Bikepacking Vermontshire: Part 1
September 28, 2024
For this year's bike tour, Meg and I rode our ATBs from Littleton, New Hampshire, in a loop around Vermont, and back to New Hampshire. Along the way, we checked out some new spots, and visited some old favourites. We connected it all with a collection of class 4 roads, singletrack, dirt roads, and -- occasional -- pavement.
Our journey begins at 12:01 AM, the day of our departure. We'd just finished up:
- wrangling all of our bags onto the bikes
- gear into the bags
- taking the bikes for a very basic 'shakedown cruise' on the local trails to test that nothing fell off and we hadn't put too much weight in the wrong places
Mind you, we sorted out plenty of gear and bags before the eleventh hour. After finishing up work on Friday, we figured we'd just attach the remaining bags (we configured the racks well in advance), put our gear into the bags, and hit up the local pub for dinner.
Unfortunately Meg's rack was mounted a little too high, rendering her (front-loaded) bike handling wildly unstable. Additionally, our setups wound up too small to fit either camp stove. We couldn't track down some of the extra-long voile straps we planned to use to secure the bear bag onto my rack, and the short ones weren't long enough to secure both the bear bag and the lock.
So I whipped up a pasta puttanesca-style mishmash of leftover CSA vegetables, Meg detached and reconfigured her rack, we eliminated all of the extra crap gear we didn't need, and we took the bikes for another test ride. Several hours passed -- nobody is quite sure how or why -- the sun set, and sometime around midnight, we felt cosy enough with our setups to hit the hay.
We got up around 7 AM, early enough to get a decent start on the day before the heat set in, but late enough to give us a decent night's rest. I whipped up some coffee, we finished off the rest of our bread, then we hit the road.
The rail trail from Littleton to the Vermont state border was as pretty (and uneventful) as always. Aside from two bicycle tourists in Littleton and an ATV in Lisbon, we didn't see anybody. After crossing the border, we were disappointed to find our favourite hole-in-the-wall breakfast spot, Hatchbox, closed on autumn break. But we trudged onward, slogging our way up the brief paved highway section of the XVT trail until we hit trails, then dirt, then class 4 road.
Along the way, we experienced one rude Prius honk, one possible coal rolling from a dumper lorry, and a whole lot of vertical climbing. Once we got away from the vehicle traffic, it was time to enjoy second breakfast. We popped a quick squat at a cute-ish creek on the side of the road, nommed away on some pop tarts and granola, and forgot all about the Bad Vibes.
A long downhill into a small town rose our spirits, helping us zoom our way uphill onto our first true class 4 road of the day. A helpful backhoe nudged off the trail to let us by; not 1000 feet later we found ourselves pushing the Moonshiners up a 20% grade of almost pure exposed rock, roots, and mud.
A truly ridiculous amount of time later, we reached the top of the climb. Fortunately, the way down looked significantly easier, so we sat down on one of the few non-posted property rocks, cracked a couple of beers, and assembled our first salami, cheese, jalapeΓ±o wraps of the journey.
Some relaxation, hydration, and libation later, we were ready to push on. This downhill lasted even longer than the first, bringing us all the way down to a hamlet containing a cute old church and an absurd number of power meters.
But our trials were not yet complete: once again, we pointed our Moonshiners up a pointy class 4 road. A group of heavily customised 4x4 trucks passed us, but it wasn't long before we caught up with them on the trails. One nice part of Vermont outdoor culture: even the 4x4 drivers tend to think ATBs are cool. They even complimented our dynamo headlights.
We almost reached the top of our penultimate climb when Meg's routing first led us astray. Instead of pointing us further down the only road in the area, I realised that our bike computer wanted us to proceed into the woods. Meg led a scouting mission through the weeds; initial reports indicated a clearly abandoned, but surprisingly well-kept roadbed. We made the silly mistake of trusting that things would stay that way.
As I'm sure you can imagine, the road lured us in using a couple of miles of flat, debris-free terrain. Then the 'road' essentially disappeared. We pushed on through some marsh, found the road again, and made it within 500 feet of an actual dirt road. Unfortunately, as any six blue whales stacked up end-to-end can tell you 500 feet is an awfully long distance across uncut forest undergrowth. Since I forgot to bring my machete on this trip, it was even worse. But, like any experienced world travelers, we prefer to look forward instead of lingering on the past, so we pushed our loaded steel ATBs straight through that forest and climbed up the roadside to the dirt road surface. I wish I could say that's the last time I'll use that sentence this trip, but alas; I cannot.
We continued along the dirt road until we came to yet another nonexistent road along the route; this time, the path led straight across a field. We surreptitiously scrutinized the sweeping stretches of soil, but didn't feel like bushwhacking across completely random forests and streams, so we circled back to another class 4 road that (supposedly) led into the state park where we planned to primitive camp.
Fortunately, this road existed, and was even (mostly) rideable. We dragged our sorry asses up the hill until we were 90% sure that we entered Washington State Forest. We hike-a-biked our way 200(ish) feet off of the very rough trail, set up the tent among some cairns, cracked a beer, ate some more salami cheese wraps, set up the bear bag, and spectated as night fell.
Before long, a side-by-side with a massive light bar and an ATV passed by on the trail, but other than that, we were entirely alone in the wilderness. We split a celebratory take 5 bar for dessert, brushed our teeth, and settled down for sleep.
Of course, that wasn't the end of our day. Because the forest was absolutely chock full of crunchy old leaves and dry twigs, we were on edge a huge chunk of the night. When you're completely blind in a dark, opaque tent under a rain fly, every crinkle of leaves falling sounds like a bear or a moose that's about to trample the tent. Every chitter sounds like a family of raccoons about to tear your bicycle to shreds. Every spooky unidentifiable crash sounds like a hash-slinging slasher on the verge of 'getting' you.
Fortunately, nearly 6000 feet of steep road climbing and 55 miles of riding was enough to knock us out despite the spooks. I woke up a couple of times in the night (or maybe I was just dreaming) to even crazier noises, but overall our camping site served us well. 7 stars out of 10 for the accommodation: the neighbours were noisy and the facilities were lacking, but I can forgive that since the price was right.
Stay tuned for our next episode, where we journey further into Vermont to Bent Hill Brewery and Roxbury State Forest for even more climbing, beers, and primitive camping.
Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 2.
Prefer not to read? Take a look at the video Meg made that summarises our entire journey in just a few minutes of screen time.