Bikepacking Vermontshire: Part 4

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 fourth day of our journey, we traveled up the mad river valley through a very steep, very beautiful set of mountain bike trails, the town of Waitsfield, our easiest (and funnest) class 4 road yet, into the village of Waterbury, and a (small amount) up the side of some nearby mountains to the scenic Little River State Park.

The skies were blue. The air was crisp (but quite warm in the sun). The leaves were yellowing before our very eyes. Conditions were damn near perfect for a bike ride.

We woke up to the soothing sounds of a steady stream of water tumbling down the rocks nearby our campsite. Strong sunlight provided the perfect means of drying out our rain fly. Despite packing up our tent rather quickly, we delayed leaving the campsite for quite some time; the pleasant kitchen area, an outhouse, and the warming rays of the sun were just a little too hard to leave.

But before long, we took advantage of the glorious weather and began our bike ride. A short stint down VT route 100 later, we turned onto Sugarbush Access Road, which we knew would be steep, but didn't realise would be very, very busy.

In fact, this road was so busy with the constant comings and goings of enormous trucks carrying heavy loads that we took the very first opportunity to turn onto some singletrack, sacrificing an easy journey upwards for an almost-mile-long uphill slog at 20-25% grades. But it was worth it for the peace and quiet of the trees. We questioned our decision a couple of times at particularly rough spots, but it was never long before the faint echoes of a giant truck engine braking or struggling its way up the hill made us grateful for the trail, the aptly named "Big Cranky".

Eventually, we made our way up to a ridgeline trail named "Plum Line" that took us along some ancient stone walls around some pretty massive sugarbushes.

Near Eurich Pond, we met a dog-walking amateur mycologist who seemed very impressed that we biked our way all the way up there with full bikepacking bags. We proceeded along the "Swell Hill" blue trail until we stumbled upon some trail maintenance. Fearing the worst, we asked if there was a way to get around: the guy driving the backhoe said we were totally fine to ride past, and even requested a photo of our bikepacking rigs that he could share with his parents, who've been looking to upgrade their setups.

A couple of wrong turns later, we found ourselves descending on some black trails when a strange noise started to come from my rear rack. Suddenly, the weighting skewed entirely off-center. We investigated to discover that the bolt and spacer on my rear rack and come completely loose and fallen off! Thankfully, Meg played a lot of I, Spy as a kid, so she found the parts incredibly quickly while I stumbled my way down the trail, blind as a bat. We replaced the parts, and then investigated the rest of the rack, only to discover that every bold on the entire rack had come extremely loose over the last few days. Guess we should have applied loctite. Anyway, we tightened up the bolts, then checked Meg's rack (the same model, but placed on the front of her bike instead of the rear). Her bolts were perfectly tight, so instead of blaming the rack manufacturer or lack of loctite, I must assume I did a poor job tightening.

After that, we felt highly motivated to go get some burritos in Waitsfield. We headed down more surprisingly steep, surprisingly rooty trails to link up with yet another set of trails, Enchanted Forest, where I assume the fun never stops. The first section of the trail, which crossed some swampland and power lines, was honestly pretty awful. It was just uphill enough that you had to pedal pretty hard the whole way, and just technical enough that you never really got in the groove of your ride. But once we hit the downhill, the riding was as bermy and flowy as I've ever seen it in Vermont. We just kept zooming downhill, pushing the endurance of our hands and cores to the max. But our desire for burritos was great enough to keep us motivated.

Eventually the trails dumped us out on a dirt road with yet more steep descent. From there, we only rode a half mile on some paved roads to reach our first destination of the day: The Mad Taco.

We gorged on some truly spectacular burritos (I highly recommend the Al Pastor; Meg highly recommends the Chile Colorado), then headed over to Lawson's Finest Liquids to hammer out the details of the rest of our route. At Lawson's, we were fortunate enough to stumble upon esteemed photographer and bikepacking router Thrashley, who was kind enough to suggest that we stick with our original route over a class 4 road instead of simplifying the route to ensure that we made it to Little River before dark.

I am pleased to report that our final route was both as excellent as Thrashley claimed and a wonderful way to add a maple creamee to our journey.

After descending down the class 4 road, we quickly found ourselves right in downtown Waterbury, where we headed straight to the Prohibition Pig, a surprisingly flood-resistant and unsurprisingly excellent brewpub. We enjoyed a light snack, nabbed some cans of beer across the street at The Taproom at Vermont Beer Collective (where the proprietor and I bonded over a mutual love for Okkervil River), and headed through a serious contender for "Vermont's most unpleasant roundabout" toward Little River.

The gradual climb up to Little River went quickly, but felt like it took ages as the sun slipped away. We stopped for a quick picture atop the nearby dam, and headed over to the welcome station. Unfortunately, 6:50PM is apparently too late for Vermont State Parks to staff their facilities, because the place was a complete ghost town. Fortunately, we were able to buy some wood via a nearby stand, but I was a little shocked that we managed to not see a single staff member the entire time we were at the park.

Our campsite at Little River was fine. The last time we stayed at Little River, we stayed in a really cozy nook on the "B" side. We basically couldn't see or hear anyway. This time, we stayed at a "non-prime" campsite on the "A" side because the "B" side was closed. We were a lot closer to our neighbours, and I consider us fortunate to have gotten quiet neighbors who let us sleep soundly.

We enjoyed a short campfire, set up the tent, and slept well. I only woke up once during the night, around midnight, to the sounds of much more rain arriving much earlier than originally forecast. Unfortunately, we would soon wake up to a similar surprise.

Curious about the rest of the story? You can now find it in part 5.