Green Mountain Byway and Smugglers Notch

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Waterbury

   Waterbury is a brick-and-clapboard village on the Winooski River, tucked into the valley where Vermont Route 100 meets the interstate, and it is the sort of place where you slow down on instinct. Mount Mansfield, Vermont's highest summit at 4,393 feet, is a short way north behind Stowe, and the Green Mountains close in on both sides here with steep, wooded flanks that go copper and scarlet in the first weeks of October.

   Read the complete Waterbury write-up.

2. 2. Stowe

   Stowe sits in a bowl of the Green Mountains, with the long ridge of Mount Mansfield rising behind it, and its white church steeple is perhaps the most photographed in Vermont. Mansfield, at 4,393 feet the highest point in the state, has a profile that resembles a human face, with a forehead, nose, lips and chin along the ridgeline, and the summit is reached by a toll road in summer and by ski lifts in winter. The town has about four thousand residents, a lively main street of shops and restaurants, and a long tradition of skiing that goes back to the 1930s.

   Read the complete Stowe write-up.

3. 3. Smugglers Notch

   Smugglers Notch is the sort of road that makes a motorcyclist grin and a camper-van driver clench. Vermont Route 108 climbs through a narrow gap between Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state, and Spruce Peak, and at the top, at about 660 metres, it squeezes between enormous boulders that have tumbled off the cliffs and been left where they landed. The tarmac is tight, with hairpins and blind corners, no shoulder to speak of, and in some places barely a car and a half wide. Large vehicles and trailers are banned, which is the highway department's way of admitting that physics is going to win.

   Read the complete Smugglers Notch write-up.

4. 4. Brandon

5. 5. Cambridge