Tag Archives: Silver Lake Road

Trailrunning in the Covid Era

We have been quite fortunate (as well as careful) in Vermont, doing our best to keep ourselves and each other healthy. Fortunately, we have the ability to stay appropriately distanced from each other to minimize spread by doing what we do best – enjoying the outdoors. I, and most of the other hikers, mountain bikers, and runners that I have met on the trails have been either wearing a face mask, or at least (as I do) wear it around their necks, for easy wearing should another outdoor enthusiast approach. By doing this, we show our respect for each others’ wish to remain healthy.

It has been interesting to see how the Moosalamoo region’s most popular trail running events, all of them headquartered at the Blueberry Hill Inn and Ski Touring Center have dealt with it. The early summer Infinitus family of races, which are best described as “see how far you can run in up to 8 days” didn’t happen. It was just too soon, and organizers were probably unsure as to how to run it safely. The challenging, but accessible to mere mortals “Goshen Gallop” did come to be, run over the course of an entire day with runners going out in much smaller waves, rather than a mass start. While this is usually one of my “must do” events, medical recovery kept me out of it this year, but I heard from friends that it was fun, well-run, and safe. The Moosalamoo Ultra (36 miles, and I staggered through it once, eight years ago) and mini-Moose (14 miles) were held. The race director, John Izzo, aka the “Head Moose” cut down the size of the field, and did took care with countless other details, to ensure the safety of competitors and volunteers helping staff the race. I assisted with one of the feed stations, wearing my mask of course, and I was impressed that almost all the competitors pulled their masks up to their faces as they entered the station. And of course, a race as challenging as this ultra spread the runners out quite safely over the course of a very long day!

As I mentioned, my body was not up to any of these events this year, but that didn’t mean that I couldn’t enjoy a run in this beautiful region. Silver Lake, a popular local destination, is most commonly reached through a 1.5 mile climb up an old dirt road, from the Silver Lake trailhead just up the road from Branbury State Park. Not as many people know that it can be reached, somewhat more easily, from the trailhead at the end of an otherwise obscure dirt road up in Goshen. It has not escaped my attention, however, that this summer, trailheads and parking lots with access to outdoor activities have seen heavier use than I have ever seen before. This “less known” parking lot has, in the past, only had a few cars in it, but on several weekend occasions, It has been full, with cars parked up to a quarter mile up the dirt road! For readers who don’t know how to access this trailhead from Middlebury: Drive up Rt 125, and about a mile or so past Ripton, take a right turn on the forest service road heading towards Goshen. At about a mile past the Blueberry Hill Inn, you will come to a crossroads, where you take the right turn on the (surprise!) Silver Lake Road, and when you come to a fork in the road, take the right fork, following continuing signage to Silver Lake.

I started my run on the continuation of this forest service road, on just the other side of the gate blocking vehicular traffic. For those who don’t know the area, this is the same road that most hikers take up from the Branbury side. This road makes for an excellent ascent from the Branbury trailhead, and a run including this was actually part of the very first post I made on this blog, many years ago! Alas, my current conditioning is not up to a run quite as rigorous, and I began my run with an easy descent towards the lake. While remaining on this road is the shortest and easiest access to Silver Lake, when I came to a T in the trail, I took a right turn, rather than following the signage leading to the lake. And I wonder why friends accuse me of getting them lost?

A very short way down this steep descent, which also doubles as a VAST snowmobile trail in the winter, brought me to another fork in the road. Once again, I took the counterintuitive direction – the arrow pointed right, so I went left.

Another short distance brought me (as expected, I might add) to the earthen dam for the rarely visited Sucker Brook Reservoir. The Sucker Brook Reservoir is the second of four bodies of water, including (in descending altitude order Sugar Hill Reservoir, Sucker Brook Reservoir, Silver Lake, and Lake Dunmore, all part of an over 100-year old hydroelectric power project which is still used to create power at a power plant near to Lake Dunmore’s shores. This particular reservoir, however, tends to be very low on water by late summer, and in fact looked more like a fen than a pond or lake. As a result, it doesn’t appear to gather much recreational interest, except from curious trail runners!

From here, I followed the obvious trail winding its way down the back of the dam, and followed the obvious open path, much of which is on a sidehill, making for challenging footing for the next half mile or so. In later summer, an obvious path through here is beaten down by the runners in the Moosalamoo Ultra, which passes this way, but it can feel a bit bushwhacky prior to this event. Eventually the wide open trail widens, and flattens, making for a nice mile or so in the forest, before rejoining the dirt road descending from the parking lot.

Running through the forest alongside the penstock

Upon reaching the road, I went right for a few hundred yards, bringing me to the dam supporting Silver Lake, and following the left turn along the shore, I stopped for a photo at the picnic area alongside the lake. Typically on pleasant midsummer days, this picnic area has been claimed by groups and families hiking up here for a day of fun, but by this point in August, the “crowds” have thinned out, making for even easier social distancing!

