Rides around Burlington VT

[Robbos]

Heading down for the Beer thingy tomorrow with some friends. Not as hyped about the beer as I am the riding. We may rent some MTB's and ride at Perry Hill on a friends reck, but I'm also keen on doing some road riding. I heard the west side of Champlain is nice, but from street view alot of the waterfront roads look to be gravel, and I'd prefer to ride my road bike. Either way, we'd like to do some road rides in and around Burlington with nice roads, nice views, and not too much traffic!
Plus if there are any Paceliners, we can share a drink tomorrow!
Cheers,
Robin

[morrisericd]

From Burlington, I'd ride South on Spear Street towards Shelburne. Once you hit the intersection with Irish Hill, head west. Right at the first stop sign and then across route 7. You're now on Shelburne Point, one of the prettiest areas in Vermont (I'm biased, I live here and ride "the Point" at least 25 times a year). Ride out to the end, check out Shelburne Shipyard (just ride right in - they have public bathrooms and water) and the views of Camels Hump and Mt. Mansfield across Shelburne Bay. The road is a little cut up right when you cross route 7 but you can ride on the sidewalk for 100 yards. Maybe 20 miles total? If you want more milage, you can go down Spear, Dorset or Mt Philo for a bit. If you want really nice views, instead of turning left at the stop sign to go back up Irish Hill, go straight and ride up Mt Philo. It will cost you $2 to ride up, but the views are unbelievable!

Enjoy!

You may get suggestions to ride the bike path out of Burlington. It's nice if you're a bike path guy. I'm really not. Plus, Bernie Sanders once ran my wife off the path (he was on his own bike).

[pncguy]

Not quite in Burlington proper, but one of my favorite rides when I was in school was from downtown Middlebury, south on 7, east on 125 over the Midd gap, north on 100, west on the Lincoln Gap road into Bristol, then south on 116 and west on Quary road back into town.

I don't know about traffic now, but 25 years ago it was nonexistent. Be forewarned, the Lincoln Gap isn't flat.

[thunderworks]

Ride south to the ferry at Charlotte. Cross the lake and ride north up the New York shore. Take the ferry at York, back to Burlington. Great ride. Approximately 40 miles.

[572cv]

Tomorrow = Friday?
What kind of road ride do you want to do? Hilly? Flat?
How many miles? What kind of time do you have?

At least to the south of Burlington, I can make suggestions, or even possibly join you, depending on the timing during the day.

Of course, the beer comes first.https://forums.thepaceline.net/images/smilies/beer2.gif

[djg21]

Originally Posted by Robbos

Heading down for the Beer thingy tomorrow with some friends. Not as hyped about the beer as I am the riding. We may rent some MTB's and ride at Perry Hill on a friends reck, but I'm also keen on doing some road riding. I heard the west side of Champlain is nice, but from street view alot of the waterfront roads look to be gravel, and I'd prefer to ride my road bike. Either way, we'd like to do some road rides in and around Burlington with nice roads, nice views, and not too much traffic!
Plus if there are any Paceliners, we can share a drink tomorrow!
Cheers,
Robin

The riding on the west side is better - far less traffic and quiet roads. I lived in Burlington and came across the lake to ride.

There are a lot of routes starting in the Essex on ridewithGPS. Take the ferry from Charlotte to Essex and ride from there. I’m actually in Willsboro now and will be riding tomorrow. My fitness sucks, as I’ve been off my bike for a month with some medical issues, but I’ll likely be riding this:

https://ridewithgps.com/routes/8600414

It won’t be particularly fast!

If you’re taking a car on the ferry to Essex Co. you should plan to check out the Ausable Brewing Compamy, which is just south of Ausable Chasm on Mace Chasm Road. https://www.ausablebrewing.com. It’s only opened in the afternoon, until about 9, and is really fun. It’s a few miles from the Port Douglas Ferry so you can take that one back to Burlington. (It’s longer). I’ll be at the brewery with my dogs tomorrow afternoon after riding.

Also, keep in min that it’s Ironman weekend in Lake Placid, and you probably don’t want to be riding near the triathlon course, which goes through Jay and Wilmington. Stay on the eastern side of Essex County, east of Pocomoonshine and I-87.

Drop me a PM if you are going to be over here.

[cash05458]

go to the champlain islands...about 15 miles up from burlington...good riding here...great roads along the lake and hardly any traffic...no hipster breweries but you can buy the same stuff at our local and drink it in the parking lot and keep going...

