Vermont Sports 2024 August Issue

And it’s only

getting better.

Vermont Medical Center is now a member of Dartmouth Health.

Exceptional care is our specialty.

together to provide better care. As a member hospital, we bring you improved access, upgraded technology and expanded specialty care including cancer treatments, orthopedics and heart and vascular care.

When the unexpected happens, you can rely on Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) to provide exceptional care and comfort, with a team that is nationally recognized for excellence in emergency nursing.

Southwestern Vermont Medical Center is now a member of Dartmouth Health.

While we’ve been partners for years, Southwestern Vermont Medical Center and Dartmouth Health are coming even closer together to provide better care. As a member hospital, we bring you improved access, upgraded technology and expanded specialty care including cancer treatments, orthopedics and heart and vascular care.

The Kendall Emergency Department (ED) at SVMC was recently selected as a recipient of the Emergency Nurses Association’s 2024 Lantern Award® for demonstrating excellence in leadership, practice, education, advocacy, and research performance. SVMC’s ED was one of 94 departments nationwide to be recognized, and the first in Vermont

Learn more at svhealthcare.org

The Lantern Award showcases ED accomplishments in incorporating evidence-based practice and innovation into emergency care. Congratulations to our skilled and compassionate team for achieving this prestigious honor.

Learn more at svhealthcare.org

So now, the great care you’ve always received from SVMC will be even better. All right here, close to home.

So now, the great care you’ve always received from SVMC will be even better. All right here, close to home.

At SVMC, exceptional care is not only our specialty, it’s our mission.

The nursing team at the Kendall Emergency Department at Southwestern Vermont Medical Center.

VERMONT SPORTS

PUBLISHER

ON THE COVER:

at

Angelo Lynn - publisher@vtsports.com

EDITOR/CO-PUBLISHER

Lisa Lynn - editor@vtsports.com

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Shawn Braley

EDITORIAL INTERNS

Alaena Hunt, Lucia Lovell

MEDICAL ADVISORY BOARD

Dr. Nathan Endres, Dr. David Lisle, Dr. James Slauterbeck —University of Vermont Robert Larner College of Medicine; Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation; Jamie Sheahan, M.S., R.D.

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

David Goodman, Brian Mohr, Phyl Newbeck, Leath Tonino, Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

CIRCULATION

Harris Gerner | (802) 388-4944 frontdesk@addisonindependent.com

ADVERTISING

Lisa Lynn | (802) 388-4944 lisa.lynn@vtsports.com

ADVERTISING SALES

Greg Meulemans | (802) 366-0689 greg@vtsports.com

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VERMONT SPORTS IS A PROUD MEMBER OF

5 The Start Here We Go Again

Floods and trail damage are now part of summer. What can we do?

7 News

A UCI World Cup

Comes to Lake Placid

Plus, an NEK treasure is preserved and a foodie’s guide to this summer’s races.

10 Health

The Good News/Bad News on Lyme Disease

New studies may deliver a vaccine, but there’s more Lyme ahead.

12 Health

Do You Need Orthotics?

Plus, a new shop in Stowe makes custom orthotics in an hour.

14 Feature

Exploring Maine’s Ocean Islands

A Mad River Valley family’s summer adventure paddling and camping Penobscot Bay.

20 Feature

Leveling the Playing Field

Vermont’s newest mountain bike network just opened, and like more and more of our trails, it’s designed so all can ride it.

22 Gear Summer Essentials

Great water shoes, polarized glasses, a new hat from Skida and more.

28 Featured Athlete

The Outrigger Canoe Coach

How Tom Atkins got hooked on outrigger canoes in New Zealand.

30 Calendar Race & Event Guide

34 Endgame

Exploring the Microworld

The wilderness at your feet.

The deadline for the Sept/Oct. issue of Vermont Sports is August 16. Contact lisa.lynn@vtsports.com today to reserve your space.

Shaun Roberts, Greg Durso and Rob Galloway tear up Hot Dogger

The Driving Range.

Photo by Mark Clement.

For an idyllic summer vacation, Brian Mohr and Emily Johnson and their daughters canoe camped the islands of Maine. Read about their trip on page 14. Photo by Brian Mohr/EmberPhoto

HERE WE GO AGAIN

FLOODS ARE BECOMING PART OF SUMMER. WHAT CAN TRAIL GROUPS DO TO PREPARE?

Just hours before we went to press with this issue, the news came in: in less than 24 hours 8.4 inches of rain fell in St. Johnsbury. Around the Northeast Kingdom the totals varied. East Burke saw 7 inches, Island Pond saw 7. Kingdom Trails and Burke Mountain Resort closed their trails but the focus in many of those towns was on helping those who lost their homes.

It felt like a déjà vu: A déjà vu from 2023 when floods destroyed towns and homes, trails and shops in central Vermont. A déjà vu to two weeks earlier when rains washed out roads and trails in Lamoille County. A déjà vu to earlier this summer when the same thing happened.

Floods are happening so fast and so frequently, it’s getting hard to keep track. While FEMA, the state, towns and local highway departments have worked tirelessly to restore roads and rebuild bridges, much of the work on trails, especially those on private land, has been left to volunteers.

“What we are seeing this summer, as opposed to last, are these narrower, more intense storms,” says Nick Bennette, chairman of the Vermont Trails & Greenways Council and executive director of the Vermont Mountain Bike Association. “The impacted areas went from Hinesburg to the Northeast Kingdom. The majority of our trails

are fine but areas that were hit, were hit hard: Hinesburg’s Town Forest, Cochran’s they took the damage on the nose but much of Perry Hill in Waterbury and Stowe’s mountain bike trails are rideable.”

However, in parts of Bolton and on the western side of Stowe, trails such as the Catamount fared less well and will need to be rebuilt.

Fortunately, VMBA has a flood recovery fund and dispersed about $15,000 last year. The fund was replenished thanks to a VOREC grant and more than $60,000 was eventually awarded. “The challenge is that is a drop in the bucket. It’s not going to be able to repair the damage that was done in Hinesburg, which the Fellowship of The Wheel described as ‘death by a thousand cuts’,” Bennette said.

Perhaps the one bit of good news is that trails such as the VAST trail in the Barre that were destroyed in 2023 and rebuilt to be more flood-resilient have survived subsequent storms. “Climate resiliency has to be built into everything we do going forward,” says Bennette. “I think as we work toward a statewide outdoor recreation master plan, via the Move Forward Vermont initiative, we’re going to see climate resiliency be the thing that rises to the top in our priorities.” —Lisa Lynn

Come Ride With Us

July floods tore out sections of The Catamount Trail between Bolton and Stowe. Photo Kenzie Fuqua/CTA

PUTNEY VERMONT

UCI WORLD CUP COMES TO LAKE PLACID

If you missed watching silver medalist Haley Batten, Christopher Blevins, any of the Olympic mountain bikers compete in France, don’t worry: This September 27-29 many of those same riders will be just across Lake Champlain competing in the WHOOP UCI (Union Cycliste Internationale) Mountain Bike World Series – the world’s premier mountain biking circuit. Racers will compete in the UCI Cross-country Olympic, UCI Cross-country Short Track and the UCI Cross-country Marathon events.

While Mt. Van Hoevenberg, the event site, isn’t yet known as a mountain biking destination, it may soon well be. The course is being built this August and the announcement follows more than $550 million in state investments in Olympic Regional Development

Authority facilities to renovate New York’s sports infrastructure.

“The WHOOP UCI Mountain Bike

WHEELER MOUNTAIN PROTECTED

One of the most iconic climbing areas in the Northeast Kingdom has been preserved for the public. In July, The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation (FPR) announced it had acquired 118.6 acres along Wheeler Mountain Road in Sutton to expand Willoughby State Forest. This new addition includes the ridgeline, cliffs, and summit of Wheeler Mountain, offering unique habitats, scenic views, and recreational opportunities such as hiking and rock climbing.

FPR purchased this land from private owner John Krieble, who agreed to subdivide and sell the ridgeline, hiking trail, and climbing access while retaining the rest of his property. “I’m thrilled to know that the Wheeler Mountain trails and cliffs will now be protected for generations of hikers and rock climbers to come,” said John Krieble, the conservation-minded seller.

The acquisition was funded by the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, the Vermont Housing and Conservation Board, and the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department’s Habitat

Stamp program.

The acquisition protects the granitic ridgeline of Wheeler Mountain, which offers scenic views of the glacial landscape surrounding Willoughby State Forest. This ridgeline is visible from popular destinations such as Lake Willoughby, Mount Pisgah, Mount Hor, and Wheeler Pond. It also provides nesting habitat for Peregrine falcons and lies within a regionally significant wildlife corridor extending from the Worcester Range to the Northeast Kingdom.

“Wheeler Mountain is such an incredible feature in the broader Willoughby landscape, and a wonderful ecological and recreational resource,” says Luke O’Brien, Forest Recreation Specialist at FPR. “The landowners have been very gracious- over many decades- allowing public use. It is gratifying that they were willing to entrust this place to FPR’s care as an addition to Willoughby State Forest.”

