Who We Are

I grew up in the northern White Mountains of New Hampshire and the southern Green Mountains of Vermont.  My Dad had me scrambling up peaks as soon as I could walk; chocolate is a great incentive!  My first experience on the Long Trail was an end to end hike with my high school outing club in 1982.  That led to several summers working for a nomadic camp operated by the AMC; giving me the opportunity to explore the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, the Cascades in Washington state, and the Adirondacks.  Those experiences gave me the travel bug and since I have spent time in the mountains of Alaska, Tanzania, Nepal, Switzerland and Iceland. But the Green Mountains are definitely home. I live with my partner in Ripton and cherish the time I spend outdoors hiking, running, skiing, sailing and biking. I am a long-time GMC volunteer and currently am the adopter of the Emily Proctor Trail.

Born and raised in New Jersey, Ellen was a high school outing club member, and ever since, she has loved the woods. After 25 years of conventional engineering work, she opted to change careers and work in positions having more contact with nature. These included watershed management, wetlands analysis, trail building with high schoolers and invasive plant identification on the Appalachian Trail. Ellen has been a work skills instructor with the Student Conservation Association for five years and is trained in Wilderness First Aid. She also was on the board of the New York-New Jersey Trails Conference for five years. Though not a regular birder, she is a 20 year volunteer with Vermont Center for Ecostudies and can be found studying bird song come spring. Ellen has a moderate peak bagging problem that started with the Catskill 3500 and progressed to New Hampshire and the Adirondacks.  There is always a new list to complete!

Brett grew up hiking and camping first in the beautiful Sonora desert of Arizona, and then in the Minam and Eagle Creek wilderness areas (and in the Blue and Wallowa Mountains) of Eastern Oregon.  When education and employment brought her to the east coast and then to Vermont, she embraced the hiking, cross-country skiing and kayaking communities here.  Not able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, she is a careful and thoughtful hiker, though she walks in the woods of the Champlain Valley nearly every day, with her beloved dogs Don Paco and Bailey. Husband Karl Lindholm is not a hiker, though Peter and Annie Lindholm, her children, both lead trips at summer camps in New England.

Hiking and camping to me has always meant the trees, roots, mud, and profound lack of switchbacks of the Northeast. Summers were spent at a camp on the New York side of Lake Champlain doing multi-night trips into the Adirondacks. To be honest, I didn't love it until leading a group of 11 year olds up Mt Colden on a perfect day in August when I was 17 and it all finally made sense. My first exposure to Vermont's Green Mountains was a Lincoln Gap to Midd Gap hike as part of my orientation at Middlebury College. Since then, I've enjoyed fantastic backpacking experiences throughout the US and Japan but Vermont has always been where I return to and thru-hiking the LT end-to-end in 2021 was the realization of a decades old dream. Each time I had to leave Vermont after a family vacation or picking my children up from their summer camp experience or when my oldest graduated from Middlebury College, it felt like leaving home rather than returning to it. After 25 years in the DC area (literally exhausting all hikes within a day's drive), my wife Ritsuko and I finally got the chance to return permanently and found a house in East Middlebury. We are enjoying everything Vermont has to offer on the lakes and in the mountains, especially, hiking, kayaking, biking, and all of the winter sports. I recently signed up as the trail adopter for the Skylight Pond Trail to Bread Loaf Mountain.

 I have been hiking since age 4, when a family photograph shows me at the Lakes of the Clouds on Mount Washington with a big woolen sock on my head to keep warm. Growing up, we went hiking in the Whites and Adirondacks every summer, and the Green Mountains starting when I was 9. My wife Lynn Luginbuhl also loves mountains and persuaded me to move to Colorado for a while, but we regained our senses and returned to Vermont in 1995. We spend most of our free time hiking , including (me) becoming a member of the Northeast 111 club , which requires climbing 115 of the 111  4000 footers in the northeastern United States (no, not a typo). We hiked the Haute Route in Switzerland in 2017 and the Alta Via 1 in the Italian Dolomites in 2016. Our son Hal completed the Appalachian Trail in 2008. Lynn and I have been trail adopters since 2011, on the Middlebury Gap north section of the Long Trail. When I am not hiking, I work as a pediatric intensive care doctor in Massachusetts, and with Doctors Without Borders internationally.

Ken grew up in a small suburb of Worcester, Mass where he romped in the woods making forts and discovering large trees and unique spots.  Mt. Wachusett and Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire were close-by, and as a teenager, they became the first mountains he hiked.  After majoring in Plant and Soil Sciences at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst he went on to earn a doctorate in Crop Physiology and Statistics.  He later became a Professor at UMass/Amherst where he conducted research in crop physiology and taught an Environmental Science class.  At this point, he has climbed more than half of the 4,000 footers in the Northeast but does not feel compelled to climb them all.  For Ken, hiking is a holistic activity with physical, spiritual, and social benefits.  Currently, he is involved with the Vermont Master Naturalist program where he enjoys deepening his knowledge of the natural world, which in turn will enhance hikes and outings he leads for the Green Mountain Club.

I grew up hiking the slot canyons (streets) of New York City and developed my love of the outdoors in Central Park and through our infrequent trips out of the city. As with so many, I got introduced to Vermont through skiing and then more deeply as my wife's parents retired to Shoreham where we spent countless weekends hiking, skiing across the neighboring fields, visiting Mad River Glen and Sugarbush or taking the kids to ride the ferry to NY and back. Now we live in Cornwall and any excuse to be outdoors is a good one, whether walking, hiking, skiing, swimming, fishing or simply taking a quiet moment to listen to the wind in the trees and the calls of the birds.  Now Anne and I look forward to being an active part of the Bread Loaf Section community and to meeting new friends on the trails, on the pickleball courts or maybe just throwing a frisbee around.