Hiking the Toughest Trail on Vermont’s Tallest Mountain
1.5 miles, straight up.
That’s what one internet blogger wrote about our home mountain, Mount Mansfield’s Hellbrook Trail. They weren’t exaggerating. The trail takes only four turns along it’s short climb, and none of them lead to a mellow switchback or flat stretch. No, the Hellbrook Trail goes up. Straight up.
We’re taking our time. The weather is finally mild after a week of high temperatures. Rumors of rain in the afternoon seem legit, so we hit the trailhead early in order to keep a slow pace and take lots of breaks. Before you write us off as noobs, let’s explain why we’re out here in the first place. The Hellbrook Trail is the steepest, roughest, most relentless way up Mount Mansfield, Vermont’s tallest mountain. It’s also one of our favorite ways down in the winter. We’re not just out here for a hike. We’re on a mission.
As much as some would like to believe otherwise, it’s no secret spot. It’s just far enough away from a groomed trail for the average tourist to consider it off limits – a fair and worthy assessment, as it’s totally unmarked and there are already enough stories of people getting lost on Mansfield. The bravest souls ride it in the winter when the snow is deep. But what about now, when there’s no snow at all?
Hiking your favorite lines is a great thing to do as a snowboarder in the off season, right up there with skateboarding, surfing, mountain biking or tuning your gear for the 100th time. It’s a way of re-acquainting yourself, and getting a fresh perspective on the terrain. You notice things on the hike up that you might not have seen riding down in the winter.
When you’re snowboarding, for example, you might look for steeper lines where you can use gravity to help you bomb through a powder stash. The Hellbrook trail offers a few steep zones, and today we find ourselves climbing on all fours up one of them. A massive rock with roots grown all over it rises up from the trail next to a waterfall. One of us recognizes the drop and recalls exactly how they hit it last winter. Looking at it now, the idea is crazy. It’s huge. But then we imagine it with snow…
We get to scope out lines without the fluffy white coating, and see all the rocks and logs that lie beneath. The hike is a leg burner, so stopping to study a clearing or a cliff is encouraged, if only to catch a breath. We hike along the Hell Brook, the trail’s namesake stream, which falls on a direct path down the mountain beside the trail. The path crosses the stream in some places, and we splash handfuls of water on our faces to cool off. It doesn’t beat a face shot, but we’ll take what we can get.
On that note, we’re counting the days until we can return with boards. Today the rocks on Hellbrook are a bit too slick to be safe for a descent, so we loop around on another trail. Next time, we’re going back down the way we came. Trust us, we’re as excited as you are. ∆