World Series is our next big chance to show the world what the North Country has to offer,” Governor Hochul

said. Tickets and schedule are at: mtvanhoevenberg.com/uci/

The Wheeler Mountain Hiking Trail had previously been permitted across the private property by the private landowner under a temporary trail easement. Rock climbing has taken place on Wheeler Mountain since at least 1947 when the first documented climbing route was established. Under the ownership and management of FPR, public access, the hiking trail, and rock climbing on the property are now permanently protected. The property will be managed by FPR as part of Willoughby State Forest and can be accessed from the Wheeler Mountain parking area and hiking trail located off Wheeler Mountain Road in Sutton.

A favorite of hikers and climbers, Wheeler Mountain is now part of Willoughby State Forest. Courtesy photo

A new World Cup mountain bike course is being built at Mt. Van Hoevenberg for the UCI World Cup coming this September. Photo courtesy ORDA/Jaime Collins

NEWS

If you are kicking yourself because you missed the Tour de Creemee in June – a central Vermont gravel ride put on by Onion River Outdoors finishing with a Morse Farm creemee, don’t despair. August and early September bring out races that pair food with runs or rides. But in typical Vermont style, many of these take a unique twist. For more information, see Calendar on page 30.

Perhaps the most unique of them all? The Brain Freezer 5k out of Burlington’s North Beach on Aug. 14. A variation on the beer run (run, chug a beer, run), this race challenges participants to run half a 5K, then down an entire pint of Vermont ice cream, and then race to the finish. Before you ask “is this really a good idea?” consider Elle Purrier St. Pierre, the Vermont dairy farmer, World Champion in the 3,000 meters and two-time Olympian. She drinks plenty of milk so how bad can a little ice cream be bad? It’s for a good cause too: proceeds go to People Helping People Global, a Fairfax organization that fights poverty.

Post-race fare of burgers and hot dogs is so… 2000. T he Fairfax Egg Run, put on by the town of Fairfax on Aug. 3 rewards participants who do the 5K run or walk or race the 10K with made-to-order omelets.

In East Montpelier, Cate Farm has eight 96-foot-long greenhouses and 22 acres that are used for a mix of field crops and forage. The greenhouses grow organic tomatoes, lots of tomatoes. And those are the prizes for the Cate Farm Tomato Trot, a 5K trail run and walk, that takes place Aug. 10 along the shores of the Winooski and around the farm. The run starts at 4 pm, followed by a farm social and each finisher receives a pound of tomatoes.

Want something more than tomatoes? At the Tour de Farms, held Sept. 15, cyclists follow a 10- or a 30-mile route that takes them through Shoreham and Orwell’s rolling fields, orchards and farm country with stops at local farms. Most farms will have samples of what they produce and cyclists can purchase produce at the farm and a delivery van will bring it to the finish. Think of it as a rolling farmers’ market. Better yet? The finish is at the Shoreham Apple Fest where cider, apple donuts and pulled pork await.

When pro cyclist and former Tour de France racer Ian Boswell and his

WILL RACE FOR FOOD

AT THESE UPCOMING EVENTS, LOCAL FOOD IS PART OF THE FUN.

wife Gretchen moved to the tiny town of Peacham, they wanted to put on a down-home, just-for-fun cycling event. The Peacham Fall Fondo, Sept. 28 is just that and true to its spirit, features a mid-route pie stop. Pies are baked by local community members and there’s usually a pie sale at the end of the event.

If you spend part of your long runs dreaming of the pizza you’ll have after, the Fly to Pie Marathon on Oct. 5 is your race. It may be the only marathon where runners (and cyclists) actually run to a pizza joint. This year, the run starts at the Coventry Airport and participants cover 26.1 miles of dirt

Clockwise from top: Stocking up on produce at the Tour de Farms, Cate Farm tomatoes for finishers, Middlebury Maple Run's sweet prizes and pies at the Peacham Fall Fondo. Courtesy photos

It used to be that the Middlebury Maple Run, a half-marathon dubbed “the sweetest half” as well as a 10K and 5K took place when the sap ran in the spring. It has moved to Oct. 6 but the race still rewards top finished with the sweet stuff: locally produced maple syrup.

and gravel roads to finish at Parker Pie in Glover. There, all-you-can-eat pizza and Hill Farmstead brews await.

HEALTH

THE GOOD NEWS/ BAD NEWS ON LYME DISEASE

NEW RESEARCH MAY POINT TO A VACCINE FOR THE DISEASE, WHICH IS SPREADING NORTH

BY LISA LYNN

The good news: a vaccine for Lyme disease may be on the way. In September 2023, the University of Vermont did a call for volunteers to test a vaccine that Pfizer has in development.

“This study follows on the heels of a Phase 2 study that Pfizer did that demonstrated strong immunogenicity in adults as well as in children for this vaccine,” says Mary Claire Ruth Walsh an infectious disease physician assistant working with study lead Dr. Kristen Pierce, and the operations manager at the Vaccine Testing Center at the University of Vermont.

As Walsh says “We had over 1,000 people express interest and we enrolled 225 people in the study. It is being conducted at more than 50 sites worldwide with over 10,000 volunteers in places such as Finland, Germany, Poland and the Netherlands."

As part of the study, each team administers either a placebo or a vaccine to volunteers and then determines the incidence of Lyme over a 30-month period by asking people to to be tested if they show any symptoms “Vermont was a good test site because we have a high incidence of Lyme disease and we also have a

population that spends a lot of time outdoors. At the end, we hope that the Lyme occurrence is only in those who received the placebo,” she says.

MARCHING NORTH

Still – and this is where the bad news comes in — Vermont continues to be the state with the second highest incidence of Lyme disease after Rhode Island and it appears to be on the rise.

In 2022, the last year that data is available from the Vermont Department of Health, 1,312 cases of

Lyme disease were reported, a jump from the previous high of 1,093 in 2017. By comparison, New Hampshire, sees approximately 1,170 new cases diagnosed annually. New York, meanwhile, saw 16,798.

It’s the trend upwards that worries Patti Casey, the Environmental Surveillance Program Supervisor with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets.

Part of Casey’s job each year is to go out into the field and actively look for ticks, particularly the black-footed

deer tick that is the carrier of the disease. Working with the Department of Health, Casey and her team survey 48 sites around Vermont each spring. “What we're trying to track is: Are the ticks moving around in the state? Are the populations changing, and where are they changing?”

While the southern part of the state continues to have the highest number of ticks, she sees them moving north, and beginning to encroach on the Northeast Kingdom where few if any were reported before.

“There was one site in Pittsford that we went to five or six years ago and there was zero ticks. We went last year and we got 161 ticks. That was a big difference” she says.

But there can be micro-local populations of ticks, too, she notes. "There's a site in Bennington that we go to where we'll do a drag, and then move over 10 or 20 yards and do a drag in what looks like exactly the same habitat and find a quarter of the number of ticks, or none at all. It’s something we are still trying to figure out,” she says.

What she does know is this: “On average, about 54% of black-legged ticks carry Lyme disease and that number has been stable over the years."

Deer are the best-known carriers of the adult black-legged tick that is a vector of Lyme and other diseases. Now, UVM is working with volunteers on a Phase 3 study to test a potential vaccine. Photo Adobe Stock

MANAGEMENT AND PREVENTION

Until a vaccine comes on the market, the best option is prevention and tick management.

In another division of UVM, the College of Life Sciences, Cheryl Frank Sullivan, Ph.D. an entomologist who works on integrated pest management, is studying preventative measures and tick control.

In addition to looking for places where ticks like to congregate, she’s also looking for where they are not, and asking why not and examining what is in the soil that might repel the blacklegged tick.

“A lot of the work that I do focuses on the use of biological controls as chemical pesticide alternatives, and a lot of that is in microbial bio pesticides,” she says. “So for example, we have developed entomopathogenic fungi. They're fungal bio pesticides, and they're used quite extensively in agriculture, but their use really hasn't caught on in the tick world, even though they are effective.”

She notes that the product Met52®, which contains the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum, is effective in reducing the number of black legged deer ticks, the vector for the bacterium causing Lyme disease and other diseases.

While pesticides may or may not be effective in warding off ticks, Sullivan has other recommendations for how to keep them at bay. “You have to make your yard inhospitable,” she says. “Ticks like leafy matter so move your leaf pile or wood pile away from the house. They feed on mice, so keep your bird feeder away from the house too.” She also recommends creating a border around your property of gravel, sand or wood chips. “Ticks don’t like warm or dry environments so they are less likely to cross over those.”

Pets and livestock can often be carriers too, she notes. “Cattle don’t get Lyme disease but horses and dogs do and dogs, especially, can carry ticks into the house, so check them carefully.”

