Amicus
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Inspired by NEHH-baggers who tackle the "Maine Six-Pack," in the Rangeley-Stratton area, in two or three days, I persuaded my wife to plan our three-day vacation getaway for Manchester, VT, which has lots of enjoyable activities for non-baggers while providing a decent base for my excursions to new Vermont peaks. Only four of the five I climbed are on the NEHH (Equinox, Breadloaf, Wilson and Dorset), but the fifth - Roosevelt - is an NE3K and gave me my best views.
Monday - Equinox
A late start, a long drive worsened by rain and a few little work crises when we finally arrived at our B-and-B ran the afternoon to 3:15 before I could throw on my hiking clothes. We were nearly across the street from the Equinox Resort/Burr and Burton start of the Blue Summit Trail to that peak, however, so after crashing the Resort's elegant lobby to collect my Trail Guide (much more detailed than that in the GMC Day Hiker's Guide to Vermont), I was off. The Resort's Guide explains all the other trails in the Equinox Preserve, which are geared to the non-hardcore and the time-pressed and take in some nice vistas, according to my wife.
The Blue Summit Trail is a type I like - pretty much all up, at a grade that varies, but not that much. The first two miles are an old road, with good surfaces. The last mile gets narrow and rough, with lots of underbrush, then young firs, that overhang the Trail and will get you wetter on a wet day. It ends at a TV antenna fence, with no sign. It reminded me of the Kearsarge No. Trail off Hurricane Mt. Road near No. Conway, but longer and without the ledges.
The summit is marked by the parking lot for an auto road from the other side and by a spectral hotel - the Sky Line Inn - which closed a few years ago. (A cardboard sign in a window spoke of "renovations", but the place looked beyond resuscitation.) No living soul shared the fog-bound summit with me, but the place-settings in the dining room seemed freshly laid, and I thought I glimpsed a moving shadow through another window.
It was easy to make good time on the way down, and I was back to our room, after a round-trip of about 6.3 miles, in just under three hours. Vertical feet : 3,170.
Tuesday - Wilson, Breadloaf and Roosevelt
Breadloaf and Wilson, on the Long Trail in Central Vermont, are not logical destinations for the bagger vacationing in Manchester. Equinox and Dorset are at hand, and Stratton is just 12 miles to the east. If those aren't enough, Mendon, Pico and Killington can be reached by driving an hour to the north. I had already climbed Stratton, Mendon, Pico and Killington, however, so B-and-W it had to be. (B-and-W are only a dozen miles or so south of Abraham and Ellen in the Sugarbush/Warren area, and Camel's Hump is not far north of them.)
There are three logical side trails for someone not traversing the LT who wants to bag those two in a day - Emily Proctor and Skyline Pond from the west and Clark Brook from the east. I chose the last, in part because it gave me a chance, if I made good time, to add Mt. Roosevelt, the next bump north of Wilson, and an NE3K.
The drive was one hour 40 minutes, slowed mainly by Rutland stop-light sprawl, but with pleasant stretches of Rtes. 7, 4 and especially 100, ending in Granville. The way to the trailhead by West Hill Road (USFS 55) is described very precisely in the GMC Long Trail Guide.
Verdant is the word for Clark Brook Trail, especially after recent rains, and it seems little hiked. After a mile and two bridges over the Brook, you enter the Breadloaf Wilderness, so there is a sign-in register at the trailhead, with about ten signatures since last week. This was another steadily rising three-mile trail, with a rough and overgrown last mile. This was rougher and more overgrown, however, with one ladder near the top, but never hard to follow.
It joins the LT north of the col between Wilson, to the south, and Roosevelt, so I turned left toward Wilson. At the first (northernmost) of Wilson's three summit bumps, a spur east lead to my first real views, to the SE. The two bumps to the south are higher, according to my altimeter (but I don't have a topo map). Much of today's Long Trail resembled what I'd experienced in hikes to Ellen, Abraham, Camel's Hump and Mansfield to the north - pleasant but with many muddy and eroded sections.
