5 Favorite Gear Items from Thru-hiking the New England Trail
From an Alpha hoodie to Cushy trail runners, here’s the gear thru-hiker Liz Thomas loved on the 200+ mile New England Trail
I am back from thru-hiking the New England Trail (NET), the ~205 mile newest National Scenic Trail in Massachusetts and Connecticut. I added nearly 20 bonus miles to start in New Hampshire atop Mt. Monadnock, an epic beginning to this incredible hike.
It’s an honor to be among the early thru-hikers of this newer trail. The NET feels like it has a lot of good energy around it and is on the cusp of becoming something big!
Hiking the New England Trail in the fall was a treat with red, yellow, and orange leaves everywhere, crisp autumn air, and even a walk through a Pick Your Own apple orchard. I feasted on resupplies of apple cider donuts, walked past sugarbushes and farmstands of local maple syrup, and saw salamanders, turtles, and turkeys doing their fall thing. The NET is well signed and blazed with good, maintained trail.
As far as the natural world goes, the Metacomet mountain range has a surprising amount of elevation gain each day, rare plants and animals, and a shocking amount of solitude. Whatever magic the trail builders have done works. It feels far more remote than it actually is. You’re walking traprock ridges on the edge of cliffs for miles, looking out at fall color from all the surrounding ranges reflected in ponds in the dawn light.
While the nearby Appalachian Trail gives you a bit of this style of ridge walking, it actually reminded me more of a mini version of the off-trail route along Chinese Wall and cliff-edge in the Bob Marshall Wilderness in Montana.
Not only was I the only thru-hiker (surprising, as this is the perfect season to hike it) but most day hikers and locals had never even heard of the NET!
As a thru-hiker, I believe it is my duty to get others excited about the newest trails because I know it will only get better as more hikers get out there.
I’m sharing a few of my favorite pieces of gear and new things I was testing while on the New England Trail.
5 Favorite Gear items from Thru-hiking the New England Trail
The Gossamer Gear Lighttrek umbrella has a huge dome that protected me from rain and also kept the top of my pack dry.
The gold hiking umbrella isn’t just for blocking out the sun. As the lightest hiking umbrella you can get (weighing 5.8 oz), it became an all-day companion during the rainy New England days on trail.
At times, the up and downs of the trail meant I generated too much heat to wear even my lightweight rain jacket. The wide canopy on this umbrella kept me from feeling too cold and wet without overheating. When it wasn’t raining, it was light enough to easily tuck away. There was one section on Ragged Peak in CT where I had to down-climb a wet cliff and throw my umbrella down the cliff so I could use two hands. The umbrella was totally fine. There were a few blowdowns where I crawled under a downed tree and the umbrella didn’t sustain any damage even after snagging on branches. It may be light, but the Lightrek is mighty!
Altra Olympus 7 trail running shoes
A kind person who lives near the trail (and lets hikers and climbers park in their yard) built this NET sign at the end of a road walk where the cushion of the Altra Olympus is appreciated.
As a newer trail, the New England Trail has some roadwalks, though nothing over 2 miles at a time. The roadwalks generally weren’t too bad and often gave me a chance to grab a sandwich and a pumpkin spice latte before popping back into the woods for the rest of the day. Still, I needed a pair of shoes that could grip rocky cliffs, steep muddy hills that occasionally have a rope to help you get up, and also the occasional pounding of pavement.
The Altra Olympus 7 trail running shoes have a lot of cushion and a Vibram Megagrip outsole for sticking to rock, without the deep lugs that can feel like wearing tap shoes when you are walking on road.
I’ve long been a fan of the Olympus for thru-hiking newer distance trails like the Pacific Northwest Trail (also established in 2009 as a National Scenic Trail and also with a lot of road walks) because I knew there will be pavement in addition to technical trail. See our full review of the Altra Olympus 7 and why it is a winner in Best Trail Running Shoes for Hiking.
Men's
Women's
The LEVE Outdoors Alpha hoodie is hunter orange and was helpful for visibility in addition to warmth. Here, I wore it for my finish photo while putting in my feet in the cold water of Long Island Sound.
Walking around PCT Days this year, I saw there aren’t many brands that make ultralight outdoor apparel in hunter orange, so I was thrilled when I found the LEVE Alpha 90 fleece. It weighs 4 oz, provides an incredible warmth-to-weight ratio, and it comes in a color that can easily be seen by hunters. This is important for hiking in the fall anywhere.