Sullivan herself has a practice of bringing a spare set of clothes when she is out in the field. “I change before getting back into my truck and put the clothes in a bag and when I get home put them right in the wash and then in the dryer. The dryer is important because ticks will survive in water but not in heat,” she notes.

Fortunately, despite the nature of their work, neither Sullivan nor Casey have ever had Lyme disease. At least not that they know of.

WHY TICK-BORNE DISEASES ARE SPREADING

Patti Casey, a researcher with the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, explains.

Large populations of black-legged ticks in the Northeast are a relatively recent occurrence. While there was probably a population of them living here in Vermont all along, the changes in landscape and land use, suburbanization, and climate change, among other factors, have combined to create an environment in which ticks have expanded their numbers and territory. And with that expansion, they have spread the diseases they can carry and transmit, making them a public health concern and not just a nuisance.

If you could go back in time, the Vermont landscape would have looked very different a century or two ago. Mostly forested, then cleared for sheep farming in the 1800s (about 20% forested in sheep-farming days), then a return to mostly forested in the last century (a flip to about 20% open lands). Needs changed, priorities changed, and so land use changed. Vermont is once again undergoing a landscape transformation as more and more people build houses and expand suburban areas, effectively dicing up the land into lots of little plots, most with a border of some kind around them, whether tended or natural.

Many of these suburban and rural areas of development are situated adjacent to bigger areas of less disturbed land, such as agricultural fields, woodlands, and wetlands. This results in a patchwork where there used to exist largely undisturbed stretches of woodlands, wetlands, or fields in Vermont.

All of these borders are essentially interfaces with at least a small bit of “wilderness.” These areas of transition between two biological communities are called “ecotones.” And we’ve created many thousands of miles of these ecotones in Vermont by sectioning off plots of land for development.

If you are a rodent, your territory and needs are relatively small, and a strip of tall grass, maybe a wood pile or rock wall, can be all you need to set up shop. And why do rodents matter? Rodents are the first meal sought after by black-legged tick larvae (aka “Deer Ticks,” Ixodes scapularis).

Larvae are the first life stage after hatching out of the egg. Rodents are host to tick larvae because, basically, rodents are what tick larvae can reach from their very lowly birthplace in the leaf litter. For the most part, ticks are born “clean,” that is, not carrying pathogens.

The white-footed mouse (Peromyscus leucopus) is largely responsible for the transmission of the pathogen that causes Lyme disease in the Northeast (Borrelia burgdorferi). Other rodents such as red and gray squirrels are also reservoirs for many of the pathogens that cause illness in humans and pets. As tick larvae feed on rodents, they are provided their first opportunity to acquire any pathogens the rodent may be harboring.

When ticks mature from larvae into nymphs, their second life stage, they are still likely to feed on a rodent (still pretty close to the ground and tiny, think poppy seed). They will happily attach to anything at their level, so your ankles are on the menu. They tend not to climb as high onto grasses as do adult ticks. This second interaction with rodents gives them another opportunity to pick up any pathogens a host rodent may be harboring.

The final tick life stage, adult, is usually spent feeding on a larger mammal, such as a deer, fox, bear, raccoon, and, yes, us humans and our four-legged companions. Adult ticks climb onto higher grasses and brushy vegetation than do earlier tick life stages.

We see higher rates of pathogens in adult ticks than in nymphal ticks, as they’ve had more opportunities to acquire the pathogen through two feedings versus one. White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), on the other hand (and contrary to popular belief), do not carry the pathogen that causes Lyme disease. In fact, deer produce a compound in their blood that actually kills that pathogen in their bodies and protects the deer from contracting the illness. What deer do is provide a readily available host for adult blacklegged ticks. And there are a lot of deer in the Northeast.

Those fragmented land use areas mentioned earlier? It’s not only ticks that love ecotones, most wildlife does, including deer. Deer love the landscaping and gardens around our homes, too, which brings them and their attendant load of ticks right into our yards and gardens.

Environmental Surveillance Program Supervisor Patti Casey has been studying the movement of ticks around the state. Photo courtesy Casey

Nearly 54% of black-legged deer ticks (top) carry Lyme disease. Their common mode of transport? The white-footed mouse. Photo Adobe Stock

HEALTH DO YOU NEED AN ORTHOTIC?

Understanding foot and leg function is complicated and confusing. The normal anatomy of the foot contains 26 bones, 33 joints, and hundreds of ligaments. The foot functions as a mobile adaptor to the uneven surfaces beneath it.

I like to think of the foot as an oldfashioned chronometer. Each gear has its turn to function and then passes off to the next in line. At foot strike, the foot bones absorb shock, then the foot stabilizes the body above it, and finally it mobilizes strength to propel the body forward. Anatomical anomalies in the foot and leg can cause malfunction, resulting in injury and pain in the foot, leg, knee, thigh, hip, and low back.

Cushioning your foot and finding ways to adapt to anomalies is where orthotics come in.

THE BIRTH OF ORTHOTICS

Merton Root, DPM, William Orien, DPM, and John Weed, DPM, a team of California podiatrists, began research in the early 1970s that today is considered the cornerstone to understanding the complicated and varied functions of the foot and how it affects the entire lower kinetic chain. Their research was used by the athletic shoe industry to launch continued efforts in prototype designs yielding the sophisticated shoes that we have today. In their studies, the Merton Root team found that anatomical malfunctions in the foot could be altered with balancing plates inside shoes. So, orthotics were born, and, as with the sophisticated athletic shoes that we have today, orthotics have undergone many changes. Orthotics now can be slim, trim, and designed to work in most shoes without having to alter shoe size or fit. They can be made from polypropylene, which means they will never need replacing, tweaking, or rebuilding.

BEWARE THE IMPOSTERS

Essentially, all of the over-thecounter orthotic products that can be purchased in a pharmacy or sport shop are really not orthotics. In my opinion, most over-the-counter products do not meet the functional needs of feet.One product called Superfeet comes close. They make several models: Superfeet Green and Superfeet Blue are best. Green is designed to help control hyperpronation and Blue works well for the foot that is lacking in shock absorption, often referred to as the

IF THE SHOE FITS, WEAR IT, RIGHT? WRONG. A RUNNER AND PODIATRIST TALKS ORTHOTICS BY ROBERT RINALDI

While

supinated foot. About 85 percent of the population hyperpronates, so if you had to make a guess as to what kind of shoes you need, the odds are in favor of needing shoes that help control hyperpronation. The same could be said for Superfeet Green.

However, this product usually makes it necessary to remove the insole from the shoe, which unfortunately reduces the shoe’s functionality. Anytime orthotics necessitate removing the shoe’s insole, the design function of the shoe itself is depreciated. Custom orthotics may have top covers and this will also necessitate the removal of the shoes’ insoles.

Also, a top cover can reduce the function of a properly designed orthotic. When a soft cushiony material covers the orthotic, it may, at first blush, feel really good, but it will provide less than optimal results. Certainly, there are situations when a top cover can be helpful. You should question your provider as to your specific needs. The best choice is a polypropylene orthotic made from a neutral position cast, with a prescription for construction at the laboratory. It does not need a top cover.

WHEN ARE ORTHOTICS NECESSARY?

If you are suffering from chronic foot pain, morning stiffness in your feet, ankles, and upper or lower legs, or from lower back pain, you may be hyperpronating to a degree that is causing overuse biomechanical injuries. Pain while running that does not dissipate, but actually intensifies, often leads to a diagnosis of a stress fracture, but the prodrome to this problem is often a biomechanical fault that alters the function of the foot and leg. Knee pain and stiffness can be very disabling to the runner, or any other athlete, and it may be caused from feet that are not working properly.

THE NEXT STEPS

If your feet are painful, first be sure that you are not using a shoe that does not match your biomechanical needs. Shops such as Outdoor Gear Exchange in Burlington, Onion River Outdoors in Montpelier, and The Boot Pro in Ludlow (for skiboots and bike shoes) have trained experts to ensure you are in the proper footgear for your foot type.

You should also check your training log. Are you sure that you have not over-

extended beyond your conditioning? After checking and changing anything necessary, take a break from training for a few days. When you return to the active list, if the symptoms re-occur, do not hesitate to make an appointment with a specialist.

Look for a provider who understands foot function, is an athlete, and has proper training. Do not be afraid to ask questions. Be inquisitive. You may need orthotics. The intrinsically posted polypropylene orthotic that I described above is usually 85 to 90 percent successful in controlling faulty biomechanics resulting from hyperpronation. They are designed for use by athletes, and they will last forever.

Robert Rinaldi worked as a boardcertified podiatrist and podiatric surgeon at the Gifford Medical Center in Randolph. He was a founding member of the American Academy of Podiatric Sports Medicine, and a podiatric consultant to the Dartmouth College track and cross-country teams. He is a former nationally ranked distance runner, having competed in 25 world-class marathons.

every foot has 26 bones and 33 joints, each is shaped differently Photo Adobe Sttock

CUSTOM ORTHOTICS, ON THE GO

For some, finding an off-the-shelf footbed such as Superfeet or Aline insoles (designed by Stowe resident Gordon Hay) is a quick and inexpensive fix. For others, it might take months (and dollars) working with a podiatrist to get a custom orthotic made for a running or hiking shoe.

