Beautiful Mid-Winter Snowshoe at Merck
Feb 1st, 2009 by Jack
As a local weathercaster said, “Unless you plan to just sit on your sofa and whine, this is a perfect weekend to get out and enjoy winter.” Sunny Saturday, cold but not frigid, and a nice coating of fresh snow. So, I grabbed the snowshoes and headed for Merck Forest & Farmland Center on Route 315 in Rupert, Vt.
Merck has a narrow 1-1/2 lane snow-covered road leading uphill to visitor parking, so the challenge is to be heading uphill when no one is heading downhill – there are 2 or 3 small pull-over notches cut into the hillside, but this winter’s snowbanks make them tricky, so mutual driver-courtesy and side-to-side maneuvering is mandatory if you do come head-to-head with another vehicle you must squeeze by.
Arriving at the visitor parking lot without encounter, there were maybe 20 vehicles already parked but I didn’t see a single person. Merck has cabins for overnight stays and from the license plates I saw – Connecticut, Washington DC, New York – I think many of them were there for overnight stays up on the mountainside.
Simply put, weather and trail conditions were perfect for a snowshoe. I headed off on my favorite winter trail, which tends to be “a road less traveled” for day visitors, and for the next several hours saw nothing but virgin snow, woods, deer/rabbit/mouse tracks (but no animals), hawks – not a soul. Snow was about 8-18 inches deep depending on location, which made for real snowshoeing but wasn’t overly tiring. The sunlight was strong, which made for some fun photo opportunities involving shadows. This trail can be followed for a few miles and offers some loop possibilities and some varying elevation.
A good trail, a great snowshoe, on a very nice day.
