A letter from a local
The East’s alpine capital, white church and all.
Mansfield — Vermont's highest — hangs over town with the Front Four carved into it: Stowe's famous double-black quartet that has humbled visiting westerners for ninety years. The resort is ten minutes up the Mountain Road; the white-steepled village postcard at the bottom is real and unbothered.
Cady Hill's flowy singletrack starts at the edge of downtown and ties into one of the East's best trail networks; the Rec Path rolls 5.5 car-free miles along the river; Smugglers' Notch's boulders and ice fill the climbers' calendar; and the Little River's pools hold trout all summer.
Foliage season is a global event and locals ride straight through it. Sixteen years here: the maple creemees still taste like October.
— Burt