Surefoot offers another solution. The company, which was founded by brothers Bob and Russ Shay, started out as a small custom ski boot fitting shop in Park City. It has grown into the world’s largest custom boot fitting company, thanks to a proprietary system that scans the foot and then uses a CAD/CAM milling machine to create the orthotic within an hour.

Surefoot’s product designer Barry Woods, a former Stowe ski instructor who works at the company headquarters in Park City now, picks the materials for the orthotics (ethyl vinyl acetate or EVA) and for their ski boots, the liner material.

Surefoot, whose one Vermont shop has been in Killington, recently opened a new shop on the Mountain Road in Stowe and we went in to see what they could do. Killington shop manager Ray Rice and Stowe manager Adam Ausura were there, putting the finishing touches on the new space.

Rice had me stand on a platform where a machine with a dozen tiny needles (well, not

Surefoot, now with shops in both Killington and Stowe, uses a propietary digital measuring system to create a template of your feet and then mills the orthotic on the spot. Surefoot is known for ski boot fitting but does running and hiking shoes too.

actual needles but tiny rubber pegs) pushed up to measure the contours of my feet in 538 locations. Who knew your feet even had 538 locations?

“That’s the point,” says Rice. “It’s not just how long or how wide your foot is but how it’s shaped,” he says. "The goal is to get you to a neutral position so that the power from your foot is transferred into

a running shoe, hiking shoe or ski boot."

The CAD/CAM drawing then goes right to the back room where the milling machine transfers the design to the EVA blanks, cutting a shape out in just a matter of minutes that fit my foot and my running shoes. The cost: $255.

As someone with a high instep and bunions,

finding a running shoe that’s snug enough in the heel and arch yet wide enough to accommodate my bunions has been a challenge. Throw in a Morton’s neuroma and pain has become part of every long run. With the Surefoot orthotics there’s still a bit of pain, but so far, it’s been quite a bit better.

—Lisa Lynn

EXPLORING MAINE’S OCEAN ISLANDS

FOR AN IDYLLIC SUMMER VACATION, THE AUTHOR AND HIS FAMILY, INCLUDING TWO YOUNG DAUGHTERS, SPENT 10 DAYS CANOEING, CAMPING AND BERRY HUNTING IN PENOBSCOT BAY. STORY AND PHOTOS BY BRIAN MOHR AND EMILY JOHNSON.

As we paddled back to our island campsite for the evening, a tidal river began sweeping across a shallow underwater ledge. Choppy knee-high waves kicked up by the summer breeze added to the excitement. The water around us was swirling and navigating our way into the little cove began to remind us of running a stretch of serious whitewater along Vermont’s Mad River, near our home.

“Please get down, girls,” I said to my two daughters, Maiana, 11 and Lenora, 8. We needed to lower the center of gravity in our narrow, 18foot aluminum canoe. “There’s a lot of current here. But be on the lookout for fishies. They like this tide.”

Some careful maneuvering and a few bracing strokes with the paddles - maneuvers that my wife Emily Johnson and I usually reserve for river conditions capable of swamping the boat -soon had us safely ashore. We were now halfway into our now-annual, 10-day canoe adventure off the Maine coast and its countless offshore ledges and islands. After a day of paddling, we were ready to crawl into our tents and crash on a private island, not far from Deer Isle.

We’ve been canoeing and camping across New England as a family –primarily along freshwater lakes and rivers - since our girls were born. In more recent years, though, we have been focusing our canoe time in the ocean off Maine.

We prefer to travel by canoe for many reasons: as a family, we can easily fit in just one boat and canoes are more comfortable to sit (or stand) in and paddle, relative to a kayak. They also make packing and carrying gear (including more sizable items like our cooler, water bags, camping and fishing gear) a breeze.

However, as canoes also put you relatively higher above the water than a kayak, and require quite a bit more skill to maneuver when navigating stronger winds and heavier seas. But then again, we are hardly ever in a hurry or following a fixed route or schedule, so when the weather and seas get too rough, we lay low.

I’m not sure whether it is the dramatic twice-daily swing of the tides, or the challenges of navigating Mother Ocean’s many moods, that draws us back more and more, but the lure of Maine’s coast is irresistible. Or perhaps it is the simple act of hunting for sea glass and the opportunity to jump into the refreshingly cool north Atlantic every day.

This past July, we were there again,

Emily Johnson and daughter Lenora paddle by the rocky shores of Penobscot Bay's myriad of islands as a fog bank hovers offshore.

without any real agenda to speak of, unleashed from the tethers of life on the mainland, and increasingly tuned into the rhythms of the sea. The four of us set off with our canoe and about ten days of food and provisions from a friend’s dock to explore Penobscot Bay.

With hundreds of islands and many hundreds of miles of coastline in the area, our plan was to connect and camp with some friends who were staying on a private island in the bay for a few days, and then move on from there, paddling no more than a dozen miles in a day –often much less. We’d move camp every day or two to either a spot we’ve gained permission to use from a landowner, or to one of the 220 established campsites that are managed by the Maine Island Trail Association.

By day, we went in search of fish, seals and shorebirds, interesting shorelines to explore, idyllic swimming holes or tucked-away seashell middens harboring hidden sea glass gems. We camped for a night, or sometimes three, in each place – depending on the weather and our mood.

The morning after our tidal river encounter, we made a simple breakfast of oatmeal, cream and some wild blueberries we found growing along

the rocky shoreline. The girls then set up a sea glass “store” above the high tide line near the water, a display from their beachcombing.

Rare specimens of metallic red and even some purple glass were on display, and the girls refined their collections with a series of trades and

deals between them. Emily took off on a run along the granite shoreline of the private island where we camped, and I gathered some lunch fixings and gear for the day’s adventure ahead –as well as containers for gathering wild berries, and some fishing gear.

Seas were calm, and they were likely to remain so all day, so we set our sights on a small, distant island where we had once found the mother lode of wild raspberries, blueberries and red currants – all ripening at the same time.

Despite the calm forecast, we were always prepared for a sudden shift in the wind and sea conditions. We packed plenty of fresh water, extra layers and basic shelter, and we had both a waterproof radio and a cell phone should we ever need to call for assistance. We towed an inflatable paddle board as well, which doubled as a basic life raft and a floating gear trailer, while giving us more options for playing and getting around on the water. Because there is always a slight risk of swamping or capsizing, we pack our canoe so that it can float even when full of water, and we’ve trained ourselves to efficiently bail water out of canoe (we have several bailing devices

The 18-foot aluminum canoe carried camping gear, kids and food for the trip.

Campsites varied from public sites along the Maine Island Trail to private property where the family had permission from the landowners.

on board) and get on our way again. Capsizing is not to be taken lightly, and we often don wetsuits when the risk seems higher on any given day.

We set off around midday with relatively glassy sea conditions and cloudy skies. A distant lobster boat motored by, and within a few minutes we intercepted a train of knee high waves from its wake. Paddling past a larger island en route, we entered an open, mile-wide bay with some exposure to the open ocean. Every few minutes, a set of gently rolling waves would pass beneath us – most likely the fading energy of a distant ocean swell. An osprey nesting on the island we passed soared overhead. Cormorants and gulls and countless migratory birds were on the go all around us.

“Will we see the seals today?” wondered Lenora.

We considered swinging out to an offshore ledge where the seals are more reliably spotted above the water line, but we opted to focus our energy instead on our wild berry mission. We kept our eyes peeled for schools of mackerel. Closer to the mainland, a couple of tall ships sailed north. A smaller vessel had a black sail. Pirates!

After just over an hour on the water, we landed on our wild berry island and wasted no time shedding our life jackets and jumping into the cool and refreshing north Atlantic Ocean. The smell of wild roses permeated the air. The girls chased minnows along the rocks. The island was barely an acre in size, but was home to a small spruce forest, countless rugosa rose and bayberry shrubs, abundant patches of beach pea and wild spinach, and numerous clusters of berry bushes.

On the shoreline, there was lots and lots of edible seaweed, some of which we gathered and began drying for later use. Emily began the daily hunt for fresh sea glass, and I set off to inspect the raspberry crop. While we were able to gather some blueberries and red currants, the raspberries were still green, giving us yet another reason to return.

A very light afternoon breeze kissed the air before fading gradually back to calm. To the east, however, we spotted an expansive fog bank gradually creeping westward. Fog is one of our favorite elements out here on the coast, and after some very sunny days, we were hopeful the fog would roll in for a day or two. Still, the fog can make open water navigating a bit tricky, especially in a small boat (we carry a good chart, and occasionally pull out a GPS device), and since we were hoping to do some fishing on our way back to camp, we did

Clockwise from top: An SUP served as a lifeboat and a place to carry extra gear. Emily would go for coastal runs whenever there was a chance. Wild blueberries and fresh fish made up meals. Brian, Maiana, Lenora and Emily. Splashing in Maine's clear, but cold Atlantic waters.

not linger for long on the island.