[Robbos]

Thanks everyone!

[benb]

There is a hipster vineyard out on Grand Isle though! You can stop in and buy some cheese, have some wine, and tickle their grand piano.

Even with just a road bike it is worth taking the bike path up from Burlington, it turns to dirt and goes out along the old railroad bed across the lake. It is definitely rideable on a road bike unless you're rocking 20s or something. With 28-32c you're well into the territory where it's super easy and fun, it's flat/straight/smooth so you don't need a ton of traction/tire.

It is supposedly the longest stretch of bike path with water on both sides of the path in the world. You're basically riding your bike in the middle of Lake Champlain with the Green Mountains on your right and the Adirondacks on the left... it's about the most insane view you can get on flat terrain. About 3/4 of the way across you take a little ferry across the gap in the path that is there for boats to get through. The ferry runs till about Memorial Day IIRC and it costs just a couple bucks. (It's a ferry only for cyclists/pedestrians) When you get to the other side there is a ton of really nice paved or gravel on the islands.

One great ride I've done is to take the Burlington Ferry (one way ticket) over to Port Kent, don't take your car just ride to the ferry and bring your bike on. Then ride north on the NY side up to Plattsburgh. Stop and look into Au Sable Chasm. Keep riding north up to Cumberland head and then take the ferry (one way again) over to Grand Isle. Then you can ride back and either take the dirt path back across the water to the mainland or you can ride across the paved causeway and end up in Chimney Corners up by Milton VT and then head back towards Burlington from there. That's a 50-60 miler depending on how you plan the return trip.

If you want climbing drive the car to Stowe and plan a ride from there that goes over Smuggler's Notch. Lots of beautiful options out that way. If you were doing a 100+ mile day you can do all that right from Burlington without driving down there.

There's also a great option if you just get out onto the islands and keep riding north all the way to the Canadian Border... incredibly beautiful. About 100 miles round trip from the Burlington area. Not much climbing but seriously windy.

MTB is "meh" out there unless you have a local contact who can help you find a good trail system. I'm originally from VT and still spend a lot of time up there as a lot of my family is up there. When I've taken my MTB instead of a road/gravel bike I have not really enjoyed the paid trails I've gone on. My understanding is like NY State a lot of trails/parks/etc.. are off limits to MTB by default or something compared to NH/MA. The paid trail systems I've been on just weren't that great. They weren't doing great maintenance, and they weren't getting much volume of riding since you had to pay for them. With no one paying, there is not much money for work. The volunteer maintained trails here in MA are better AFAICT. One thing I did do one year is go to the Bolton Valley Ski area on a day the lifts were not running. I did an up-down ride on my XC bike with discs and stuck to the easy trails. Most of the trails for lift operated MTB seemed to be too dangerous to attempt without supervision... (i.e. ambulance at the bottom and patrols). But you could ride up and down for free and it was a good ride with a ton of climbing. But even "green" ski trails are ridiculously hard to climb!

Gravel bike is my favorite thing to take if I only can take one bike and am not strictly going up there to climb.

A lot of the routes from the Vermont Stage Race down by App Gap and stuff make for great riding too, just further away from Burlington.

BTW.. the beer thing is kind of nuts and ridiculous. Amazing beer, but the way to get it is not to go wait in all the ridiculous lines, the way to get it is to support the local restaurants. A lot of those beers that the beer fans are waiting in ridiculous lines for can be had any time you want just by going out to lunch/dinner at a place that has them.

I was up there a month ago. Stopped by the Alchemist's new place in Stowe and there were hundreds of people in line so we just left. We went out to eat that night in Waterbury and you could have any of those beers there, along with a bunch of the Hill Farmstead beers, etc.. Pretty much every time I will get one of the Alchemists beers by just going out to eat. Same thing with most of the other super hard to get beers. (E.x. Hill Farmstead and Lawson's are easy to find in the restaurants)

You can also just go to Winooski beverage warehouse. If you want some of the stuff all the nuts are there to get you might still have to find out when the delivery is and then go wait in line but you can walk in whenever you want and buy tons of great VT beers if the goal is to buy a lot of beer. (A lot of the travelers AFAICT are just there to buy cases of beer and go home)

I've done the thing 2x where you wait in a line for a case of Heady Topper or whatever. If I'm up there I'm staying with family and there is no real inconvenience to do so cause it's a couple miles away. But I have no real need to buy that much of something like that... there are too many options.