The Green Mountains

Wednesday (18th) was very cold in the morning, but pleasant during the day. Our first stop was the Hyde Cabin on Grand Isle in Lake Champlain. Built in 1738 and the oldest log cabin in New England, it was the home of the Hyde family for over 150 years.

 

Next we drove to St Anne's Shrine where the French Fort Ste Anne, which was Vermont's oldest settlement, once stood.

 

From there we headed to the Green Mountains. The stretch of Route 108 between Jeffersonville and Stowe is beautiful and passes through the narrow Smuggler's Notch which closes during winter because of the steep grades and sharp curves. There's a place where the road narrows to one lane as it twists and turns between the rocks. We were unable to stop to take any pictures because the little available roadside parking was already filled.

At Stowe Mountain Resort we rode the gondolas up the mountain to the Cliff House.

 

From there we decided to continue to the top and hike the Cliff Trail to the summit of Mt Mansfield. At 4,393 feet, it's Vermont's highest peak. It ended up being more of a "climb" than a "hike". The difficulty of the trail took us by surprise. In several places it was marked by paint splotches on the rocks so you could figure out where to go. We kept climbing naively thinking that it would probably get easier (not:) I guess we should have taken the hint from the 2 couples about our age who turned back before reaching the top. . . But we made it!

The view was pretty amazing, but the wind was blowing so hard that I didn't want to go too close to the edge for fear of being blown off if I lost my balance. We soon found that the tough, rocky terrain was challenging on the way up . . . But treacherous on the way down! We did quite a bit of "crab walking" and sliding on our behinds as we descended :) We later learned that the Cliff Trail is considered extremely difficult and challenging. I guess we did pretty good for a Papa and Gramma.

Beginning of the Cliff Trail

A rocky path . . .

. . . But not too bad . . .

. . . Until we got to this point . . .

Looking back over the way we've come and we're only halfway there.

Giving me a hand up before crawling through the opening . . .

Going higher . . .

. . . And higher . . .

Almost there . . .

At the top!

Proof that I made it, too:)

Looks like the only way down is back the way we came . . .

It's even trickier going down than it was coming up.

Sliding down the rock.

Inching down on my bottom . . .

. . . 'til I started to slide . . . Whoooooaaaaaaaa!!

Almost there.

 

We camped for the night at Smuggler's Notch State Park (very nice). Mark unhooks the camper from the truck battery every night so that we will only draw power for our lights from the 2 camper batteries and not risk wearing down the truck battery. This time when he unhooked it, the lights immediately went out in the camper:( After some investigating he figured out a fuse had blown and was able to replace it :)

 

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