Vermont's High Point - "Mount Mansfield"

Vermont's high point Mount Mansfield at 4,393 feet is located near Stowe, and operates as a ski resort in winter. We had seen the impressive mountain range and Mount Mansfield's white snow covered peak on our drive from the north down to Burlington where we had based ourselves for a few days (see last photo).

On the 27th March 2008, we drove to the Stowe Ski Resort on what was intially a sunny clear sky day. As we prepared for the hike in the car park, the clouds and darker sky rolled in and the flurries started! With the weather starting to look ominous (and no one who could tell us what the weather at the summit was like), we took the gondola to the Cliff House. From there, we started the steep icy hike to the Mt Mansfield summit which was very icy. Parts of the rockface was like a sheet of ice and we couldn't have done it without the crampons. It took us about an hour to reach the summit which gave us a decent view of the cloudy mountain range and the ski runs at the resort. We tried to find the USGS marker on the highest rock which Mark had visited previously, but after chipping away at the ice on the rock with our ice axes, we gave up. We headed back down, sometimes sinking into a feets of snow as we made our way back to the Gondola. It was a relatively quick but rewarding hike to the highest point in Vermont in winter.