Vermont Route 100 Central

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Killington

   Killington is a ski mountain first and a village second, and in summer that makes it oddly empty. The peak itself reaches about 4,235 feet, the second highest in Vermont's Green Mountains, and the resort sprawls over six or so connected summits with a long season that sometimes starts in October and runs into May. Out of season the base lodges are quiet, the gondola turns for hikers and mountain bikers, and the long access road feels like a corridor between condos and woods.

   Read the complete Killington write-up.

2. 2. Rochester

   Rochester is a small Vermont town that happens to sit at a very good crossroads. It lies in the valley of the White River's upper reaches, along Route 100, the long north-south road that the state calls the Green Mountain Byway, with a handsome village green, a bandstand and a few white-clapboard buildings around it. Behind it, the Green Mountain National Forest rises in a series of wooded ridges, and the sense of remoteness is real, even though the interstate is not far away.

   Read the complete Rochester write-up.

3. 3. Granville Gulf

   The Granville Gulf is the narrowest, steepest and most dramatic stretch of Vermont's Route 100, and it feels like a mountain pass without ever quite becoming one. The road threads a deep, wooded cleft between the high ridges of the Green Mountains, with rock walls rising on both sides and a small stream, the Mad River's upper branch, running along the bottom. The state set the whole gorge aside as a reservation, and the effect is of riding through a green corridor with almost no buildings.

   Read the complete Granville Gulf write-up.

4. 4. Waitsfield

   Waitsfield sits in the Mad River Valley, a long, narrow slot between two ranges of the Green Mountains, and everything about the place is shaped by the ridges. To the west the Lincoln Range rises with Mount Abraham among its peaks, to the east the Northfield range, and between them the Mad River runs north through a patchwork of farms, hayfields and white-steepled villages. Two ski areas, Sugarbush and Mad River Glen, share the valley, and the second is a cult favorite: it is a cooperative that still runs a single chairlift and insists, with its famous slogan, that you ski it if you can.

   Read the complete Waitsfield write-up.

5. 5. 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.