Smugglers Notch to Champlain Islands

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. 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.

2. 2. 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.

3. 3. Burlington

   Burlington is Vermont's biggest city, which is to say a lively town of about forty thousand on the shore of Lake Champlain, with a big view and a bit of swagger. The lake is long and wide enough to feel like a small sea, and at sunset the Adirondacks across the water turn violet. The waterfront has a bike path, a boathouse and a pleasant park, and the whole city slopes up from the lake to the University of Vermont on the hill.

   Read the complete Burlington write-up.

4. 4. South Hero

   South Hero is on an island, which changes the pace of everything. The Champlain Islands are a long, thin chain of low, farm-covered land stretched along the northern end of Lake Champlain, connected to the mainland by causeways and bridges, and South Hero is the southern anchor of the group. Its odd name goes back to the Allen brothers, Ethan and Ira, the Revolutionary-era heroes of Vermont, and local tradition says that North Hero and South Hero were named in their honor.

   Read the complete South Hero write-up.