Sunday mornings are usually a pretty small affair for the MNC junior crew. When I realized that there’d be a pretty experienced group of only four of us for this week’s final rollerski, I decided we’d take on a bigger challenge.
Instead of the typical out-and-back along Pleasant Valley Road, I met Will Solow at the highest parking lot at Smuggs for a car-drop. We’d end our ski with the long, gradual climb up the base of the notch. This was the perfect way to cap off a long volume week amid changing foliage and amazing scenery.
Passing a very quaint mill building
If you’ve never at least driven through Pleasant Valley, you owe yourself the trip! It is one of the most picture-perfect postcard Vermont locales. We barely saw any cars for the first portion of our ski, although once we began to climb the Notch we were swarmed by throngs of leaf-peepers from New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Near the top one car even slowed down next to me and rolled down the window. I was ready to receive the typical rollerski quip of “hey there’s no snow yet” or something similar, but it turned out to be Jim and JoAnn rooting us on!
Speaking of more roads, we ventured up to Road 101 during our ski, site of some striding intervals earlier this summer. What we came across today was amazing fresh pavement…this might just be the best rollerski road in VT right now!
Can’t beat this stuff!
In total our rollerski was 3 hours long, covering multiple towns and many, many feet of vertical climbing (waiting for the report from Sara’s Garmin). The cider doughnuts I brought and left waiting at the top were a welcome sight!
Replenishing some calories!
Comments are closed.