Hikers and cyclists can now cross Vermont on New England’s longest rail trail, a year after the floods

HARDWICK, Vt. – One year later epic summer floods delayed the official opening of New England’s longest rail trail, the 90-mile route through northern Vermont is finally fulfilling the promise made years ago of a cross-state recreational trail.

The Lamoille Valley Rail Trail is open to cyclists, walkers, horseback riders and other non-motorized uses between Swanton in northwestern Vermont near Lake Champlain and St. Johnsbury, not far from the Connecticut River border with New Hampshire. In winter, the trail is open to snowmobiles as well as skiers and snowshoers.

A section of the trail damaged by the 2023 floods still needs to be repaired, but there is a posted detour. Heavy rains at the beginning of this month it also closed some sections, but most of the trail weathered the storm. Updates are in https://railtrails.vermont.gov/trail-updates/.

The trail passes through 18 communities and includes the Fisher Covered Bridgewhich was the last working covered railway bridge in the country, in Wolcott.

“I walked railway tracks in 48 of the 50 states. And that’s on top of some of the most amazing,” said Marianne Borowski, founder of the Cross New Hampshire Adventure Trail. She is part of a group trying to extend the Vermont trail 35 miles to the state line, where it would connect to trails in the Granite State.

“It’s full of New England charm,” Borowski said. “It’s so Vermont, it’s so beautiful. It’s got forests and fields and farms and rivers and streams and swamps and, you know, railroad cuts and cows – I mean, it’s got everything.

The Lamoille Valley trail is one of several railway trails in the state. Near its western end, it intersects with the Missisiquoi Valley Rail Trail, which runs 26 miles between St. Albans and Richford, near the Canadian border.

Adria Halstead-Johnson and her husband, Charles, of Marshfield, were hiking the trail east of Hardwick on a June day.

“It gives me a safe place to ride my bike. I love seeing everything around you,” said Adria. “We’re leisure cyclists, you know, we’re not the kind of cyclists who need to go a certain speed or go certain miles. We like to go out. We enjoyed seeing Vermont.”

Communities along the route are welcoming trail users. In Johnson, the company Lamoille Valley Bike Tours is renting bikes, organizing tours and offering a shuttle service to help people make one-way trips without having to pedal back.

Most of the approximately 40 bikes the company rentals are electricwhich allows more people to use the trail.

“For most of the summer season, until school starts and again in the fall, all the bikes come out every day,” said the company’s Jim Roy, whose niece and nephew own the business, which began operating in 2016, when the first sections of trail opened. “I mean, it’s just growing.”

In Wolcott, about 15 miles east of Johnson, there are plans to offer amenities such as restrooms and a cafeteria for trail users and others, and to provide additional miles of trails in a new urban forest that can be used by mountains. motorcyclists and others.

The trail passes over a railroad line completed in 1877 and operated until the 1980s. In the late 1990s, the state requested proposals on what should be done with the line.

The Vermont Snow Travelers Association, a statewide snowmobile organization, began work in the early 2000s transforming the line into a four-season recreational trail. It turned over management and construction of the trail to the Vermont Agency of Transportation in 2022. The group said it still hopes to help.

“For us, the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail is a child that we raised and are sending to college, so we’re not just going to let this child go,” snowmobile club executive director Cindy Locke told a committee. of the Vermont legislature at the time.

The state transportation agency says the total costs, both public and private, to complete the transition from the old unused rail line to the current four-station rail line was just over $31 million, or nearly $336,000 per mile. .

The Lamoille Valley Trail was completed in spring 2023, and Governor Phil Scott was set to open it last July. But just days before Scott, an avid cyclist, began riding the trail from end to end, floodwaters destroyed several bridges and destroyed years of work.

The last unfinished section is a section south of Greensboro Bend, about 25 miles from the east end of the trail. Completion should be later this year, state officials say.

The governor hopes to reschedule the entire trail trip for later this year, said his spokeswoman Rebecca Kelley.

Meanwhile, at what had been Hardwick railway station, Adam Anghilante, from Underhill, was recently taking a break from a 30-mile journey.

“I’ve always been a big cyclist and now I’m at an age where mountain biking is a little too intense for me,” he said. “But being able to walk this beautiful rail trail between the farms and the cities and the views of the mountains and rivers, it’s spectacular.”

—-

Wilson Ring of Stowe, Vermont, retired from the Associated Press in 2023 after nearly 31 years with the news organization.