Back at camp that evening, we were joined by our friends Monique and Kalev and their offspring, who were staying on another island nearby. The kids practiced building and keeping a fire, while the rest of us prepped dinner and guessed at if and when the fog would roll in, or if it would prevent us from safely pushing to our next camp even farther offshore tomorrow.

With some luck, we’d at least get a break in the fog midday to make our move. Meanwhile, the skies were clear and the ebbing 12 foot tide gradually pulled the blanket back on a landscape of previously submerged ledges and boulders, banks of seaweed, and small pocket

beaches that were possibly middens created by earlier inhabitants of the coast who would gather and process large quantities of shellfish in these spots. The incredible, twice-daily swing of the tide will never cease to amaze me.

Late that evening, down by the water the world around us was unusually quiet and calm - a far cry from our tidal river experience yesterday evening. Deep in the intertidal zone, however, the scratching of busy crabs and the hissing and popping of other shellfish kept total silence at bay. Sleep would come easy. Walking back to our tents under the stars, however, a subtle foghorn from a very distant buoy reached our ears. It seemed as though the fog was rolling in after all.

Or was I only dreaming.

A full moon, a fire and a few tired kiddos mark the end to a day of paddling from campsite to campsite.

Lenora supervises a makeshift kitchen using old lobster pots found on the beach.

HOW TO PADDLE AND CAMP IN MAINE’S COASTAL ISLANDS Y

our best place to start planning a trip is with the Maine Island Trail Association (MITA) –mita.org. MITA is a membership organization that oversees the 375-mile Maine Island Trail – a coastal waterway extending from Kittery to Cobscook Bay. It promotes safe, responsible, low-impact travel through the region. Members receive access to a valuable guide and trail resource (updated annually, and available in print and via phone app), while playing a vital role in helping MITA achieve its island conservation and stewardship goals.

A number of outfitters can provide boats, and camping gear. For those who have not paddled in this area before, it’s recommended to go with a group or a guide as strong currents, tides, fog and changing weather can turn a calm sunny day into a dangerous situation. Maine Association of Sea Kayak Guides and Instructors (MASKGI) is a good resource to find a guide.

Nautical By Nature is a small guide service that offers half-day to multi-day tours in Penobscot Bay, Merchant Row and Frenchman Bay with a focus on a Leave No Trace and environmental ethic. Rates start at $375 for a guide and go to $600 a day for guide and gear for the first person, and $200 a day per person for additional people after that. Osprey’s Echo Sea Kayaking also offers overnight tours for $300 to $350. For each outfitter you bring your own camping gear and food.

Stonington Paddle, like the others, will also help plan and tailor a multiday trip and outfit you with the kayaking gear you need.

If you are going it on your own, make sure you are equipped with the following: PFDs (with whistles), wetsuits and comfortable footwear for being in an out of the boat and water. Nautical chart sand compass, cell phone, marine/weather/VHF radio, and a GPS device. A spare paddle, containers for 10 gallons of water. A first aid kit and training in wilderness first aid. A kit for packing and disposing of human waste. A list of contacts for people with boats readily available in case of an emergency. Be sure to leave your itinerary with someone and have a regular check-in plan.

LEVELING THE PLAYING FIELDS

FROM THE NEWLY MINTED TRAIL NETWORK THE DRIVING RANGE TO A PROPOSED NEW TRAIL SYSTEM AT SUGARBUSH, THERE’S A MOVE TO MAKE MOUNTAIN BIKE TRAILS ACCESSIBLE TO ALL RIDERS.

BY LISA LYNN |

BY MARK CLEMENT AND JEB WALLACE-BRODEUR

Shaun Roberts fires out of The Cannon on two wheels and Greg Durso goes around on three at Hot Dogger at The Driving Range. Photo by Mark Clement

PHOTOS

If you’re headed north toward Burlington on Route 2 or I89, just before you get to Bolton, glance off to your right. There, near the solar arrays is a 53-car parking lot and a kiosk. The land was once a driving range owned by a member of the DesLauriers family, the founders and current owners of Bolton Valley Resort.

In the lot, you might find UCI World Cup downhiller Adam Morse and fourtime Collegiate National champ and World Cup vet Phil Kmetz swapping stories about sending The Diving Board, a massive ledge on Skidmarks.

You might also find Greg Durso, Senior Director of Programs for the Kelly Brush Foundation and photographer Louis Arévalo unloading their three-wheel adaptive mountain bikes. This month Berne Broudy, the board president of Richmond Mountain Trails and filmmaker Tyler WilkinsonRay will also be there documenting the scene at The Driving Range, Vermont’s newest mountain bike network.

In July, the last of the planned trails for The Driving Range, the first known trail network to be built from the ground up with universal design (meaning all trails can be accessed by adaptive mountain bikes) was completed.

Wilkinson-Ray’s film, tentatively titled “Driven,” will tell the stories of several of Vermont’s adaptive mountain bikers and how The Driving Range and other trail networks around Vermont are expanding their options. He hopes it will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next year.

“Man, coming back here I got a lot of FOMO,” says Wilkinson-Ray. He’s a Richmond native who has made films such as “2.5 Million” about Aaron Rice’s quest to break the record skiing uphill and “Ascend: Reframing Disability in the Outdoors” and now lives in Aspen, Colo.

“When I was growing up here, it was all rake and ride trails. What’s going on here in Vermont in terms of adaptive trail building and even just trail building -- it’s some of the biggest in the country,” he says. “I mean, go to downtown Richmond and everyone’s on a bike – I can see it getting a little like Moab,” he says.

“But there’s a difference here and that’s that most of what’s going on here is about grassroots and volunteers. In Aspen, someone writes a check and the trails get built by pros. Here, the people who are riding them are out building them,” he continues.

That is especially true of how The Driving Range, completed this past July, came to be.

WHAT DROVE THE DRIVING RANGE

The inspiration for making the network universally accessible came during a ride that Broudy and Durso were on in the Hinesburg Town Forest in 2020.

Durso, who injured his spinal cord while sledding on the slopes of Okemo, moved to Vermont five years ago. He had already received two grants from the Burlington-based Kelly Brush Foundation and ended up working for them. “A big part of my moving here was to be more involved with outdoor recreation,” he says. Since

then, as a program director for Kelly Brush Foundation, he has worked with Vermont Adaptive and the Vermont Mountain Bike Association to make trails around the state adaptive-bike friendly.

Durso is an expert rider who has competed in the Ironman in a wheelchair. That day in the Hinesburg Town Forest he had no trouble keeping up or even leading the pack. Except when it came to bridges; they were just barely wide enough for his threewheeled adaptive bike. “Berne was

wide enough for a

was an

like ‘This is ridiculous. There are some things we can do to make these trails better.’ She then came back to me and said: ‘We want to make our new network adaptive-friendly,’ and asked if I wanted to be involved. How could I say no? Every time I ride a trail I think about how I could make it more universal. The Driving Range seemed like a really cool opportunity to bring the community together and to do something different but at the same time to normalize adaptive mountain biking.”

Making bridges

three-wheel adaptive bike

impetus for creating The Driving Range. Greg Durso, here on Brushfire, shows why. Photo by Mark Clement

As Durso, noted, it doesn’t take too much to make trails that any bike can handle.

“When you start thinking about universal design, what does that look like?” Durso asks. “A lot of it is just an exaggerated version of the trails that already exist. But trail width is a big thing. Most adaptive mountain bikes are between 28 to 38 inches wide. So that means making sure that you have a trail that can fit those bikes – we’re not talking about a highway, but the trail needs to be wider. And then the other big thing is slope or off-camber. Just how off-camber is a trail? On a two-wheel bike you can kind of carve and move your body inside. But on a three-wheeled trike, if the trail is too off camber, we will flip over or roll over.

“And if there are obstacles such as a tree root or a rock or a bench cut, I can’t just stand up and walk around it. I have to be able to physically move through the whole trail without having to get out of my bike,” he says.

There’s also the turn radius –adaptive trikes have longer frames, and the landing areas to consider. Finally,

there are basic essentials for a network: handicapped parking spots where a car or van won’t get blocked in and restrooms or Port-A-Potties that are also accessible.

While the Richmond area has trail networks such as those at Cochran’s and Chamberlain Hill, according to Bec Wojtecki, the executive director of Richmond Mountain Trails, few of

the trails, if any, were designed to be adaptive-friendly.

As they came to think about a new network, the Richmond Mountain Trails board members realized that with some forethought, the Driving Range could be the first in the nation to be designed, from the ground-up, to have every trail be universally accessible. As board president Berne Broudy noted: “I’d never

ridden with an adaptive rider before I met Greg and then I started talking with Rob Galloway and the idea came up to make this new trail system a place where anyone could show up and know that every trail can handle an adaptive bike.” Galloway, a RMT board member, is one of the few BICP Level 2 adaptive mountain bike instructors in the country.

