack — the shelter was full, so she and her family tented with her son’s Scout troop on the grounds.
The question of a replacement shelter in the Tamarack area was revisited periodically for years. In 1997, Killington Section directors discussed encouraging the GMC "to scout out potential sites for a second shelter between Clarendon Shelter and Cooper Lodge. This shelter would more or less replace Tamarack Shelter which was taken down a few years ago because of its proximity to Killington’s Juggernaut Ski Trail." In 2001, the Coolidge Range Ridgerunner suggested that "a good place would be the old site of the Tamarack Shelter, on the south side of Little Killington, at the junction with the Shrewsbury Peak Trail." As of this writing, no replacement shelter has been built.
The Juggernaut Trail that precipitated Tamarack’s removal is now part of Killington Resort’s trail network. The site where Tamarack stood — at the junction of the Long Trail and the Shrewsbury Peak Trail, 1.1 miles south of Cooper Lodge — remains unmarked by any shelter.
Sources
Long Trail News, February 1970, pp. 2, 9. Green Mountain Club.
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Smoke and Blazes (Killington), No. 54 (2001), pp. 4–5. Daniela Molnar, "Coolidge Range Ridgerunner 2001 Season Report." Killington Section, GMC.
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Smoke and Blazes (Killington), No. 67 (2014), p. 3. Roma Pulling, "Roma’s Ramblings, Part Five." Killington Section, GMC.
Smoke and Blazes (Killington), No. 85 (1988), p. 6. Herb Ogden Jr., "Parker’s Gore, But Not Much More." Killington Section, GMC.
Smoke and Blazes (Killington), No. 134, p. 5. Cynthia Taylor-Miller, "The Spirit of Long Distance Hiking." Killington Section, GMC.
Green Mountain Club. Long Trail Guide Book, 20th ed. Green Mountain Club, 1971. Pp. 34–35, 78.
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Woodward, Paul & Joanne. Long Trail System Shelter History, 2nd ed. Green Mountain Club, 1999. P. 115.
