Big Jay, Jay, Camels Hump, Abraham, Ellen, Breadloaf, Wilson, Dorset, Equinox

(Almost) All Vermont Hundred Highest in a Weekend

On the summit of Dorset

Eric and Matthew Gilbertson
(Almost) All the Vermont Hundred Highest in One Weekend
5pm Friday May 20 – 11:15pm Sunday May 22, 2011
9 mountains
45 Miles hiking
13,300 ft elevation gain
627 miles driving (~14 hours)

Author: Eric

“Why don’t MITOC people ever go hiking in Vermont?”
“Because it’s farther away than New Hampshire, the mountains are smaller, and there aren’t as many of them”
“Well then, think we could do them all in one weekend?”

The seeds had been planted for a great adventure. Matthew and I are trying to climb the 100 highest mountains in New England, and Vermont happens to have 14 of them (compared to 59 in New Hampshire). We’d already climbed three of the ones in Vermont on our 2006 Appalachian Trail hike, so we thought doing all the rest might just be possible in one weekend.

I did some summitpost research, and it would involve ~60 miles of hiking + 14 hours of driving. That’s doable in ideal conditions, but our conditions didn’t quite look ideal – it was supposed to rain all weekend, the trails were likely snow covered in the higher elevations, and three of the mountains were bushwacks. So we settled for 9 mountains, leaving the two closest to the whites to tag some other day.

Day 0
We rented a car and headed out of boston Friday evening, reaching the base of our first mountain, Jay Peak, by 10pm. The rain had started around Franconia Notch at 8 and didn’t show any signs of stopping, so our tent didn’t sound too appealing. Instead we practiced car camping in its purest form – camping in a car.

Day 1
The sun woke us up at 5:45 Saturday morning and started up Jay peak by 6:30. Luckily the rain was holding off, but the trail was still soaked. We were hoping to get views into Quebec from the summit, but it was socked in with clouds by the time we got there. I had heard the ski resort was open the previous weekend, but that must have been it for the season because we were the only ones up there.

We continued west from the summit towards peak number 2, Big Jay. This one is officially trailless, but apparently somebody years ago cut out an illegal path to the summit. It’s pretty overgrown now but still isn’t quite as hard as pure bushwacking anymore. We found the start of the route without too much trouble and started pushing through the trees. There was actually quite a bit of snow on this ridge – enough for me to change out of my running shoes and into my hiking boots, but not quite enough to warrant the snow shoes we had brought.

After a mile of deep mud and snow we reached the summit and actually got a few glimpses into quebec when the clouds broke. There was no time for fooling around, though, since we still had 7 mountains left and the clock was ticking. We stopped long enough for pictures and then headed down, reaching the car by 9:15. It turned out we could save $13/day by only having one driver on the rental car, so I took a turn to do all the driving for the weekend.
Our next mountain – Camels Hump – was 2 hours away and this was a lot more pleasant driving than the previous night in boston rush hour traffic. The only problems were the occasional rogue cattle herd walking in the middle of the road, or a fallen tree spanning most of the road. These didn’t slow us down too much, and we were at the Burrows trailhead by 11:15 to start mountain #3.

This time we decided to ditch the snowshoes and go ultralight – just a fanny pack for each of us instead of our big backpacks. The trail was 2.2 miles up with 2200ft elevation gain (that’s pretty steep), and we reached the top in about an hour. Of course, this one was in the clouds too, but at least the rain was holding off. We got some good jumping pictures and then started jogging back down. Back at the trailhead there were now 5 new cars. We thought it was kind of funny that for most of the other hikers, this mountain was their entire day, but it was just a 2-hour side-trip sandwiched between four other mountains for us.

Another 45 minutes of driving brought us to Lincoln Gap and the trailhead for mounts Abraham and Ellen. It was 2:15 and we had 13 more miles of hiking to do, so we scarfed down a quick lunch and took off. Mount Abraham’s summit offered our first good view of the day – undercast to the east and sunny to the west, with ominous storm clouds rolling in. We had some other hikers get a picture of us just before the rain started, and then we split off down the ridge towards Ellen.

The ridge between Abraham and Ellen is one of the few areas of New England where summits are actually labeled with signs – Little Abe, Lincoln Peak, Nancy – but for some reason the mountains on the ends of the ridge – Abraham and Ellen – are unlabeled. We weren’t taking any chances and had already programmed in the summit coordinates on our gps, so when we got to a nondescript, viewless local maximum on the end of the ridge we knew with certainty it was Mount Ellen.

Not 100 feet past Ellen we noticed the trees parted and there was a ski lift. There was even a bench overlooking the valley, and we took a short food break here to admire the view. It was neat to see the trees in the valley were fully green, while on the top of the mountain they weren’t even thinking about budding leaves yet.

We started jogging back after about 20 minutes, and got back to the car by 6:30. The next mountains were really close, so we drove back down to the valley and pulled into the Skylight Pond trailhead. It was 7pm now, and with only one hour of light left and a 9-mile round trip for the next set of mountains, we decided to call it a day and get to bed. 23 miles was a pretty good day, and we needed to rest up to do it again tomorrow.

