Mendon Peak

Mendon Peak – 85th Highest Mountain in New England

Matthew on the summit

Mendon Peak
85th Highest Mountain in New England
10.10.11
Eric and Matthew Gilbertson
8 miles mountain biking
3 miles hiking
1 mile bushwacking

We slowed our car down and pulled over as a huge steam roller rumbled straight towards us on a remote, one-lane gravel road deep in the mountains of Vermont. We were a little nervous, having deliberately sneaked passed a “Road Closed Do Not Enter” sign a few miles back, and hoped the driver would mistake us as construction workers coming back from a late lunch, and keep driving by. No such luck – he slowed down to a stop and turned off the steam roller, leaning down to see who we were.

“What’re you guys doin’ in here? The road’s closed” he yelled down.
“ We’re trying to climb Mendon Peak, and the Bucklin trailhead’s supposed to be up this road a few miles,” Matthew replied, as politely as possible. The driver must have been a hiker too, because he immediately lightened up.
“Oh ok. Never heard of Mendon Peak. Well the bridge is washed out a mile up the road, but you could park next to my bulldozer and nobody would bother you if you want to keep walking up the road,” he yelled back down. We thanked him and he turned his steam roller back on and drove away.

Mendon Peak would be number 82 of our project to climb the 100 highest mountains in New England, and it was one of the tougher ones with no official trail on the whole 8-mile trip. It was, however, just a bonus point on our full weekend. On Friday and Saturday we had driven 17 hours out to central Ontario for our primary goal – Ishpatina Ridge, the highest mountain in Ontario. A similar washout on the logging-road approach to Ishpatina Ridge had increased that journey to 30-miles of mountain biking on top of the standard 8 miles of hiking. Thus we were unfazed by the current washout.

We continued up the road until we saw the bulldozer, and pulled as far off as possible in case more construction vehicles came through. We had driven 10 hours that morning and by now it was already 3pm. The most common route to Mendon peak (according to summitpost at least) was supposedly 3.5 miles of abandoned logging roads followed by a 0.5-mile pure bushwack to the summit. We knew bushwacking in the dark would be extremely slow and error-prone, so we had to be done with that section by 6:30pm. We were betting some of that old logging road would be mountain-bikeable in order to make this work.

We quickly pulled the mountain bikes out of the car, put them together, and started up the road. Just like the steam-roller guy had said, there was a big washout and more construction workers working on a new bridge. We acted confident about being there and they didn’t seem to care. The stream didn’t look too deep, so we cut into the woods, put on our crocs, and carried the bikes across to the other side. We continued biking up the road for a few more miles until finally reaching Bucklin Trailhead. Of course, we weren’t actually taking Bucklin trail but just following the abandoned logging road that also starts there.

The old road was actually extremely mountain-bikeable. We cruised up the easy grade with no problem for the first mile until the road crossed a stream. The bridge had probably been destroyed decades ago, so we again carried our bikes across. Now the old road started deteriorating, with big crevasses washed out from water, and blow downs all over. We pressed on with the bikes, though, knowing how much easier it would be to cruise down the mountain on the bikes than to hike down. Halfway up, I got a flat tire, but we quickly patched it and kept going. Eventually the road became too steep even to bike, so we ditched the bikes and continued up on foot. It was convenient because we didn’t have to worry about locking the bikes or hiding them in the woods – we could just leave them right in the middle of the old road with confidence nobody would bother them.

After a few steep switchbacks we reached the height of land between Little Killington Peak and Mendon, and here the true bushwacking began. We plunged into the woods at an open-looking area, not knowing if it would become an impenetrable spruce maze like many other bushwacks in New England, or stay nice and open. As we pushed in deeper I noticed a lot of moose droppings and we occasionally seemed to follow herd paths. It must have been a popular place for moose and perhaps they had cleared out some of the undergrowth. At one point we started wading through the classic impenetrable spruce walls, but it didn’t last long and we actually stumbled on what looked like a hiker herd path. From here the summit was no problem.

At 5:45pm we officially reached the summit of Mendon Peak, and were greeted with an awesome view of the setting sun to the west. There was even a little cliff near the summit where we could see Killington and the surrounding mountains. That’s quite a treat for a New England bushwack.

We spent a grand total of 4 minutes at the top, before hurrying back down. We still wanted to get off the bushwack before dark. Luckily it was easier going back and we got to the logging road by 6:10pm, with even a few minutes to spare before official sunset. We needed to pull out the headlamps by the time we reached the bikes, and this was one of the few times we had ever biked at night where our bike lights were for us to see, not just to be seen. Night-mountain biking is actually pretty thrilling, especially on an unmaintained old logging road. You can’t always see what you’re riding over, but you just brace yourself and absorb all the obstacles with your body. After the first stream crossing we just rode down in our crocs to avoid delays at the other crossings.

By 7:40 we reached the main gravel road, and by 8pm we were back to the car. It hadn’t even been nicked by any construction vehicles! It wasn’t a great location to camp, unfortunately, since we didn’t want the construction workers waking us up super early the next morning. We knew, though, that there was an Appalachian Trail road crossing close by with guaranteed camping, so we packed the bikes back into the car and headed out.

I weaved back around the “Road Closed” sign that had been stuck in the middle of the road, and headed toward camp. It always feels better leaving an area you’re not supposed to be in than entering one, and we knew we would rest easy that night with Mendon in the bag and a legal campsite on the Appalachian Trail.

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