Three days along North America’s longest backcountry ski trail

The 311-mile Catamount Trail runs north-south along the length of Vermont, following the rounded spine of the Green Mountains between Massachusetts and the Canadian border. Its 31 sections can be skied as individual day trips or linked up for a weeks-long, continuous journey that only a few hardy skiers have completed. I’d chosen the rolling terrain of Sections 13, 14 and 15 at the middle of the state, with plans to overnight in trail-side inns.

Once I’d chosen my route, I was glued to the weather forecast. Despite bone-chilling temperatures, Vermont had received little snow by early January. While many ski resorts use machines to produce their own snow, backcountry skiing depends on ample quantities of the natural version.

“It’s very challenging,” said Catamount Trail creator Steve Bushey. Even the northernmost parts of New England get less snow than they did a few decades ago. People who love to ski through the woods feel those changes acutely — but during Bushey’s Vermont childhood, snow regularly piled into puffy mounds. Alongside teenage members of his public high school’s outing club, he honed a love of adventure and navigation: On one October day in 1981, he found himself at home in Vermont after a cross-country bicycle ride, staring at the snowy mountains.

“I thought, ‘One could ski the length of Vermont, because the snow comes early, it stays late and it piles up deep,’ ” he said. Bushey, who studied geography and cartography at the University of Vermont, began poring over maps, imagining a path that would link existing trail networks established by the state’s many cross-country ski centers.

At graduate school in Ottawa, Bushey determined to create the long-distance ski trail as his master’s thesis. In March 1984, he asked two friends, Ben Rose and Paul Jarris, to join him for the inaugural trip. “The ski trip itself was the final requirement for completing my thesis,” Bushey said.

A week before my own departure, a storm paused over Vermont’s mountains long enough to fill the woods with powder. Setting out from the trailhead with two companions, I wound northward through the tangle of purpose-built ski trails, footpaths, old logging roads and snowmobile trails that the Catamount Trail braids into a single route. The snow was cold enough to creak and shiver beneath my skis, and the yellow birch forest strained the morning sunshine into silvered lines of shadow.

On any fine weekend morning like that one, Vermont’s ski resorts are clamorous: Whirring chairs spin skiers uphill, snow-making machines hiss at the edge of the trail and booted visitors clomp into cafeterias. In contrast, backcountry skiing offers an extraordinary quiet. Moving through the forest, I skied to the sounds of my quickened breath and heartbeat alone.

At a suggestion from Greg Maino, the communications and events director of the nonprofit Catamount Trail Association, we had climbed away from the main track for a scenic detour. After pausing for a brief lunch on a frozen log, we followed a section of the Long Trail — a 272-mile hiking trail running the length of Vermont — into an especially lovely, rolling stretch of woods that the Trust for Public Land purchased for handover to the Agriculture Department-managed Green Mountain National Forest.

On its way across Vermont, the Catamount Trail crosses a diverse patchwork of federal, state and private land. Reroutes are common. The trail is a living corridor, twitching up and down slopes, flicking in and out of drainages. “In the last few years, we’ve had a couple of changes where we’ve had to move the trail 50 yards or 100 yards just to make sure it’s on a different property line,” Maino said. He hopes the detour we followed will soon be official.

With the added miles from our side trip, it was late afternoon when we joined the expansive network of cross-country trails managed by the Mountain Top Inn & Resort, where we planned to spend the night in a snug guesthouse overlooking the Chittenden Reservoir. The GPS device said we had traveled 11.2 miles. Before long, we’d be warming our feet — and drying our ski boots — beside a crackling fire.

For intrepid souls attempting a “through-ski,” accommodations are not so plush. One day along the trail in 2015, I met and skied alongside local outdoorsman Sam Brakeley, who was then midway through a 17-day, south-to-north ski he’d later chronicle in his book “Skiing with Henry Knox: A Personal Journey Along Vermont’s Catamount Trail.” He was alone, carrying a lightweight backpacking tent and making a cold camp each night in the snow.

“The nights were the biggest challenge and the biggest surprise for me,” Brakeley said. “Nights in winter in Vermont are long — really long. It gets dark at 4:30 or 5 and doesn’t get light until 7:30. That’s a lot of time with subzero temperatures in the dark.”

That may be one reason so few skiers have attempted what Brakeley did. In 2020, 555 people registered through-hikes of the Long Trail. In contrast, the Catamount Trail Association has registered just 105 end-to-end ski trips in the nearly four decades since Bushey conceived the route. Most of these are by “section skiers” who completed the 31 sections gradually. Just a couple dozen people have skied the trail in a continuous line, Maino estimates.