The land, a 256-acre parcel owned by East Cote LLC and managed by Lindsay DesLauriers helped form the concept for the network. “Part of it is we were constrained by the steepness of the land, but we decided to tackle the misconception that to be adaptive, something needs to be a green trail, and also that if something is adaptive friendly, that it doesn’t mean that it’s not fun for other riders,” said Broudy.

Work began in 2022. By August 2023 when the first trails opened, volunteers had put in more than 4,000 hours of work building 4 miles of the proposed network. A Gofundme page raised nearly $34,000.

Professional builders Lepesqueur & Daughters came to machine-build

Greg Durso, above in blue, with two two-wheelers at The Driving Range and below, catching up with Matt Tilford at the parking area. "We want to normalize adaptive riding," says Durso. Photos by Mark Clement

Heavy Duty and Double Bogey. Zac Freeman of Apex built Brushfire and Dana Cabrera of Mountain Trailworx built Hot Dogger. All told, Wojtecki estimates more than $270,000 was raised through donations and grants to fund the work. But volunteers did much of the work. “I think one of the highlights of the year for us has been that we continue to have nearly 25 people showing up every week at trail nights to volunteer,” said Wojtecki.

Among them were pro rider and YouTube “Skills with Phil” publisher Phil Kmetz and his wife Hailey, who started work on a trail they named Skidmarks. “We wanted to build a British Columbia-inspired black diamond-level trail with optional pro line and double black options,” Kmetz noted on his web page.

He documented the build on his YouTube channel, including carving out one of the biggest ledge drops on a Vermont trail map, a.k.a. The Diving Board. “Phil and Hailey hosted a grand opening of that trail in July, there were probably 150 people at that event,” Broudy says. “I talked to people from Quebec, New York, Maine and New Hampshire who came to ride it.”

One of the things Durso loves about The Driving Range is that it isn’t easy, leaving room for him and other riders to progress. He’s ridden just about every trail and every section, with the exception (so far) of The Diving Board. “If you ride every trail, it’s about 8.1 miles now,” notes Broudy.

Says Durso, “In some sections we spent 76 hours rock hammering a slab so we could ride it on our bikes, instead of doing a go-around. Heavy Duty has two rock slabs that are interesting and Double Bogey also has a big rock slab that’s definitely tricky and then there are some bridges on Brushfire,” he says. But the trails are only a part of the draw for him. “Perhaps the best thing is that now when I go to ride, there’s a posse of four or five us on adaptive bikes who can meet up at the parking lot at the Driving Range,” he says. “That’s really important not just for the camaraderie but because we can all help each other.“

GROWING THE TRAILS, GROWING THE COMMUNITY.

Ask Durso just how many adaptive riders he knows in the greater Burlington area and he’ll tick some names off. “Probably about 10,” he figures, adding “and there are at least three people I know who recently moved here, in part for the trails and adaptive riding. Heck, I moved here in part for the riding,” he says.

Louis Arevelo is one of the names

Many of the trails at Kingdom Trails Network have been made accessible to all bikes and adaptive clinics are often held there.

Durso mentions. A photographer whose work has appeared in Backcountry and many other national magazines, Arévalo was a fixture in the Utah backcountry scene. While on

a skiing shoot in 2020, he had a bad fall that left him severely injured and paralyzed from the waist down. In April 2024, the Utah native moved to Essex Junction, Vt. “My wife is from

here and I’d been riding here in the summers since 2013,” he says.

“What I found coming back was that people have just been remarkably welcoming here. I went to my first

Photo Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

community VMBA day last spring in Stowe not knowing if things were going to be awkward or if I was going to be the only guy in a wheelchair. I hadn’t even parked when Felicia and Sarah from Vermont Adaptive came up and said “Hey Louis and helped me park and get my bike out. Then I ran into my friend Maggie, then Greg Durso showed up. It’s just a welcoming place,” he says.

On August 1, Arévalo plans to join Durso and a host of athletes at an event at Killington put on by the Kelly Brush Foundation, Vermont Adaptive and the High Fives Foundation for International Adaptive Activity Day. “We just call it Have-A-Day – it’s just a chance for us all to hang out and ride the trails,” he says.

While The Driving Range may have become a media darling the past two years, the Kelly Brush Foundation, Vermont Adaptive and the Vermont Mountain Bike Association have been working for years to make trail systems around the state more accessible to people with disabilities of all types. They have done everything from widening and retrofitting trails, to putting on training clinics, to providing scholarships and bikes and gear for those who need them.

“What’s unique about Vermont is that we have this trifecta of

organizations that are working on all aspects of making riding accessible,” says Nick Bennette, the executive director of the Vermont Mountain Bike Association. “VMBA and the chapters work on making the trails accessible, the Kelly Brush Foundation has grants to help make bikes available (and they are expensive!) and Vermont Adaptive puts on the programming that helps people learn to use them and provides environments so people can progress.”

Kenzie Fuqua of VMBA notes that there are nearly 110 miles of trails in the state that have been assessed as adaptive-friendly, but notes that only includes the chapter-maintained trails and does not include ski area downhill trails such as those at Stratton, Killington or Burke Mountain Resort.

For the past few years, Vermont Adaptive has also helped organize an adaptive downhill race during the annual Fox US Open at Killington.

Durso, a regular on the podium at the event, is expected to race again this year.

As Durso notes: “With the bikes and technology getting better, we’re seeing more and more demand for adaptive mountain bikes. I’d say nearly 30 percent of our KBF grant applications now are for adaptive mountain bikes.” The bikes can cost between $15,000 and $25,000 and often have to be tailored to a rider’s needs.

And as Durso notes, if you are a serious rider, you will need a quiver just as many riders have cross-country, downhill and gravel bikes. Durso’s three bikes, for instance include a full-suspension hand-pedaled ReActive Adaptations Hammerhead hybrid, a fully-electric Bowhead Reach Adventure E-Bike and a new Bowhead RX pedalbike.

BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME?

As the bikes and the trails have improved for adaptive riders, the demand for them has also grown. “Our mountain bike program has started to just explode,” says Jeff Alexander of Vermont Adaptive. “In 2023 Vermont Adaptive had 5,336 outings and that was a record,” says Alexander– an ‘outing’ being any experience with a Vermont Adaptive athlete in any sport.

A VMBA Community Day at Cady Hill in Stowe last May was a chance for (top, left to right) Felicia Fowler, Greg Durso, Sarah Keith, Louis Arévalo, Maggie Gettys, and Cheryl Brodowski to ride together. Below, Maggie Gettys leads Louis Arévalo on one of the trails optimized for adaptive riding.

Photos by Jeb Wallace-Brodeur

“As of late July, already this year we are close to 5,000 outings.” He estimates there were 800 participants, but notes that not all are adaptive mountain bikers.

The three organizations have also been working together on a trail assessment program. Chapters of VMBA register to get assessed, “We then go out with our riders or someone from Kelly Brush Foundation and figure out what needs to be done to the trails,” says Alexander. The trails are then marked and coded so that a search on the VMBA website can show what networks are set up for adaptive riding and which trails are accessible.

Alexander also notes, “Our new grant from VOREC (the Vermont

Outdoor Recreation Economic Collaborative) is going to help us create a web-based hub that will help people with disabilities find trails that are adaptive-friendly.”

In May, the state awarded the $644,437 grant to the Vermont Trails and Greenways Council “in partnership with Vermont Adaptive, Northern Forest Canoe Trail, Vermont Mountain Bike Association, Upper Valley Trails Alliance, and Community Geo, to develop a statewide trail accessibility hub and complete detailed trail assessments in order to promote and share information about trail access across the state.”

Alexander is also excited about a proposed new downhill trail network

at Sugarbush. “We’ve been working with them for several years on that project,” he says. The proposed new network will include 10.9 miles of trails accessed from the Gate House lift at the Lincoln Peak base. The trails, beginner and intermediate freeride and tech trails, will be in addition to the existing and more difficult lift-served trails at Lincoln Peak. “With our Vermont Adaptive base right here at Mt. Ellen, it’s a great opportunity to get more people out riding,” he says.

The other bright spot, Alexander notes: “Just about every trail builder in the state has been on our adaptive bikes. They now understand what it means to build a universally accessible trail and I think you are going to see

more and more new trails being built so anyone and everyone can ride them.”

And if you build it, will they come?

Ask Nick Bennette of VMBA how many adaptive mountain bikers there are in Vermont and his quick answer is “Not enough. “

He explains: “If we keep building these trails and the programs to help people access them, we will see more people with disabilities getting out and and enjoying the trails, as we all do.”

For more on adaptive mountain biking resources visit VermontAdaptive. org; kellybrushfoundation.org, and VMBA.org.

