How long is the Long Trail, and can you walk part of it?
Photographs: Famartin, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · John Nicholas LeCounte Anderson, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Niranjan Arminius, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
The Journal · The Long Trail and the Green Mountains
The Long Trail runs 273 miles along the main ridge of the Green Mountains, and most visitors walk a day section rather than the whole path. Who built it, where it crosses roads and summits, how the Green Mountain Club keeps it, and what to check before choosing a stretch.
The short answer
The Long Trail is 273 miles long. It runs the length of Vermont, from the Massachusetts state line at Clarksburg to the border at Jay, along the main ridge of the Green Mountains. It is also the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States, built between 1910 and 1930 by the Green Mountain Club, and it can be walked a day at a time: the trail crosses many of the state's roads, so a short section is easy to reach.
This article explains how the trail came about, what it passes, how it is looked after and what a walker should check before picking a stretch. The range itself is described on the Green Mountains page.
How it began
The Long Trail was conceived in 1909 by James P. Taylor, then assistant headmaster of Vermont Academy in Saxtons River. On March 11, 1910, Taylor and twenty-five others met at the Van Ness House in Burlington for the first meeting of the Green Mountain Club, whose mission was to protect and maintain the Long Trail system and to foster stewardship of the state's hiking trails.
Construction began in 1912, and the club completed the trail in 1930. It served as the inspiration for the Appalachian Trail, which shares its route for roughly a hundred miles in the southern third of the state.
The Appalachian Trail, which grew out of that inspiration, was proposed in 1921 and completed in 1937, and it now runs almost 2,200 miles from Georgia to Maine, passing through 14 states. The Vermont section is therefore both the older path and the shared one: for about a hundred miles the two trails are one, and where they part, the Long Trail continues north alone to the border.
What it crosses
The trail passes over most of the major summits of the range. From south to north they are Glastenbury Mountain, Stratton Mountain, Killington Peak, Mount Abraham, Mount Ellen, Camel's Hump, Mount Mansfield and Jay Peak. The range holds five peaks over 4,000 feet, and three of them, Mansfield, Camel's Hump and Mount Abraham, support alpine vegetation.
The trail passes through six of the eight wilderness areas in the Green Mountain National Forest: Glastenbury, Lye Brook, Peru Peak, Big Branch, Joseph Battell and Breadloaf. About twenty-three miles share the route of the North Country National Scenic Trail, and more than 175 miles of side trails complete the Long Trail System.
Walking a day
A walk on the Long Trail can be as short as a day. The trail meets Vermont Route 9 at Woodford, east of Bennington, and it crosses or passes beside many other roads, so a section can be walked in a few hours or the whole trail in weeks. Camel's Hump has the Burrows Trail, the oldest on the mountain, through spruce-fir forest that escaped the fire of 1903, and the Monroe Trail, built in 1912, which climbs the east face through paper birch that grew back after the fire; the Long Trail itself crosses the summit north to south.
On Mount Mansfield the Long Trail follows the main ridgeline across the forehead, nose and chin, and a walker who takes the toll road to the Nose can follow the ridge on to the Chin, the highest point in the state. Killington Peak, the second-highest in Vermont, is also on the route. The Camel's Hump page describes its two humps and the tundra on its summit.
Choosing a first stretch
Three kinds of day suit most visitors. The first is a summit: Camel's Hump, tied for third-highest at 4,083 feet, has a bare crown of rock and ten acres of alpine tundra on its summit, with views to Mount Mansfield, and wreckage of a B-24J bomber that crashed in 1944 lies beside the Alpine Trail. The second is a pond: the Sterling Pond trail rises 900 feet from the Smugglers' Notch state park campground to a pond that allows fishing and swimming.
The third is a gap, where the trail crosses a road and a short walk gives a view. Route 9 at Woodford, east of Bennington, is one such crossing and Killington is where the Appalachian Trail turns east at Maine Junction toward the Connecticut River. A map of the Long Trail System, with its side trails of more than 175 miles, shows many shorter loops that start at a road.
The club and its volunteers
The Green Mountain Club is recognized by the state legislature as the founder, sponsor, defender and protector of the Long Trail System, and the trail sees about 410,000 people a year. Twelve club sections maintain assigned stretches of the trail, and two other sections look after trails in the Northeast Kingdom and the Appalachian Trail from Maine Junction in Killington to the Connecticut River.
Roughly a thousand volunteers do most of the work, with a paid staff, a seasonal crew of summit caretakers and the Long Trail Patrol, which takes on heavy projects.
The forest around it
Much of the range lies in the Green Mountain National Forest, established in 1932 because of uncontrolled overlogging, fire and flooding. It is one of only two national forest areas in New England and holds about 900 miles of multiple-use trails, three nationally designated trails and eight wilderness areas that bar motorized and mechanical vehicles, bicycles included. Wildlife includes beaver, moose, coyote, black bear, white-tailed deer, wild turkey and ruffed grouse.
What to check before you go
Late spring is the season the club closes some sections to hikers, to prevent erosion and to protect the fragile alpine plants on the higher peaks, so check before choosing a high stretch in April or May. The rest of the season, the trail welcomes anyone who is prepared: carry water, a map, and clothes for a change in the weather, because mountain weather differs from the valley's; Mount Mansfield receives more than 80 inches of precipitation a year and has had snow on its summit in every month.
The trail is also a good companion to a drive. Route 100 runs along the eastern edge of the national forest for much of its length, and the scenic drives page puts the main roads in order. The guide does not sell, book or reserve anything, so for trail conditions use the Green Mountain Club itself.