The Black Diamond Astro 300-R headlamp was my constant companion for morning and evening camp chores on the New England Trail.
The Black Diamond Astro 300-R headlamp is the most popular headlamp at REI and is Black Diamond’s most popular headlamp. We hadn’t tested it yet for our best headlamps guide because it is their entry-level/mid-range level headlamp and we thought we’d be better off testing fancier models.
But after using the Astro 300-R headlamp on the NET, I understand why it is so popular. It’s less expensive than Black Diamond’s previous most popular headlamp, the Spot. It’s also more straightforward to use with one button that controls all the features.
Another cool thing about the Astro 300-R headlamp is that it is dimmable, similar to the more expensive BioLite headlamps. And the quality of the light and the brightness far surpass what I would have expected for a so-called 300-lumen headlamp.
I had to do a lot of night hiking on this October trip (not a lot of daylight this time of year) and all my morning and evening camp chores happened by headlamp. The Astro 300-R may not be the most ultralight headlamp out there, but I was pretty impressed by the quality and crispness of the beam.
Before I left my home in sunny California, I treated all my gear and clothing with Sawyer Permethrin.
When I looked up the hazards of the New England Trail, true to its region, tick-borne diseases rose to the top. Before I left, I bought two giant bottles of Permethrin and treated all my clothes and gear, including my tent, sleeping quilt, shoes, and underwear.
The whole trip, I saw only one tick. Unfortunately it was crawling on my friend’s neck (he hadn’t treated his gear). I hate ticks and not seeing them on me was well worth the time spent laying out all my gear and spraying it down before I left.
I’ve been Zenbivy-curious for a while, not so much as to totally replace my backpacking quilt but just to understand how the system works.
At PCT Days, I got the Zenbivy Conversion Patch Kit, which includes a series of stickers with hooks that you attach to your quilt. Then those color-coded hooks let you snap a backpacking quilt by any brand into a Zenbivy Ultralight Sheet.
Voila! My old, trusty quilt now works with a 3 oz Zenbivy sheet!
The Zenbivy sheet wraps around my sleeping pad and makes sure the edges of my quilt stay curled around the pad, eliminating cold spots. It also allows me to roll around more at night.
I didn’t pack a groundsheet for this trip, but found the Zenbivy Ultralight sheet to provide some level of protection for my NEMO Tensor sleeping pad from popping when I slept in shelters. It got down to freezing and my ten-year old Katabatic Palisade quilt is rated to 30F. The Zenbivy added just enough extra warmth that I didn’t even notice it was cold out. Plus, I find snapping my quilt into the Ultralight Sheet to be oddly satisfying and a fun way to end out the night before bed.
Conversion Kit
Fast sheet
Thoughts on thru-hiking the New England Trail
Rocky outcrops with a surprising amount of views of miles of endless fall color made hiking the New England Trail a treat.
The NET was a blast and I feel honored to play a part in getting the word out about this newer trail.
There aren’t too many 200-mile thru-hikes, so it is such an asset for thru-hiker culture to have another long trail that can be done in a standard vacation time.
I also appreciated being able to sneak in a long trail in October (when many mountain trails are already covered in snow). Especially on weekdays, I had solitude for nearly the entire day.
In my opinion, the NET needs more people hiking it, spreading the word, building trail culture, and advocating to conserve the land along the trail. I often think of the early Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail hikers putting in their time on roadwalks to spread the word about the trail. Today, those trails are nearly all free of roadwalks with an unmatched trail culture. I think the NET will follow the same pattern, and hopefully soon!
About the Author/Why you should trust us
Liz Thomas has backpacked 25,000+ miles over more than 40 different thru-hiking trails. She thru-hiked the New England Trail in October 2026, which was especially significant to her because as a student, she interned for the trail organization that manages it.
Liz has written about outdoor gear for numerous publications, including as contributing editor at Backpacker Magazine and as a staff writer for the New York Times’ product review site, Wirecutter.
She’s the author of the National Outdoor Book Award winning Long Trails Mastering the Art of the Thru-hike. She regularly books speaking gigs with outdoor clubs, non-profits, and colleges and universities to talk about backpacking and conservation. She’s also Editor-in-Chief here at Treeline Review and oversees all of our outdoor gear stories.
You can read more about at www.eathomas.com or at her author page.