I wasn't suprised to have the Clark Brook Trail to myself, but thought I'd run into somebody on the LT or at the E. Proctor Shelter, but again the trails were all mine. Breadloaf summit is on a 0.1-mile view spur west from the LT. If you're fussy, you may conclude that the true high-point, by about 18 inches, is about five feet off the height-of-land on that spur. Clouds rolled in as I reached the view ledges, but they rolled away again as I descended back toward Wilson, and I got some nice views from a clearing looking north.
I had time for the one-mile roundtrip to the summit ledges north of Roosevelt, and found that stretch of the LT to be somewhar rougher, with a number of uncleared blowdowns and plenty of mud. Those view ledges, however, which the LT Guide calls "Killington View," gave me by far my best views of our trip, stretching to the Presidentials in the NE and as far as Monadnock to the SE.
By requiring you to climb Wilson twice, this trail entails more vertical feet than the Emily Proctor, which is of similar length but reaches the col between Breadloaf and Wilson. The Roosevelt detour added more feet, and my total climbed today were 4,480. I covered the 11.8 miles in six hours 30 minutes.
Wednesday - Dorset.
You reach Dorset Hollow Road after 12 minutes on a straight shot north from Manchester on Rte 30. It's on the right at Barrows House, a posh-looking inn in the Village. Everything in that vicinity looks rather posh, I thought, but nothing more so than the homes on Upper and Lower D. Hollow Roads - most stately, with mountain vistas to the east and south exceeding anything you'll see from the summits.
The two roads rejoin as Tower Road, which comes to an unmarked but recognizable end "to general navigation," at a junction where a driveway around a hay-field sweeps to the right. I pushed my Outback forward on the rougher road for 200 feet, but some big dips made me chicken out and I backed gingerly to where the Guide said (at 1,550 feet). Still, the road got a little better thereafter, and tracks suggested that some high-riding pick-ups continue on for about a mile (c. 300 vertical feet), to where a tar-papered camp (occupant not present) sits to the left of the road.
After that, the road gets rougher and steeper, and after a while even ATV tracks seemed to end. The road reaches a T-junction at a saddle between Dorset to the east and Jackson (?) to the west. A stone fire-ring on the left marks the Dorset Four Corners Road, which comes up from the N.
You take the right - a very distinct snowmobile trail which heads east and reaches a junction at .4 mile. (The orange caution sign and silver blazes mentioned in the Day Hiker's Guide are mostly gone, but are not needed.) At the junction, the left heads NE at a gradual grade while you take the right, which heads more steeply up to the SE. In about a quarter-mile, an easy-to-miss wooden arrow in a tree on the left and small cairn on the right mark a footpath on the right that heads steeply up though ferns to the Dorset South summit, where you'll find the remains of a fire tower.
From the Dorset So. summit, you take another snowmobile road NE for .1 mile, where it bisects the trail you took in, maybe 100 yards east of where the footpath left it. That trail continues straight to the east, down to East Dorset somewhere, but you go straight through. A little blue "North Dorset" sign in a tree points the way. At a second junction, you can read the somewhat cryptic remains of a very old sign, from the days when Dorset South was "Dorset Peak" and there seem to have been more trails.
From the muddy col, you rise gradually to the summit and its canister, which seemed odd for a non-bushwhack. I guess it is enough that it is un-trail-signed and unsanctioned. The infamous Dorset flies were buzzing, especially at the North peak, but they seemed to leave me alone. After five days of hiking (Chocorua on Sat. and big chunk of the Mattabassett in Conn. on Sun.) in some of the same clothes, I may have overpowered them.
The Day Hiker's Guide says that a rocky trail drops north from Dorset No. for .2 miles, where it picks up that other snowmobile trail, heading WSW back to the junction .4 miles east of the saddle. I looked around a bit but couldn't find it, so retraced my steps to the first intersection and so down. The other Reports I've read all seem to indicate the route I took, so I'd be interested in hearing from someone who has hiked the Day Hiker's Guide loop.