Again, has been the norm, as I passed other on the trail, either I or the other party would step off the trail, and everyone would put the other masks on, until we had passed each other. And yes, we made the point to exchange niceties! From the little beach area, I followed the well marked side path which brought me to the Leicester Hollow trail, and took a right. This trail, the remains of an old carriage road, was the means by which guests accessed the old Silver Lake Hotel, which burned down in the early 20th century. I went right on this for roughly a third of a mile, before I got to an obvious trail heading left, returning to the Goshen parking lot. Of course, the early part of the run had some easy descents, and alas, this is where I had to pay back the altitude with some climbing. In the past, running up this, albeit slowly, was feasible, but I was happy to do it as a mixed run/walk until I returned to my car. This run ended up being a little over 3 and a half miles, with a few hundred feet of climbing, on a mix of forest service roads, double track, single track, and a few legitimately rough sections. In other words it was fun!

Altitude Profile

Big Moose 2018 Preview Run

One of the great recent additions to the local trail running season has been the advent of the Moosalamoo Ultra, an early August race, now in its 8th year, which starts and finishes at the Blueberry Hill Center in Goshen. The Blueberry Hill Inn, which has sponsored the Goshen Gallop a “mere” 10K trail race for many years (40 years as of tomorrow to be exact!) has also opened up its trails and resources for two other trail races of even greater challenge and reward – the aforementioned Moosalamoo Ultra, and the even hairier Infinitus. The Moosalamoo Ultra actually comes in two flavors, the “Big Moose”, a 36 mile race, which I was barely able to finish six years ago, and still very challenging 14 mile “Little Moose”. These races are the inspiration of local ultra runner John Izzo, who, with a small cadre of volunteers, and apparently every member of his extended family, hosts, and manages the Meese. One of the events John likes to organize every year is a “Big Moose Preview”, where he invites locals to come run a fun segment of the race, so that they know what they are in for on race day. My travels preclude participation in this year’s event, but I enjoy the terrain and the people, so I joined in.

The segment of the race we were running last Saturday corresponded to approximately miles 15-25 of the Big Moose course, so runners competing in the Little Moose. We had a modest-sized crew of runners for this warm-up run, aged 14-69, and an equally diverse range of speeds, but all of us shared the love of running trails in the mountains, and an eagerness to complete challenging athletic endeavors. Setting off on the Goshen-Ripton Road, heading north towards Ripton for about a mile and half, we took the first “major” trail splitting off on the left, a section of gradually descending snowmobile trail, which made for generally easy trail running. After a short while we came to a normally boggy section alongside a beaver pond meadow.

Beaver Pond Meadow

Given the generally dry summer, there were few of the usual quagmires that I was used to seeing in this section, but in one standing pool of water, I did notice something which I found disappointing; Running in the Moosalamoo Wilderness, you really get the feeling that you are far from civilization. This fantasy was disrupted by the inevitable sheen of gasoline on the surface of a standing puddle of water. Was it from a passing snowmobile? A chain saw? An ATV? Who knows, but if you stop and think about it, this man-made sheen is a far-too-commonly seen occurrence.

Hydrocarbon Sheen

Descending further, we came to a well built bridge, clearly suitable for snowmobile traffic, and after stopping to enjoy the brook, we continued up a short, but very steep hill, on a trail which if taken directly would bring us up to the Goshen trailhead above Silver Lake.

Up the hill

But I knew that the Big Moose had other plans for us, and when we got to the next trail junction, instead of continuing uphill, we veered to the right down to the small Sucker Brook Reservoir, which at this point in a dry year, was nothing more than a muddy marsh with a small stream meandering through it. But we did hear an unseen loon calling out as we approached it! Going across the berm which forms the shoreline in the spring, we took the trail cutting back onto the downhill side, and into the Penstock part of the course. The Penstock is a wide pipeline, through which water from the Sucker Brook Reservoir can be diverted to Silver Lake, and in turn to the power generation station near the shores of Lake Dunmore. Some more details on this hydroelectric project can be found in a blog posting of mine a few years ago, entitled “Penstocks to Power”. Right below the Sucker Brook Reservoir is one of my less favored places to run – The grass is high and slippery, it is on a sidehill, and the poor footing is hard to see. That said, the rough spot is only about a half mile long, before it opens up to a level, wide, overgrown service trail which got us to the shores of Silver Lake, about 5 miles into the run.

It was a cool overcast day at Silver Lake, and the deer flies were pretty incessant, so instead of the usual dip in the lake, we backtracked to meet up with some of the slower runners, before returning to the side of the lake, from which we began our return by heading up the forest service road heading towards the Goshen trailhead. Nearing the top of this section, instead of staying on the road to eventually return the the Blueberry Hill Inn, we took a little used ski trail veering off to the left, and descending. Many years ago, this was a maintained ski trail to connect the Blueberry Hill ski trails with the now defunct Churchill House Inn and ski touring area. Now, it seems to only get foot traffic from trail runners! Bottoming out, we began the gradual ascent back to the Goshen- Ripton road. The original route through this section followed existing trails and forest service roads, but some homeowner privacy issues forced a re-routing through a short section of forest, marked by orange streamers. We only lost the trail once, momentarily! I suspect with a few years usage, this section will get worn into a more obvious trail, but for now, it is about weaving through the forest and following the streamers. As we approached the road, we came to the dreaded bog, which always seem to find its way into Moosalamoo runs. Most of the time, it has mud up to your knees, but when we saw the humorous signs left by the race organizer, we knew it would be a little different this year.

