Green Mountains Conclusion

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With just a few days left here at the Green Mountain Family Campground, we try to get a few more day trips in. Our next hike will be the one that is closest to our campground. The Abbey Pond Trail starts less than 3 miles down the road. We have driven by it countless times over the past month but never stopped to check it out. It is listed as a 4.3 mile out and back hike with 1220 feet of elevation gain. We had heard that it had been seriously damaged in a storm that hit last year in August but at least it was open again. Here’s a look at the pond we hope to get to see.

Our Destination - Abbey Pond

The trailhead is about a half mile up a dirt road adjacent to a large gravel pit. Being a Friday morning, the place is open and although we can’t really see what is going on, it’s a very noisy place with a nearly constant “beep beep beep” of a backup alarm. We will hear this noise for a good portion of the first mile. We don’t have to go very far to see how damaged the trail was from the storm in early August of 2023. They had received over 6 inches of rain in just a few hours! From the washed out sections, we could tell this had been a very well constructed trail with all sorts of large plastic grid panels that must have been laid down and covered with gravel to provide a strong base for the soil above.  But they were now just scattered along a deep, carved out gully from the rushing rainwater.

Chris Surveys Missing Trail

This first mile is the steepest portion of the trail gaining 1000 feet - roughly a 19% average slope. At least we have something neat to see at the 1/3 mile point. The Abbey Pond Cascades is the natural path of the water takes when rainfall isn’t excessive. There was supposedly a geocache hidden near here, but after spending 10 minutes searching for the container, we gave up and decided it likely hadn’t survived the storm.

Abbey Pond Cascades

A bit further up the trail, we can hear the same stream just to our right. I venture over to check it out more closely. This section of falls was equally nice.

Another Section of Falls

As we continue up the trail, we have lots of portions that are in fine shape, but other parts are a rocky mess and took some time to get through the obstacles. There was only one really bad part. When we got to it, we surveyed the situation to try to determine which path was the safest and driest. It looked like the water had carved out 6 or more feet of the trail. The only path we saw was to hop from one rock to another right along the roots of a tree that had almost succumbed to the torrent but was now giving us something extra to hang onto.

Extremely Rocky Section of Trail

Chris Attempts to Stay Dry

The last half of the trail, being flatter, also seemed to have handled the flooding much better so we were able to hike at a faster pace. There was one intentional stream crossing that had large stepping rocks that appeared to still be in their intended spots. The geocache hidden less than a quarter mile from the pond, had survived and was in good shape. We finally could see Abbey Pond and looked for a place to sit down and have lunch.

Very Bright Mushrooms

Rocks Across Water

First Glimpse of Abbey Pond

The trail brings us to the north end of the pond which also appears to be the outlet side. There was lots of indication of beaver activity with some of the felled trees looking to be very recently downed given the wood chips all around the base. We managed to get over the narrow outlet and find some large flat rocks that worked well for lunch. We kept a close eye on the pond, hoping to see some beaver swimming around but all we could see was their lodge in the distance.

Recent Beaver Work

Our Lunch Spot

Beaver Lodge Across Pond

We had only seen a few others during our hike up and nobody was at the pond while we sat and ate lunch. On our way down, we saw two others guys heading up and we told them where the best pond viewing point was. It was slow going down some of the real rocky, damaged sections. Steep down is always harder than steep up, but this was dramatically worse since these rocks were only somewhat stable. I remember coming up to one very large rock and looking beyond it to pick which rock looked most stable. I had just assumed the large rock would be stable enough to support me without moving. So I was shocked as stepped onto it only to have it teetered 6 inches nearly taking me down in the process. Yes, going down this trail can be dangerous if you get too complacent.

Chris Picks Her Next Rock

When we got back to the main cascade, we checked it out a little bit more before continuing to the car. We knew we were on the right track since the “beep beep beep” became audible again. I bet this was a really nice trail prior to the storm and I assume that a crew will eventually make it out here to try to make it nice (and safe) again. With all the extra detours for geocaches, we came in at just under 6 miles total.

Abbey Ponds Cascades

Mushrooms

More Washed Out Trail

Since it was just midafternoon, we decided to head to Woodchuck Hard Cider in Middlebury. They have a taproom where visitors can sample their wide array of hard cider choices. We saw they have a self guided tour so we head up to the room that explains their history and also overlooks the production floor. We spend 15 minutes just reading about the process of making hard cider and watch some of the activity on the floor below. The line that was filling the cans seemed to be having some issues. It would start up and look like it might get up to speed, only to stop again while workers looked over monitors to determine what was going wrong.

Old GMC Pickup

Overlooking Cider Tanks

Tap Handle Artwork

Canning Line

We head to the bar and each order a flight of their dry ciders. We were talking with the bartender about our hike and asked him about the flood that took place last August. He pulled up some pictures on his phone to show some of the flooded roads in the area. While we were enjoying our cider, in walk two guys and sit next to us. They looked familiar and then I realized that they were the guys we had talked to near Abbey Pond a couple hours ago. They were also just traveling thru the area and had the idea to stop for cider after their hike - what a small world!

Woodchuck Cider Mascot

We were glad to have gotten in this hike to Abbey Pond when we did since the next day was rainy. With our last full day upon us, we head southeast of camp to explore the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail. The famous poet used to have a summer home nearby and these woods are said to have inspired some of his works. The interpretive trail is about a mile long but there are lots of other trails in the woods with a few geocaches for us to find. So we are able to extend the walk to roughly 2.25 miles with over 400 feet of elevation gain. There are several sections of boardwalk over the swampy areas and every so often is one of his poems printed onto a sign for visitors to read.

View Along the Interpretive Trail

Boardwalk

The Road Not Taken

The Water Tower Trail to our caches was a bit more challenging. With yesterday’s rain, there were lots of sections with running water and mud to get over or around. After successfully finding them, we head back down and complete the Interpretive Trail. With a quarter mile to go to the car, a dark cloud came over and started to sprinkle on us. Fortunately it was short lived and we got back to the car to have our lunch at one of the picnic tables in the parking area.

It looked like the rain was isolated and we should be able to get one last hike in. Just a few miles down Route 125 at Middlebury Gap is where the Long Trail passes through the area. We don’t want to do attempt a real serious hike, but there is a hike to a place called Silent Cliff that sounded interesting. Listed as 1.5 miles out and back with just under 600 feet of elevation gain, we figured we could have this hike be our final one in the Green Mountains (for now). It follows the Long Trail for nearly half a mile before splitting off.

At Long Trailhead

It was definitely a steep uphill climb for that first half mile with some large stone steps to climb. We ran into a couple of young women with fully loaded backpacks and camping gear who made the climb look effortless. We took our time and made it to the well marked side trail.

Steep Trail Section

While the Silent Cliff Trail turn was clearly marked, the trail itself was definitely a much less traveled trail. It wasn’t really that hard to follow but it was obvious that it doesn’t see much traffic or maintenance. The third mile or so to Silent Cliff was definitely less strenuous but does have a fair amount of up and down. We made it to the end of the trail and the overlook to the south. The view wasn’t all that great simply because of the trees growing up the face of the cliff below us. It was remarkably windy too. So much so that I felt I needed to stay back from the edge a bit further than I might normally do.

View From Silent Cliff

The hike back to the car was less strenuous but still challenging with the steep descent and wet trail conditions. This was an okay hike, but wouldn’t put it high on our list of ones to do. Having been at camp for a full month, we did have a fair amount of stuff to put away for our travel day. Next stop - the Adirondack Mountains near Plattsburgh New York.