December 26, 2009
Vermont options nearly endless
by Tony Chamberlain/
I’m not really sure which way I prefer Route 100 in Vermont — in spring with my flyrods packed for trout, or winter with skies in the carrier.
Like Route 70 from Denver to Vail and Eagle County Colo., Route 100 strings together some of the best mountain areas of the region, and of course that means swift-running water down into the valleys as winter recedes.
The Vermont spring finds me beginning around Manchester just north of Massachusetts, and a continuation of Berkshire country, though the mountains are about to become more dramatic.
That fabled trout stream, the Battenkill is found here, but as Route 8 heads north, Route 100 makes a slight easterly turn on its way to the pretty, funky town of Jamaica and the classic legends of snowsports in the Northeast, Mt. Snow.
To say Snow long ago reached the limit of its development potential is a euphemism for, on big winter weekends and holidays, big crowds. But to be lucky enough to encounter Snow some midweek period is to understand how the terrain brought skiers here from the earliest ski generations in New England.
Another hour along Route 100 brings our seasoned Subaru Outback into the pretty town of Ludlow Vt., with its prize promontory Okemo, which became one of skiing’s biggest success stories of the 1980s.
With lots of vertical, well-designed trails, Okemo is something of a cruiser’s mountain, usually with its share of well-produced and groomed ego snow. Ludlow has some first-rate restaurants, and Route 100 has its share of antiques and curiosities along this stretch.
The town of Plymouth-Union, further up the road, has two items of note — the Calvin Coolidge village with birthplace, and the Vermont Cheese factory, both of which are worth getting out of the car for a look around the small town.
A few miles farther along is the Killing Skyship, which yanks skiers and riders right off the side of the highway into the labyrinth trails and runs of New England’s largest ski area.
Most Vermont travelers are well aware of Killington’s variety of trail and slope offerings, but in the last decade it also has become one of the premiere glade areas of the East, with long tracts of outback skiing, along with the admonition that, “These woods will be as cold and lonely tonight as they were 200 years ago.”
Another hour up Route 100 brings us into the most beautiful valley with its two contrarian cousins — Sugarbush and Mad River Glen. The two seem extreme opposites until you find your way to Castle Rock at Sugarbush and some of the wildest natural terrain in Vermont. From the Panorama trail — a turn off some sweet cruising terrain — one looks across the Champlain Valley to Whiteface in the Adirondacks.
Mad River maintains itself as a holdout to modernity. No snowmaking or grooming, even the single chairlift is a throwback to ancient times, and don’t bother to bring your snowboards. Not allowed. And, of course, the best-known ski area slogan anywhere still remains on many bumper stickers: “Mad River Glen — Ski it if you can.”
Some ice cream (Ben & Jerry's), cheese (Cabot) and hiking (Long Trail) later, we arrive in Stowe Village at the intersection of Route 108. As a former ski capital of the East, Stowe still stands as a kind of elegant queen at the top of the Green Mountains.
From the rough and tumble of the Front Four to standard cruising fare such as Perry Merrill, Mt. Mansfield, with its 4,000-foot summit, is anything but an afterthought to the Route 100 trek.
In fact, the road rolls on toward Canada, but not before running through Newport, which, as the name suggests, is hardly a mountainous paradise at all, but rather the gateway to Lake Memphramegog that runs 30 miles into Canada.
But then, that’s back to trout talk.
