The Vermont Waterfall Crawl

Go chase them now, before they freeze solid for months

In case you don’t follow the White Mountains tourism department on Instagram, fall in the Whites took a sudden turn for the glacial this past week. The mighty Kancamagus scenic highway was dusted with snow, as were the haunches of several mountains in the vicinity. That’s how it goes up there. In late 2012, while working as a croo member at the AMC’s Mizpah Spring Hut, my comrades and I awoke one early October morning to find that the auburn and crimson scenery had gone white. We celebrated by frying up all the bacon we had in our fridge—enough to feed hut guests multiple breakfasts in a single week—and coating it with a maple syrup glaze. We offered it to our guests first and foremost, but it also became our go-to snack for the next three days as we scrubbed the walls and floors of the hut, shutting it down for the winter season.

The end of fall is approaching—that is, the fall we associate with glowing foliage that transforms hiking, biking, walking, and even driving into something sublime. I’m not ready to declare that winter is here yet. We’ve still got New England stick season to look forward to, which I’ll be delving into in another newsletter. But right now, as the maple leaves pile up, some celebratory indulgence feels right. I’m guessing that’s why my fellow hut-hands and I cooked all that bacon: it was our natural way of bidding auf wiedersehen to New England’s most sumptuous season, during which we took some splendid hikes into the isolated Dry River Wilderness (it’s one of the creepiest places in New Hampshire if you’re alone, but thrilling when you’re with good company.) Two weeks ago, I found myself thinking about the most indulgent way to ring out Fall 2021.

I went back to the inaugural issue of Beyond Mountains, which featured a hike across a little-known mountain dam in Southern Vermont and a switchback descent to one of the state’s most thunderous cascades, Hamilton Falls. And I realized—with the sudden white hot panic of knowing it’s the day before Thanksgiving and you haven’t bought potatoes—the waterfalls in northern New England are going to freeze up soon. We won’t be able to see them thundering for months. If we’re lucky, we’ll be able to hear the muffled roar of water rushing beneath the icy exoskeleton of cascades. A very beautiful thing in its own right, but just not the same as watching gallons of water exploding and gushing over mossy rocks and collecting in a frothy pool below.

I needed one last taste. I also had upcoming business in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont: I was scheduled to help three dear friends move their winter wood into their basement (a late fall tradition of ours.) So instead of simply commuting up I-93 from Boston to the town Greensboro directly—a journey of roughly 3-4 hours—I decided I’d turn my passage north into a VERMONT WATERFALL CRAWL that would necessitate nearly 7 hours of driving, over 300 miles. But the journey along local roads would be broken up with short hikes through the woods to 9 of Vermont’s most beautiful and highly-rated waterfalls: most of which I had only laid eyes on via the New England Waterfalls guidebook by Greg Parsons and Kate B. Watson. (If you like to spend time outdoors in New England and you enjoy waterfalls, consider this book your Quran.)

The following road diary is an episodic breakdown of how my first Vermont Waterfall Crawl went. (The basic trail and directional information for each waterfall will be listed after the road diary.) For the most part, I highly recommend trying a crawl of your own, but with the following caveats.