This hike of about seven miles took me 3 hours 34 minutes, with vertical gain of 2,455 feet. After driving up from Brattleboro by Rte 30 Monday morning, my wife and I drove back today by 7A and 9, and got to see much nice Vermont.
My pix are here.
Monday - Equinox
A late start, a long drive worsened by rain and a few little work crises when we finally arrived at our B-and-B ran the afternoon to 3:15 before I could throw on my hiking clothes. We were nearly across the street from the Equinox Resort/Burr and Burton start of the Blue Summit Trail to that peak, however, so after crashing the Resort's elegant lobby to collect my Trail Guide (much more detailed than that in the GMC Day Hiker's Guide to Vermont), I was off. The Resort's Guide explains all the other trails in the Equinox Preserve, which are geared to the non-hardcore and the time-pressed and take in some nice vistas, according to my wife.
The Blue Summit Trail is a type I like - pretty much all up, at a grade that varies, but not that much. The first two miles are an old road, with good surfaces. The last mile gets narrow and rough, with lots of underbrush, then young firs, that overhang the Trail and will get you wetter on a wet day. It ends at a TV antenna fence, with no sign. It reminded me of the Kearsarge No. Trail off Hurricane Mt. Road near No. Conway, but longer and without the ledges.
The summit is marked by the parking lot for an auto road from the other side and by a spectral hotel - the Sky Line Inn - which closed a few years ago. (A cardboard sign in a window spoke of "renovations", but the place looked beyond resuscitation.) No living soul shared the fog-bound summit with me, but the place-settings in the dining room seemed freshly laid, and I thought I glimpsed a moving shadow through another window.
It was easy to make good time on the way down, and I was back to our room, after a round-trip of about 6.3 miles, in just under three hours. Vertical feet : 3,170.
Tuesday - Wilson, Breadloaf and Roosevelt
Breadloaf and Wilson, on the Long Trail in Central Vermont, are not logical destinations for the bagger vacationing in Manchester. Equinox and Dorset are at hand, and Stratton is just 12 miles to the east. If those aren't enough, Mendon, Pico and Killington can be reached by driving an hour to the north. I had already climbed Stratton, Mendon, Pico and Killington, however, so B-and-W it had to be. (B-and-W are only a dozen miles or so south of Abraham and Ellen in the Sugarbush/Warren area, and Camel's Hump is not far north of them.)
There are three logical side trails for someone not traversing the LT who wants to bag those two in a day - Emily Proctor and Skyline Pond from the west and Clark Brook from the east. I chose the last, in part because it gave me a chance, if I made good time, to add Mt. Roosevelt, the next bump north of Wilson, and an NE3K.
The drive was one hour 40 minutes, slowed mainly by Rutland stop-light sprawl, but with pleasant stretches of Rtes. 7, 4 and especially 100, ending in Granville. The way to the trailhead by West Hill Road (USFS 55) is described very precisely in the GMC Long Trail Guide.
Verdant is the word for Clark Brook Trail, especially after recent rains, and it seems little hiked. After a mile and two bridges over the Brook, you enter the Breadloaf Wilderness, so there is a sign-in register at the trailhead, with about ten signatures since last week. This was another steadily rising three-mile trail, with a rough and overgrown last mile. This was rougher and more overgrown, however, with one ladder near the top, but never hard to follow.
It joins the LT north of the col between Wilson, to the south, and Roosevelt, so I turned left toward Wilson. At the first (northernmost) of Wilson's three summit bumps, a spur east lead to my first real views, to the SE. The two bumps to the south are higher, according to my altimeter (but I don't have a topo map). Much of today's Long Trail resembled what I'd experienced in hikes to Ellen, Abraham, Camel's Hump and Mansfield to the north - pleasant but with many muddy and eroded sections.
I wasn't suprised to have the Clark Brook Trail to myself, but thought I'd run into somebody on the LT or at the E. Proctor Shelter, but again the trails were all mine. Breadloaf summit is on a 0.1-mile view spur west from the LT. If you're fussy, you may conclude that the true high-point, by about 18 inches, is about five feet off the height-of-land on that spur. Clouds rolled in as I reached the view ledges, but they rolled away again as I descended back toward Wilson, and I got some nice views from a clearing looking north.