By midmorning on the second day of our ski journey, I had an inkling of another reason so few people have completed the Catamount Trail. That day’s 18-mile ski found me sweating despite the cold as I hopped over streams, clambered across fallen trees and scraped my skis on exposed brambles. A long-distance trail is a far cry from the curated conditions of a resort. Instead of wide-open runs, it invites travelers to measure out the landscape in hours, days or weeks spent on skis.

“It gives you a flavor for Vermont that is a totality, and it’s a very deep and rich flavor,” Bushey told me when I got back. “If you go to a single ski resort and spend two days there, it’s a very different experience. You begin and end in the same place, and your experience is limited.”

That deep, rich experience of Vermont left me thoroughly tired by the time my party reached the cross-country trails of Blueberry Hill Inn, where we would spend the second night. I knew from experience that a jar full of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies — the inn’s specialty — would be waiting there. The prospect lent spring to each kick on the final, gentle slope of nearby Hogback Mountain.

“You’ve had a good, long ski,” said innkeeper Tony Clark, leading us to a room at the far end of the inn’s plant-filled conservatory. In younger days, the British-born Clark traveled to cross-country ski races around the world, and the inn’s outdoor center brims with racing memorabilia from Russia and Finland, as well as Norway’s famed Birkebeiner ski marathon. Vermont still produces fine skiers: Over a dinner of hearty soup and bread, we discussed the astonishing women’s cross-country Olympic team, which includes Vermont-trained 2018 gold medalist Jessie Diggins, who would soon go on to become the first individual cross-country medalist from the United States since 1976.

Dark flurries enclosed the inn like a curtain that night, leaving a few inches of fresh powder to cushion our skis as we left the next morning. With a final chocolate chip cookie tucked into a side pocket, I led the way along the easygoing, eight-mile romp toward our endpoint among the trails of the Rikert Nordic Center.

The first day out, I had noticed how quiet the woods seemed whenever our conversation lulled, but on the final stretch of trail, the forest was abuzz. Overhead, woodpeckers tapped their rhythmic codes into the dead wood of paper birches. Fresh snow revealed the perfect trail of a passing fox. I spotted a slender mouse tunnel, ending in a precise hole where the creature had nosedived into fluff.

Then, nearing Rikert, we finally met tracks left by other skiers for the first time that day. Turning onto the center’s groomed trails, we slid across fresh corduroy and crossed a meadow, then caught sight of our snow-covered car waiting in the far edge of the parking lot.

I leaned down to unbuckle my boots, shouldering my pack to the ground for a final time. When I took off my coat, steam rose from my shoulders. At our backs, the Catamount Trail slipped into afternoon shadow, gathering the forest close to its flanks as it continued northward and away.

Where to stay

Mountain Top Inn & Resort

195 Mountain Top Rd., Chittenden, Vt.

802-483-2311

Groomed cross-country trails twine through this resort’s 700 private hillside acres with views of the Chittenden Reservoir. Warm up after a day of skiing, snowshoeing, ice skating or sledding at the inn’s spa, where overnight guests and day-spa users have access to a cedar sauna. Dining options include an on-site restaurant and the inn’s casual tavern, with a long list of Vermont beers on tap. Guest rooms from $200 per night. Skis, snowshoes and ice skates are available to rent. Full-day trail passes for non-overnight guests cost $25 for adults and $18 for seniors and juniors.

Blueberry Hill Inn

1245 Goshen-Ripton Rd., Goshen, Vt.

802-247-6735

Old-fashioned charm abounds at this inn wrapped in cross-country and backcountry ski trails that intersect with Catamount Trail’s Section 15. Guests can gather around a fireplace in the lounge or visit the tea and cookies station. Some guest rooms flank a slender conservatory lined with plants that bloom through the winter. Rooms from $199. Country breakfast included, dinner by advance request for $35 per person. Access to trails for non-guests is by donation.

What to do

Catamount Trail Association

802-864-5794

Find trail maps, descriptionsand suggestions for day-long and multiday trips for all skill levels on the CTA’s website. The nonprofit also organizes a number of mostly free outings each winter, including guided single-day and multiday backcountry ski trips. Check website for trip dates. Trail access free.

Rikert Nordic Center

106 College Cross Rd., Ripton, Vt.

802-443-2744

About 34 miles of expertly groomed ski trails place Rikert Nordic Center among Vermont’s premier destinations for cross-country skiing. Open daily 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. December to March, depending on snow conditions. Full-day trail passes $25 for adults, $20 seniors 62 and over, $15 children, and free for kids under 5. Ski, fat bike and snowshoe rentals available.

Information

PLEASE NOTE

Potential travelers should take local and national public health directives regarding the pandemic into consideration before planning any trips. Travel health notice information can be found on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s interactive map showing travel recommendations by destination and the CDC’s travel health notice webpage.