Pico from Brewers Corner

[helmethiker]

Does this path from Brewer's Corner to Pico exist? It is on OpenStreetMaps which is the base map for Alltrails. The source is listed as Strava. I see no indication from Strava heat maps that anyone uses it. I see no mention from anyone ever following this route. If you use alltrails and start at Brewers Corner and end at Pico this is the suggested route. When I hiked Pico & Killington last fall from Sherburne Pass I saw no indication of the path, but I also did not have it marked as a waypoint to look at the specified junction coordinates. My original plan had been to hike from the ski resort, and that route had the junction marked.

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/brewers-corner-to-pico-c0d5868

If it did exist as a route that was not a bushwhack, then this larger 3 peak route (badly titled), including a bushwhack used by a different alltrails user from Mendon to Killington, might be interesting:

https://www.alltrails.com/explore/map/mendon-peak-and-bushwhack-to-killington-0a93091

I will almost certainly not try it on my own. I have done almost no bushwhacking, I am by nature a list completer, I have already hiked Pico & Killington, and neither seemed interesting enough to repeat. Future VT hikes will almost certainly be New England 100 highest that are not 4k. But I want to know. I believe Pico & Mendon were mentioned in a recent post, but I cannot find that. This question is why I joined vftt a few months ago.

 

[JToll]

I went up the Bucklin Trail in October and did not see any indication of a trail or herd path heading toward Pico

 

[helmethiker]

I went up the Bucklin Trail in October and did not see any indication of a trail or herd path heading toward Pico

After redlining the paper map of Monadnock trails on 31 Oct 2024 I was looking at alltrails and onthegomap, both of which use openStreetMaps. I found a lot of other trails, some on openStreetMaps but others from looking up the openStreetMaps names and seeing trail reports and gpx tracks on the web, some of which have blazes, some of which have cairns, one which is on a different "map" in the main visitor center area and in the spring had trail junction markings but in the fall had an attempt to obliterate the same. Most of them I would walk right by the junction if I did not know to look, and even then for me who is not skilled in the art of seeing hidden junctions I would walk by them anyway if I did not have GPS coordinates or other prior knowledge.

One of the tasks I have assigned myself is to flag those routes on openStreetMaps with the correct tag so that alltrails will not route you along them without a lot of effort. I have not yet done that. If this Brewers Corner to Pico path does not exist, the same should be done here.

 

[KRooney]

I went up the Bucklin Trail in October and did not see any indication of a trail or herd path heading toward Pico

I've done Bucklin a few times to get Killington and IIRC you bear right about 2/3's of the way up to get Mendon. But Pico - have only done it from the old Long Trail Lodge, at the height-of-land on US4.

 

[KRooney]

Here's a list on Wikipedia of the 100 Highest List. Mendon is # 85, and Pico is # 75.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_...d in the mountaineering sport of peak bagging.