“How much would I have to pay you to bushwack up to Mt Breadloaf right now?” Matthew asked over dinner, after the sun had already set. We often play this game in the winter when we pass an unfrozen river that could be jumped in, or at the end of a crazy hike to see if there’s any chance we’d just turn around and do it again. There’s always a price someone is willing to accept to do these things, though the hypothetical payer never really materializes.
“No trail? In the mud and dark? Pulling an all-nighter just because? Hmm, I’d definitely do it for $500,” I replied.
“But not for $497?” Matthew countered.

And so the negotiation began until we discovered a gray area between $200 and $400. By then we were tired and went to sleep, this time in our tent (because it wasn’t raining).

Day 2

We slept in til 6:30am the next morning and hit the trail by 7. The next objective was Mt Breadloaf, and I was glad we were on the trail and making good time instead of thrashing through the woods and mud in the dark without sleep. Amazingly this trail actually had switchbacks, so the climbing wasn’t that bad. We hit the ridge after a few miles and then met up with the long trail. The long trail came within 100ft of Breadloaf before turning away, but we cut through the woods to touch the official summit. This mountain didn’t have a sign or even a cairn, but we again confirmed with our trusty gps that it was indeed breadloaf.

Mountain #7, Mt Wilson, was 2 miles farther up the long trail so after a quick food break we took off again. We were on the north side of the mountain this time and saw quite a few patches of snow – probably the last snow we’ll have seen this season in retrospect since the subsequent mountains were snow free. Wilson was actually directly on the long trail, though still completely unmarked. We snapped some pictures on the gps-indicated summit and then retraced our steps, going back up and over breadloaf and reaching the car by 10:15am. Only two mountains and 12 miles left to go and we were certain we could do them both.

I took the wheel and we headed south to mountain #8, Dorset Peak. This one was officially trailless but we’d heard there were four-wheeler tracks all the way to the summit. We drove past a bunch of super-fancy houses in the town of Dorset before reaching the end of a gravel road in Dorset Hollow. There were no signs or even a parking lot, but we pulled onto the side of the road and started up an obvious four-wheeler path.

The path wound up a streambed, past a dilapidated old hunting cabin, and then turned into an extremely steep old logging road. It was probably on the 1000ft-per-mile grade and unrelenting. Surprisingly we met an older couple taking a break halfway up, and asked where they were going. The man pointed south to an apparently trailless mountain and said they were doing Dorset.

“Um, Dorset is that one up there,” we said, pointing to the mountain to the north where the path led.
“Really? Well, I’ll take another look at the map,” he replied.

We continued up, skeptical if we would ever see those people again or if they’d get themselves lost on the way up. We passed by a few more confusing intersections and tried to put sticks over the wrong trails to try to steer those people in the correct direction. We finally reached the top around 2pm. This mountain actually had a sign and a summit register! I guess all the officially trailless mountains in New England generally have registers, though this was anything but trailless.

On our way down we ran into the people and they were luckily on the right path. I bet they eventually made it to the correct mountain in the end.

We reached the car by 3:15 and then headed to our Manchester Center and our final mountain, Mt Equinox. This mountain had an official map and Kiosk at the trailhead with some interesting advice:
“If you only have one hour, try hiking the yellow-blazed trail. If you have 3-hours try the red trail. If you have all day, you can try to hike all the way to the Mt Equinox summit.”

“What if you only have 2 hours?” I jokingly asked, mentally calculating that we’d have to be back by then if we wanted to get back to boston by 10pm.

“Then you ignore that sign and do the whole mountain in 2 hours,” Matthew replied. This one was 6 miles round trip and 2700ft of climbing, so it wouldn’t be easy. But we hadn’t intended the weekend to be easy so at 4:30pm we started up the trail.

Halfway up my energy was entirely zapped, but a couple power bars cured that in no time. By 5:30 we were at the summit, and this one had an awesome view! There was some old building on the top and actually a road going all the way up, so all of the trees had been cleared out for the views. We admired how most of Vermont was covered in trees with very few houses, and only a farm here or there in the valleys. I guess Vermont does have the second lowest population of all the US states. We even got to see a porcupine on the summit gnawing away at one of the doors of the old building (though he was unsuccessful at getting in).

After 15 minutes we turned back down. This time we jogged most of the way back and reached the car at 6:30, exactly 2 hours. Now came the final leg of the trip – getting back to Boston. Unfortunately we only had the Vermont road atlas and had forgotten to print off directions. We’re so used to coming back from New Hampshire when you just take I-93 back, but now we had only secondary, indirect roads to choose from. We ended up playing it safe and just heading south to the Mass Pike and taking that back to Boston, getting back into town by 11pm. The trip amazingly went completely according to plan with all 9 mountains summitted. Vermont actually does have some worthwhile mountains, even if you don’t quite do all of them in one weekend.