Distance from Middlebury- 25 minutes

Length of Ascent- 40 minutes followed by a 20-minute ascent back to the car

Difficulty of Ascent- 3

Difficulty of Descent- 4

Elevation Change- 633 ft.

Comments:

As we were searching for our next location, we stumbled upon North Branch Rd, which winds around a mountain in East Middlebury. In looking at the topo maps, we realized that the best route would be to pull off from the road on one of the several designated pull-offs, hike up for a bit, then descend past the road and down to the base of the ridge. Since this form of hike is one we hadn’t experienced, we felt it would be a helpful one to attempt. In addition to this, we were lucky enough to embark on this trip after a night of fresh snow.

Ascent

The route that we took had no trail, so the two of us were ascending based on the density of the forest. This was a successful tactic as we were able to avoid any overly troublesome areas. Our path begins with a fairly mild elevation gain but as we wound westward towards the peak, we found significantly steeper slopes. It was a fairly quick ascent to the top, but we knew there would still remain a secondary hike back to the car.

Descent

For the ride down, we headed away from the path we ascended in search of a more open and consistent slope. The woods were very dense which made it a difficult descent, but luckily, there were no major rocky areas. As we got closer to the road, the forest opened up a little, and as we crossed the road we passed into the best section of the descent. It was steep, but open enough to allow for wide turns. It was a short descent, and within a few minutes we found ourselves walking back up to the road. This was a little less than a twenty minute ascent, but due to the steep slopes was not one of our easiest.