Some hikers are raising an alarm after reports that a man sexually assaulted a woman and made others fear for their safety on Pico Mountain on the Long Trail last weekend.
Vermont State Police believe the man, who uses the trail name “Salt,” is suspected in two incidents on Saturday, Sept. 4.
In the first, a woman told Vermont State Police that the man approached her on the trail on Pico Mountain in Killington at about 6:30 p.m. and allegedly began touching her while talking about crimes he said he had committed.
About a half-hour after that incident is believed to have occurred, three other women who were hiking the trail said the man invaded their campsite at the Pico camp shelter, acting erratically and making them fear for their safety should they try to leave, according to an online post made by one of the women. He straddled her from behind, she told VTDigger in an interview, and gave her an unwanted massage.
As a general practice, VTDigger does not name victims of sexual assault without their consent.
Michael DeBonis, executive director of the Green Mountain Club, which maintains the shelters along the Long Trail, said that while situations like this are uncommon, it’s important for hikers to be aware.
“Things that happen off trail also happen on the trail,” DeBonis said.
The “community of hikers” on the Long and Appalachian trails has been expanded by social media, he said. In this case, he said, that helped to spread awareness of the incident faster than the club could have before.
The incident with the three women at their campsite was also publicized via hiker forums such as All Trails, where the woman who was assaulted published a post about it. The post was republished by the website Vermont Sports on Thursday.
After the trio set up at Pico camp’s small closed cabin, a tall man with long blond hair and a small beard arrived at the shelter at about 7 p.m., the woman wrote. Hikers generally don’t know who else they will be staying with until arriving at a given shelter for the night.
According to the woman’s post, the man carried a light backpack and introduced himself by his trail name — traditionally used by thru-hikers on the trails to identify themselves to other hikers — of “Salt.”
On arrival, Salt claimed to be moving on to the Cooper Lodge Shelter, which is 2.5 miles south, but wanted to borrow a camp stove to heat up food first, the woman wrote. The women did not have one with them but said Salt stayed and spewed delusions at them for hours. He told them he was the lead singer for Metallica, that a pro snowboarder was leaving her husband for him, and that he wrote two movies for Hulu and many popular songs by artists such as Taylor Swift.
The whole time he was blasting music, which he angrily told the women they needed to listen to in order to calm down, the woman wrote. While the hikers considered leaving the area, the next closest shelter was nearly 2 miles away, the sun had set and they feared he would follow.
Then, without asking, he started giving one woman a massage, straddling her from behind, according to the woman’s post. The three women went outside the cabin to get space, but he followed. There, he continued touching the woman on her lower back, telling her he was in love with her. When they announced they were going to bed, he asked who was going to cuddle him.
Scared of what he would do, the three women slept huddled on one platform, she wrote. The man sang and yelled things all night, including “it’s 3 a.m., the sun is up and there’s 3 feet of powder on the ground!”
“No one got a good night’s sleep,” the woman wrote. “Whenever we woke up we were scared to move, scared for him to know we were awake.”
She told VTDigger that while they all had self-defense items on them — such as mace and knives — they chose not to use them.
“With someone that large and in that state of mind, anything we could’ve done would have put us at more risk, as we would’ve simply angered him instead of incapacitating him,” she said.
In the other incident reported on Friday to Vermont State Police, a man named “Salt” approached a woman on Pico Mountain at 6:30 p.m. — about a half-hour before the three women said he arrived at the camp — and began touching her. The woman told police he had a gray beard and seemed “manic.”
DeBonis said the Green Mountain Club contacted the U.S. Forest Service Law Enforcement, which notified Vermont State Police.
DeBonis believes the community could help police find the man because of how well information is spread up and down the trail among hikers. “Salt” told the women he was a local who went to the Pico camp shelter often, according to the woman.
