During the school year, Middlebury resident Will Robinson teaches preschool at a Head Start program in Addison County.
In the summer, he hikes. A lot.
One year, Robinson — trail name Flash — summited all of New Hampshire’s 48 mountains that are above 4,000 feet. Another year, he bagged Colorado’s 58 peaks over 14,000 feet.
This summer, though, the 28-year-old man achieved his most ambitious physical challenge yet: Walking to and summiting the 115 mountains in the Northeast that are above 4,000 feet. As far as he knows, he’s the first person to turn the challenge into a long-distance hike.
Robinson’s journey, which started in the Catskill Mountains of New York and ended at Mount Katahdin in Maine, took 59 sometimes miserable, occasionally exhilarating, always exhausting days. He walked between mountain ranges, so his boots carried him along 220 miles of road connecting the Catskills and the Adirondacks, across the Crown Point Bridge, on to the Long Trail during July’s torrential rains, and through a raging, chest-deep river in Maine.
All told, he estimated the trek was more than 1,300 miles.
Though many through-hikers listen to music or podcasts while they walk, Robinson said he mostly just thinks or spaces out. On this summer’s adventure, he occasionally caught himself repeating nursery rhymes in his head.
“That’s the preschool teacher in me,” he said.
Hitting the trail around 6:15 each morning, Robinson averaged 20 to 30 miles per day, though on one occasion he managed 37. By the time night fell, he was always physically and mentally drained, he said: “All I wanted to do was lay down.”
The best part of the trip, he said, came during the two weeks he spent in Maine, where he met up with a crew of fellow hikers that became his “tramily,” or trail family.
Robinson said that one day, he’d like to walk across the country. For now, though, his teaching schedule won’t allow it.
Instead, he’s contemplating other potential monumental feats he can accomplish next summer vacation.
The original print version of this article was headlined “Trailblazing Teacher”
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2023.
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