At ski resorts such as Burke Mountain Resort (above) trails are being optimized for downhill riders like Durso (above). At Killington, the FOX U.S. Open now has an adaptive downhill race. Photo Jeb Wallace-Brodeaur

GEAR

BACK TO SUMMER

SUMMER HOODIES

We love burrowing into hoodies when it is cool, but Royal Robbins’ Amp Lite Hoodie ($80) is great for summer and fall. The Amp Lite material is light, quick-drying and breatheable. It also wicks moisture and offers some wind and sun protection. The hoodie comes in a variety of colors in both men’s and women’s sizes.

SEE-THROUGH MIRRORS

Costa, which specializes in Polarized glasses that are ideal for seeing what’s below that lake or river surface, unveiled

FORGET BACK TO SCHOOL, NOW’S THE TIME TO MAKE THE MOST OF SUMMER WITH THESE ESSENTIAL ITEMS.

a new lens this year which will appear in more than 20 styles of glasses, including the Spearo XL ($292), shown here. The Costa 580G Gold Mirror is rose base lens, designed with a lighter Visible Light Transmission (VLT), polarized and 580 color-enhanced. That means it will help you see in a variety of lighting conditions (sunshine to overcast) when out on the water.

WALK ON WATER

Most water shoes try to do all of the above: be breathable, comfortable and drain easily; have some arch support

and good grip and protect your feet. But it’s rare to find one model that does all those things. The XTRATUF Kiata Drift ($80) is the shoe that will keep your feet protected while you are hiking that rocky trail that leads to a secret swimming hole. The TUFgrip outsole will grip as you launch off the slippery rocks or scramble up the riverbed. And the 3D knit uppers will dry out quickly after you swim to shore. Plus, these shoes (which come in river rock and dark forest grays and greens for men’s and pastels such as coral and seafoam for women) look sharp enough to wear to the brew pub after.

HATS OFF TO VT STATE PARKS

The Vermont headwear brand Skida has no shortage of cute hats for winter. This summer, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of Vermont State Parks Skida launches a Elmore line of forest-themed caps, headbands, bandanas and more. A portion of the sales of products such as the Skida Alpine Hat ($38) will go to the non-profit Vermont Parks Forever to help ensure Vermont’s 55 parks see it through the next 100 years.

Skida Alpine hat

XTRATUF Kiata Drift

Costa Spearo XL

Royal Robbins

Amp Lite Hoodie

FEATURED ATHLETE

THE OUTRIGGER CANOE COACH

Name: Tom Atkins Age: 48

Wife: Jena

Lives in: Essex and New Zealand

Primary Sport: Outrigger canoe

Occupation: High school teacher

Tom Atkins was introduced to outrigger canoes in Rarotonga, one of the South Pacific's Cook Islands, in 2007. Since then, he has brought his love of the boat to Vermont, founding the Lake Champlain Downwind Paddlers. Outrigger canoes are designed for one, two, three, four, six, or even twelve rowers. Their signature features are lateral supports called outriggers which are attached to the main hull. By Phyl Newbeck

What took you to Rarotonga?

In 2007 I took a step - a stroke actuallythat significantly altered the direction of my life. My family and I had just moved to Rarotonga, the main island in the Cook Islands. I had a two-year teaching contract as the Head of Department of English at the local high school. Rarotonga, or The Rock as the locals refer to it, is a tiny dot, less than 20 miles in circumference, in the middle of the South Pacific. It’s approximately 2,000 miles from Auckland, New Zealand and 20 degrees south of the equator. The local population is about 14,000 people who live in small villages. There are a few resorts, some restaurants and bars, a mountain in the middle of the island, a ring road, beautiful beaches, a lagoon, a reef, and thousands of miles of open ocean. Visitors either love it or are unimpressed. It’s a make-your-own-fun destination and most of that fun exists in the ocean.

How did you start paddling?

I tried Oe Vaka (the Cook Island word for outrigger canoeing) and was hooked from the very first stroke. It was so liberating to be off The Rock out in the deep blue Pacific. Everyone was so happy and welcoming. I attributed that to the culture of the Rarotongan islanders and decided that I had found my people. What I’ve realized with over 20,000 kilometers of paddling and thousands of interactions with paddlers

around the world is that it is a cultural thing. It’s not specific to Rarotonga, but a paddling thing. Paddling is about connection and sharing. There is stoke from the stroke. Paddlers love to share that with others the world over.

What happened when the twoyear contract was up?

Paddling had become an important part of my life and the big deciding factor of where to live when I moved back to New Zealand was the paddling opportunities. On my first day at my new teaching job in Tauranga, which is a coastal city on the North Island of New Zealand, I was approached by the Teacher in Charge of Waka Ama (the New Zealand term for the sport’s coach). They needed a coach, so I took on that role and then became Teacher in Charge of Waka Ama at Tauranga Boys’ College from 2009 to 2021.

How does the outrigger fit into the Maori culture?

Outrigger paddling is rooted in New Zealand culture. The boats have been used for coastal travel throughout the Pacific for thousands of years. When Māori migrated south to New Zealand from Rarotonga one of the taonga (treasures) they took with them was their knowledge of waka building. Waka ama began to grow as a sport in New Zealand in the 1990s starting on the North Island. I grew up on the South Island and it was not on my radar until my Rarotongan adventure, but after that I was happy to share my love of the sport with hundreds of young men at the school as well as serving as coach of the Tauranga Moana Outrigger Canoe Club.

and I was just excited to be sharing the stoke here in Vermont.

How is Lake Champlain for outriggers?

How did you end up in Vermont?

My mother was from upstate New York, but she moved to New Zealand to teach and then met my father, fell in love, and stayed. My connection to Vermont goes back to my senior year of high school in 1994. During that year I was living with my aunt and uncle and having the experience of American high school in Vermont and that’s when I met Jena. Distance and maturity were barriers to our relationship then and despite Jena making the move to college in New Zealand for a year, we parted ways. Over twenty years later we came to our senses and reconnected. We got married last summer on our property in Essex. We now spend six months here and six months in New Zealand.

When did you start paddling here?

One of the sacrifices I thought I’d be making when I started summering in Vermont was not paddling. The words ‘Green Mountain State’ conjure up images of people skiing, hiking, and mountain biking. In the summer of 2021, I began to long for water, so I joined some paddling forums on Facebook and found a picture of a two-person outrigger canoe on Lake Champlain. There were no captions, but I reached out to Blaine Martin who posted the picture.

That contact was the beginning of the Lake Champlain Downwind Paddlers. Blaine had bought the outrigger on a whim because it looked sleek and fast. He had never heard of outrigger paddling. We paddled together on a glassy Friday and made plans to try again the following week. Blaine was worried because the conditions were rough. The wind was blowing 20 knots and there were three-to-four-foot waves, but it turned out that Blaine had a blast,

It turns out that Lake Champlain is a special taonga when it comes to paddling. It is stunning when it is still and flat. Being out there in different light conditions and looking at the Green Mountains and the Adirondacks is spectacular. But when the wind blows the real fun begins. The Adirondacks produce a funneling effect that channels the westerlies into a south wind that blows right down the lake. We’ve had people come up from Boston and New York who have paddled in lots of places around the world and rate the downwind conditions here as up there with the best in the East. For skilled paddlers, 20 to 30 knots are the sweet spot. That produces three-to-sixfoot waves that can be surfed for tens of miles. A popular surf run is from Thompson’s Point to Leddy Beach. It’s nearly 20 miles of stoke.

Is there a big OC scene in the US?

The West Coast has a much bigger scene because of the Hawaiian influence, but the paddling is coming in this direction. There are a lot of paddlers in Florida and there are paddling clubs in Washington D.C., Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and at Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire. I think the sport is going to grow rapidly. Blaine’s addiction to paddling and my experience as a paddler and coach resulted in the formation of the Lake Champlain Downwind Paddlers in the summer of 2023. We started with a sixperson outrigger canoe (OC6). At our first launch on May 15 of last year out of Coates Island we had four and a half members but by the end of the season we had over 15 people coming out regularly on Tuesdays and Saturdays. They love it, which is no surprise to me.

How does the club work?

We’re not affiliated with any organization. People pay $100 for the summer but Blaine has forwarded most of the money. He’s been a philanthropist for the sport. We keep the boats at Coates Island Marina, and we launch from there, but we will often spot a car and drive so that we can paddle with the wind behind us. We frequently paddle out and back to Juniper Island from Leddy Beach because it lines up nicely with the south wind.

We purchased another OC6 during the winter and this season is just blowing up. Last Tuesday we had 17 paddlers using the two OC6s, Blaine’s

Atkins, with his outrigger canoe on Lake Champlain. Courtesy photo.

original OC2 and three OC1s. At this rate we’re going to need another boat. The likely next step is to run paddling opportunities on other nights.

This is not the first time a six-person outrigger canoe has been based on Lake Champlain. I learned that there was one in the early 1990s and some of those original paddlers have taken the opportunity to outrigger paddle again. It feels great to be bringing the stoke of the stroke back to Lake Champlain. We look forward to sharing it with many more. There is also a growing desire among club members to try racing.