Humorous signs

Sure enough, while there was plenty enough mud to make my shoes look pretty gross, it was far below usual midsummer standards! Also, note the omnipresent gasoline sheen.

Barely Ankle Deep!

Reaching the road, I returned to the Blueberry Hill Inn, to complete a 10 mile run. This run would actually have been closer to 9 miles, but some of us put in a little extra mileage backtracking to avoid deerflies while the group accordianed back together at Silver Lake. There are no monster hill climbs in this section, making it one of the easier segments of the Big Moose, but there were plenty of rolling climbs and descents. Good luck to everyone at the big race in August!

Google Earth of the Run

Altitude profile

Last Run Before Spring

The title of this post, “Last Run Before Spring”, might have you scratching your head over chronology. While long delayed this year, the full foliage on the trees in the Middlebury area certainly indicate that the few short weeks we know of as spring are most assuredly here. So a confession here – I did this run a few weeks ago, in mid-May, while the trees were still quite bare, and it has just taken me a while to post it. Nonetheless, it is a good run, so I thought it quite worthy of posting – better late than never!

Regular readers by now know that the Silver Lake and its surroundings make up one of my favorite running destinations, and this post represents a new variation on that theme. At the core of this run, is the very first post I made to this blog, the ascent from the Sucker Brook Trailhead, past Silver Lake, to the Goshen Trailhead, and back. On this particular run, I chose to extend it beyond this central loop, in the name of checking out some new terrain, as well as visiting an old favorite location for great views.

This run, on a warm weekend late afternoon, was undertaken to be one of my last real runs before tapering my training prior to the Vermont City Marathon at the end of May (note – I actually completed the marathon by the time I got to this post – I am not going to write it up for the blog, but it went well!), so I wanted to stretch it out to the 8-9 mile range. So, I set off up the 4WD road (yes – it is closed to motor vehicles) from the Silver Lake/Sucker Brook Trailhead just south of Branbury State Park, and chugged my way up past Silver Lake up the the trailhead above the lake at the end of a rarely traveled dirt Silver Lake Road, which emanates from Goshen, as a right turn from the Goshen Ripton Road, a mile or so south of the Blueberry Hill Inn.

When I reached this road, I realized that it provided an opportunity to add some mileage, so I continued on past the hikers’ parking lot and trailhead, which I knew would descend me back to my parked car, 800+ vertical feet below. So, I continued on this road, which while open to vehicles, is so lightly traveled that it feels almost like a trail. At this time of the year, before any of the trees had leaves, there were great views towards the the main ridge of the Green Mountains, while views towards Silver Lake and the west were obscured by the modest ridge. At a few locations, I noted primitive roads heading up the eastern flanking ridge, but abandoned them when I realized they were driveways up to “off the grid” homes and camps, and I wanted to respect their owners’ privacy. After a little over a mile on this road, I could see Hogback Mountain, and Romance Mountain, the two peaks behind the Blueberry Hill Inn, and thought it would be fun to link to that trail system on this run, but due to the lateness of the afternoon and impending sunset, I decided to turn around at one particularly impressive glacial erratic on my right.

On my return, gazing into the forest for sights which would soon be hidden by the foliage, I noticed a series of PVC pipes stuck in the ground, 20-50 yards from the dirt road. I have come across pipes like this, even further from the road on past explorations. Does anyone know why these are here, or what their purpose is?

Mystery PVC

After contemplating the mystery of the pipes, I continued back to the Silver Lake trailhead, and descended the short trail down to the lakeside on the Leicester Hollow Trail, where I took the right turn back towards the campground and the small beach at the north end of this gem of a lake. Rather than simply follow the trail which I had previously ascended back to my car, I chose one last variation, and instead took the short trail down below the Silver Lake Dam, and followed the penstock (that is the fancy word for “big fat pipe”) back towards the power line, where I ascended its trail to catch the early evening views and impending sunset over Lake Dunmore. In a month or so, the lake will be busy with summer vacationers and boaters, but on this quiet spring evening, there was only one boat traversing what must be an otherwise silent lake. I had hoped that the lone raptor in the skies would land nearby to get his picture taken, or at least hover nearby, but my presence led it to seek out a quieter eyrie.

Dunmore Sunset from Lenny’s Lookout

On my descent from this lookout, I took another obvious left turn which returned me to the main trail up from the lower parking lot, where I came across what must be a fairly recently placed sign, where the over look was referred to as “Lenny’s Lookout”. This is the first time that I have heard this name applied, so I am also curious as to the origins of this name. Who exactly is Lenny, and why is the lookout named after him? A google search shed no light on this question, although it did lead to some beautiful photography from another hiker who has posted their pictures of this location.

Lenny’s Lookout Signpost

From this point, it was an easy skip down the trail to my car, making this a slightly less than 9 mile run, with about 1100 vertical feet of ascent and descent. Bring on the summer!