I had time for the one-mile roundtrip to the summit ledges north of Roosevelt, and found that stretch of the LT to be somewhar rougher, with a number of uncleared blowdowns and plenty of mud. Those view ledges, however, which the LT Guide calls "Killington View," gave me by far my best views of our trip, stretching to the Presidentials in the NE and as far as Monadnock to the SE.
By requiring you to climb Wilson twice, this trail entails more vertical feet than the Emily Proctor, which is of similar length but reaches the col between Breadloaf and Wilson. The Roosevelt detour added more feet, and my total climbed today were 4,480. I covered the 11.8 miles in six hours 30 minutes.
Wednesday - Dorset.
You reach Dorset Hollow Road after 12 minutes on a straight shot north from Manchester on Rte 30. It's on the right at Barrows House, a posh-looking inn in the Village. Everything in that vicinity looks rather posh, I thought, but nothing more so than the homes on Upper and Lower D. Hollow Roads - most stately, with mountain vistas to the east and south exceeding anything you'll see from the summits.
The two roads rejoin as Tower Road, which comes to an unmarked but recognizable end "to general navigation," at a junction where a driveway around a hay-field sweeps to the right. I pushed my Outback forward on the rougher road for 200 feet, but some big dips made me chicken out and I backed gingerly to where the Guide said (at 1,550 feet). Still, the road got a little better thereafter, and tracks suggested that some high-riding pick-ups continue on for about a mile (c. 300 vertical feet), to where a tar-papered camp (occupant not present) sits to the left of the road.
After that, the road gets rougher and steeper, and after a while even ATV tracks seemed to end. The road reaches a T-junction at a saddle between Dorset to the east and Jackson (?) to the west. A stone fire-ring on the left marks the Dorset Four Corners Road, which comes up from the N.
You take the right - a very distinct snowmobile trail which heads east and reaches a junction at .4 mile. (The orange caution sign and silver blazes mentioned in the Day Hiker's Guide are mostly gone, but are not needed.) At the junction, the left heads NE at a gradual grade while you take the right, which heads more steeply up to the SE. In about a quarter-mile, an easy-to-miss wooden arrow in a tree on the left and small cairn on the right mark a footpath on the right that heads steeply up though ferns to the Dorset South summit, where you'll find the remains of a fire tower.
From the Dorset So. summit, you take another snowmobile road NE for .1 mile, where it bisects the trail you took in, maybe 100 yards east of where the footpath left it. That trail continues straight to the east, down to East Dorset somewhere, but you go straight through. A little blue "North Dorset" sign in a tree points the way. At a second junction, you can read the somewhat cryptic remains of a very old sign, from the days when Dorset South was "Dorset Peak" and there seem to have been more trails.
From the muddy col, you rise gradually to the summit and its canister, which seemed odd for a non-bushwhack. I guess it is enough that it is un-trail-signed and unsanctioned. The infamous Dorset flies were buzzing, especially at the North peak, but they seemed to leave me alone. After five days of hiking (Chocorua on Sat. and big chunk of the Mattabassett in Conn. on Sun.) in some of the same clothes, I may have overpowered them.
The Day Hiker's Guide says that a rocky trail drops north from Dorset No. for .2 miles, where it picks up that other snowmobile trail, heading WSW back to the junction .4 miles east of the saddle. I looked around a bit but couldn't find it, so retraced my steps to the first intersection and so down. The other Reports I've read all seem to indicate the route I took, so I'd be interested in hearing from someone who has hiked the Day Hiker's Guide loop.
This hike of about seven miles took me 3 hours 34 minutes, with vertical gain of 2,455 feet. After driving up from Brattleboro by Rte 30 Monday morning, my wife and I drove back today by 7A and 9, and got to see much nice Vermont.
My pix are here.
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