Bikepacking Vermontshire: Part 3

October 01, 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.

On the third day of our journey, we traveled through Northfield, Roxbury, and Warren, VT. Our day involved some general silliness in the hills around Warren, a stop at a lovely cafe, a stop at a lovely brewpub, a giant gap climb, and a couple of solid Vermont general stores.

After waking up early, we descended on dirt roads through the remainder of Roxbury State Forest. The air was crisp, the dirt was solidly packed, the leaves were yellow, and the grade was pleasant.

We happily zoomed through the miles until we reached our first (and only) class 4 road the the day. Unfortunately, this road was marked "ATVs ONLY" and "STAY ON THE TRAILS OR STAY HOME". We once again assumed that the (not government posted, on an official class 4 road) signs contained an implicit "except for ATBs, which are allowed on ALL TERRAIN", and continued on.

The first descent on the class 4 road was extremely steep, but fun -- the combination of heavy ATV tracks and runoff clearly contributed to a surface with a solid amount of slip. We continued along through a couple of intersections, not seeing any other traffic, until we reached a sharp left-hand turn.

After a couple hundred feet, I noticed we were now off course, so we returned to the turn to discover that the original class 4 road was blocked off and completely defunct, covered in the obvious detritus of years of neglect and disuse. So we turned back around, took the sharp left, and tried to see where it went. We were only a few hundred feet from the nearest road, with one stream in the way, so we figured the newer, maintained trail might eventually meet up. After a solid mile of riding across extremely rough terrain, the trail only traveled farther away from the road.

So we turned around, again, returned to the defunct class 4 road, and decided to bushwhack our way across the remaining few hundred feet of old roadbed to the nearby dirt road.

This turned out to be a bad idea. The road, as I mentioned before, was covered in downed trees, 10ish-year-old new trees, bushes, downed branches, and other undergrowth. Before long, even the original roadbed was difficult to make out among the ferns and grasses. And it wasn't long before we discovered the reason for the road's abandonment: an ancient, broken, concrete bridge.

Naturally, we didn't let that get in our way. We proceeded down the nearby slope, across the nearby stream, through a nearby bog, and up the adjacent very steep, very tall embankment of the dirt road. There weren't any difficulties at all. No blood was shed. No trespassing occurred. We didn't wind up covered in mud and muck, I never discovered just how cold that creek water was, and nobody groaned at all as they lugged a heavy, loaded steel bicycle up a roadside embankment. Nope. Definitely not. Everything was above the board and totally legal and normal.

Anyway, some time later, we found ourselves laying on the side of the nearby dirt road, covered in mud, muck, water, blood, debris, and pieces of plants. Before anyone noticed anything untoward, we hopped aboard our bicycles and rode downstream toward Northfield.

Perhaps two miles later, we found an exit from the ATV trails we were just on. Thirty seconds of unsettling and unhinged laughter later, we proceeded towards Northfield again.

We may have stopped a couple of times to clean ourselves and our bicycles.

A few miles later, we met up the with the main road into Northfield. A few miles after that, we cycled past Norwich University, and into town. Not long after that, we found ourselves cozied up at Carrier Roasting Company, enjoying a couple of excellent coffee beverages and a veritable horde of pastries.

After relaxing at Carrier, we headed over to the nearby Norwich University to explore and kill some time. We checked out the campus, appreciated the impressive local spooky season displays, lubed our drivetrains, finally threw out some of our trash, and headed back next door to Carrier to the highly anticipated Good Measure Brewing, where we enjoyed a hearty lunch.

At Good Measure, we had a lengthy chat with a horse enthusiast who, for the sake of anonymity, I'll refer to here as "Mr. Underhill". Mr. Underhill was the first of quite a few people who seemed genuinely interested in our trip, making this one of our most social tours ever. I especially enjoyed our conversations about how bike people and horse people really ought to get along better, since we all enjoy getting out on a saddle over rugged trails in the wilderness. And learning about various horse-riding events was fascinating.

After Good Measure, we booked it down the valley to our big climb of the day: Roxbury Gap. While this gap isn't quite as steep or as high as our previous VT tour nemesis, Lincoln Gap), we still reserve a healthy respect for any climb exceeding 1,000 vertical feet. We swung by the Roxbury Country Store for some electrolytes (gatorade and goldfish) and braced ourselves for a grueling ascent.

Turns out that this one wasn't too bad. It was steep at times, and the traffic turned out to be slightly more than we normally experience on VT dirt roads, but we made surprisingly good time cruising up the hill, and most drivers were really respectful. When we reached the top, we were genuinely surprised (and maybe even a bit disappointed) that we didn't have to climb another 500 feet.

The descent made it all worthwhile, though. We cruised through miles of absolutely pleasant, swooping roads with a gorgeous view of the Green Mountains and Sugarbush's ski trails, right to our penultimate stop of the day: the East Warren Market, a perfectly folksy old schoolhouse complete with tiny cemetery, an excellent wine and beer selection, and some seriously good looking sandwiches and burritos. There was a lot of local art as well, but we didn't bother with any this time -- our bikes are already heavy enough!

We nabbed a four pack of Alchemist and a couple of burritos, and headed down through Warren to reach our campsite for the night, a HipCamp that promised waterfalls, a fire ring, an outhouse, and a pizza oven. After two nights of wild camping, we were seriously hyped. Passing through Warren was a quaint as ever, and before we knew it, we turned down yet another dirt barely-a-road to reach our campsite. It turned out to be our favourite of the entire trip: a gorgeous spot, immaculately maintained, and even better, we were the only campers there that night.

We grilled our burritos and sipped our beers under the stars much later than our previous nights, and fell asleep to the dulcet tones of a large (but low-flow) exposed-rock waterfall.

I woke up a couple of times to hear some seriously dumb coyotes horsing around in the nearby forest; I know coyotes can sound scary when you're deep in the dark woods, but when you're cozy and safe, it's hard not to notice that they're basically a pack of children playing in the woods.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 4.