Cycling Vermont

In October I rode the Green Mountain Gravel Growler route in Vermont with a few close friends. It’s a route curated by bikepacking.com that consists of back roads, dirt roads, and single track trails. It wasn’t as blissfully car-free as the C&O Canal or the loop around Lake Konstanz that I rode earlier this year, but in exchange for sharing the road occasionally, we got loads of variety and beautiful hills to climb up and coast down.

As the name implies, the route is structured around breweries. We only did half because vacation time is scarce, but still managed to hit some good ones. The first night’s, in Burlington, was Foam Brewers. I had the “Tally Mark” altbier, which tasted like a cigar, in a good way.

We didn’t get much time to explore Burlington. We did see the world’s tallest filing cabinet.

The first day of riding was from Burlington to Stowe, with stops at The Bidwell for food, The Tropic for a mid-ride drink, and ending at The Alchemist. About 50 miles, and 3,700 feet of climbing.

Places like The Alchemist are impossibly nice: sunshine, babies and puppies crawling in the grass, happy people playing corn hole. The delirious happiness of finishing a long day in the saddle makes it all even more saturated and exuberant. I was feeling pretty good on the bike, most of the ergonomics were working. The only gear tweak that this trip will inspire is sticking to fancy cycling bibs (shorts): Ornot, to be specific, instead of trying to scrape by with the cheap stuff, which for me is The Black Bibs.

The Alchemist’s “Heady Topper” is like drinking a flat white made out of hops.

Weather was perfect for almost the entire trip, and the route was pretty clear and empty. We mostly encountered locals riding casually, casually passing us on the way up some big trail. Vermonters are strong riders.

The second day would be about 44 miles of riding and well over 4,200 feet of elevation. At this point everyone was feeling it: we’re New Yorkers and a lot of the biggest rides up till this point have been pretty flat. The total elevation change for the C&O Canal ride we did was 605 feet over 185 miles. Riding Bear Mountain and the Goldens Bridge loop helped with training, but nothing near the city can match the relentless climbing in Vermont. I expect hills to crest when there’s a turn in the road, but Vermont doesn’t follow that rule.

But, every hill ends eventually. I only had to walk up one, and that was because it was so steep that I couldn’t get traction and not wheelie at the same time.

To make this all easier, we weren’t camping at all, just staying at nice places and sleeping in real beds. With the quickly changing weather, camping in the cold would’ve been pretty tough. So that meant more room for changes of clothes and creature comforts. Places to stay in Burlington, Stowe, Hardwick, and Montpelier are pretty scarce though, and tended to be at the very top of hills. Seemed like everything was at the top of the hill, especially…

Where The Alchemist was a casual, hippie-inflected destination, Hill Farmstead was like an elusive vineyard that happened to brew beer. And it’s at the top of a hill, of course. Like everywhere else, there were a few other people who had also biked to the hill, and lots of families, dogs, and fleece jackets. They had a food truck outside which whipped up an excellent, fairly spicy vegan burrito for me.

Timing for this trip was tight, and rushing to arrive at a brewery before close had a kind of reality-TV greatest race feel to it. We were going to Hill Farmstead on a Sunday, and their hours on Sundays are 11:30-3pm. They close at three! And they don’t re-open, that’s just it. The rest of the week the bar closes at 5: it’s an exclusively day-drinking oriented outlet.

But we made it, and made it to Hardwick, where the local Positive Pie location had a spectacular beer selection and surprisingly vegan-friendly menu.

This was my first time in Vermont, encountering its specific brand of rural living. Many people were so open and welcoming to us, asking about the route and complimenting our endurance like proud parents. This, even though it was nearly peak tourist season and they probably get plenty of other people following the same directions. One stop in particular, sticks in my memory, the Maple Corner Community Store.

If you look at the full span here: this place is a grocery store, deli, coffee shop, live music venue, bar, as well as the post office. Plus it has a little free library out front, and carries a selection of books written by local authors and signs for plays written by local playwrights that are performed nearby. It’s hard to even comprehend the level of integrated community-hub joy in this place. And, for me, they had a world-class selection of vegan snacks.

The few odd interactions with Vermonters were all about land: their private land, and that we should stay off it. Not that we ever were on it - we were staying in houses and riding on public roads. But still we got reminded not to veer off and ride through apple orchards or lawns. In one sense this is a funny inverse of cities, where people control such little territory, but here the average homeowner has acres upon acres. But land rules in Vermont are very unusual: the constitution allows people to hunt, fish, and trap on other people’s private land unless it’s posted that the land doesn’t permit it, and the rules around posting are contentious. I’d be watchful too if people could just hike to my backyard and kill a deer.

Then we were headed back on the Amtrak from Montpelier. It’s such a perk to be able to do this kind of trip without renting or using a car at all, just riding to and from train stations. Amtrak’s train ticket guarantees a spot for the bike, but it is always stressful and rushed getting bikes on & off.

We only completed the first half of this trip - Burlington-Stowe-Hardwick-Montpelier, so there’s another Vermont trip in the future. Maybe next year! It was really spectacular. The hills were tough, but it was all worth it.