Where are outrigger races held?

Blaine and I are heading to Gloucester in July to race the Blackburn Challenge, a 19-mile ocean race in our OC1s. There are races up and down the Eastern Seaboard including Boston, D.C., and on the Jersey shore. There are also races in Quebec and Toronto. The goal is to build competency in terms of the number of strong paddlers so we can do those races.

Some races are sprints and others are long distance. A sprint can be 500 or 1,500 meters. Long distance races are 20+ kilometers although there are

some that are 30km. Most are just shy of 20 miles. Some races are sited so that they will be downwinders. The race is scheduled when there is likely to be wind and designed so that you are going with the wind.

Last winter Blaine came to New Zealand and stayed with me so he could paddle. We took part in two really big races. One was a 20-mile downwind race on our OC1s, and another was close to 30 miles in an OC6.

Where else have you competed?

I got into competing in 2007 when I was in the Cook Islands. I was Rookie of the Year in my first season and managed to break into the top team in my second year. They host a large, week-long international race with people coming from New Zealand, Tahiti, and Hawaii. My six-person outrigger placed second. I’ve qualified for the World Sprint Competition in Australia, but I didn’t end up going. I’ve also won a couple of

Vacation Rental Directory

This picture-perfect classic Vermont 2-bedroom, 1-bath cabin sits in a quiet valley not far from the slopes and backs up to miles of trails that are great for hiking or backcountry skiing. Just 15 minutes to the Trapp Family Lodge, town and Stowe Mountain Resort. airbnb.com/h/ stowe-vt-cabin-with-hot-tub

MIDDLEBURY

On gorgeous Lake Dunmore, this freshly-renovated 2-bedroom, 2-bath cottage sleeps 6, is central to great skiing at Brandon Gap, Killington, Pico, Middlebury Snow Bowl and Rikert Nordic Center. Yearround, skate, XC ski or swim right out your front door. airbnb.com/h/ lake-dunmore-cottage

medals in long distance and national titles with my New Zealand OC6 teammates.

Why do you prefer outrigger canoes to other kinds of watercraft?

I really like the connection with the water. It’s really in tune with the feedback of the stroke and the connection you’re making. I also like the team aspect of the six-person canoe. It’s been a really great place to meet people from around the world. My best friends are people I met through paddling.

In Rarotonga I thought the great vibe was due to their culture, but I think it’s really the culture of outrigger paddling. It’s a very welcoming community. We had a visitor from Florida this year and she appreciated that she could paddle with us and invited us to join her in Florida. There is an openness to the sport. People in the U.S. use the Hawaiian word ohana which means family. It seems to be something that is passed through the sport. It might come from the way people feel on the water.

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COZY KILLINGTON CHALET ON MTN. ROAD

This cozy retreat is just one mile from main base areas and within walking distance to over a dozen restaurants and bars. It has a wood-burning fireplace, washer/dryer, porch, t.v., and wifi. This 2-bedroom, 1-bath, sleeps 4 people and will take dogs. vrbo.com/650909 or email rent.killington@gmail.com

STOCKBRIDGE YURT ON 40 FOREST ACRES

Ideal for nature enthusiasts. the yurt (or wall tent, too) is 4 miles from excellent hiking on the LT/AT. Near mountain biking at Killington, Rochester, and Randolph and the gorgeous White River. Pack it in and out, leave no trace. This is for folks looking for a quiet and peaceful experience.

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CLASSIC STOWE CABIN WITH HOT TUB

COTTAGE ON LAKE DUNMORE

Jena and Tom Atkins spend their summers in Vermont, winters in New Zealand. Courtesy Tom Atkins.

VERMONT SPORTS

LISTING YOUR EVENT IN THIS CALENDAR IS FREE AND EASY. VISIT VTSPORTS.COM/SUBMIT-AN-EVENT OR E-MAIL EDITOR@VTSPORTS.

COM. ALL AREA CODES ARE 802. ALL LOCATIONS ARE IN VERMONT, UNLESS NOTED. FEATURED EVENTS, IN YELLOW, PAY A NOMINAL FEE.

RUNNING & HIKING

AUGUST

3 | Paine Mountain Summit Race, Northfield. The Saturday afternoon 7-plusmile race will start and finish at the base of Paine Mountain. Run moderate to challenging single-track on wooded and grassy trails to the summit of Paine at 2,408 feet and back down. Open to all levels with awards for top 3 overall and in age divisions. norwich.edu/shaw

3 | The Fairfax Egg Run, Fairfax There are multiple race options including the 5K run, 5K walk, 10K run, and a kids fun run for those 12 years old and under. This beautiful course includes gentle rolling hills and offers views of the Lamoille River. After the race enjoy a made-to-order omelet featuring locally sourced ingredients. fairfaxrecreation.com

3 | GMAA Red Rocks 5K, Burlington A 5k on the dirt and gravel trails of Red Rocks Park. with moderate hills through woods.This race benefits the GMAA scholarship for local scholar-athletes. gmaa.run

10 | Slate Valley Scramble, Poultney Run this fun 8K or half-marathon trail race starting from Slate Valley Trails' Fairgrounds. Also a free kids' fun run. slatevalleytrails.org

10 | Kingdom Heritage Trail Ramble

The Kingdom Heritage Trail system features a continuous ~20 mile footpath (and side trails) across former Champion International Paper timberlands in the far reaches of Vermont's Northeast Kingdom. This event offers the unique opportunity to challenge yourself to complete this "footpath" in a day, fully supported. 22 miles and 4,300 ft of elevation of gain and loss over some of the most beautiful terrain you could experience in the north east. ultrasignup.com/register. aspx?did=112848

10 | CornFest 5K, Swanton A thrilling run on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail with a 1 pm. start. Finish your afternoon surrounded by the vibrant energy of Swanton Recreations' 2nd annual Corn Festival. swantonvt.myrec. com/

RACE & EVENT GUIDE

10 | Cate Farm Tomato Trot 5K, Plainfield. A scenic trail run/walk through farm fields and on woods roads. The first kilometer snakes along the Winooski River and is relatively flat; the rest of the run is over small rolling hills. Each runner/walker will receive a pound of Cate Farm tomatoes upon finishing. catefarm.com.

16 | Last Mile Run/Walk, Randolph

The 5K run and walks begin at 6 p.m. with registration starting at 4:30 p.m. at Gifford Medical Center. Registration is $25 per person. Participants are encouraged to create teams with friends and family. giffordhealthcare.org/lastmile/

14 | Brain Freezer 5K, Burlington Lace up your running shoes and grab your spoons. The rules are simple: Challengers run half a 5k, stop to down a full pint of Vermont-made ice cream, then race to the finish. The race starts and ends at North Beach Park and follows the bike path along the shores of Lake Champlain. Racers will stop and eat pints at Water Works Park. runsignup.com/Race/VT/ Burlington/BF5K

18 | Mozo Double Up, Stowe This is not your average trail run. You will be going up or down most of the time, with zero opportunity to lose your focus. There are no-fall zones (meaning if you fall, serious injury or death may result), and quad-busting descents over some of the most technical terrain you can find. If you don't run hills, don't consider this race. If you do run hills, run more of them, and run them often. ironwoodadventureworks.com/mozo-doubleup

25 | Race to the Top of VT, Stowe Hikers, bikers, and runners from across the U.S. and Canada climb Mt. Mansfield, Vermont’s highest peak to benefit the Catamount Trail Association. The course ascends the historic Mansfield Toll Road. It is 4.3 miles in length, and has 2564 feet of elevation gain. rttovt.com

27 | Barre Heritage Fest Trail Run, Barre A 5K trail race on primarily single track trails through the historic Barre Granite Quarries. Terrain is wooded, rocky and lots of roots. Walkers are encouraged to participate. cvrunners.org

31-Sept. 1| Jay Peak Trail Fest, Jay A 2-day trail running event with 7 races. Races range from an epic kids trail race to what has been called, the hardest 50k in the East, the Jay Peak Ultra 53K. Choose from Three different 5k's (yes, you can run all 3) on Saturday or on Sunday, an 11,- 22-miler or the 53K ultra. JayPeakTrailRun.com

SEPTEMBER

5-7 | RAGNAR Trail, West Windsor

Gather your team of 8 and traverse 120-ish miles of scenic trail systems over three loops. You'll spend 2 days and 2 nights camping. When you're not out on the trails, you'll be exploring the Ragnar festivities and bonding with your teammates. runragnar.com

7 | Maple Leaf Half Marathon, & Kotler 5K, Manchester. Your run will take you from the downtown Manchester to picturesque village settings to country roads past farm lands back to the finish. Adding to the beauty, Vermont will be in the early stages of fall foliage. manchestervtmapleleaf.com

7 | Saucony Charlotte Covered Bridges Half Marathon, Charlotte There are no huge hills and the scenery is beautiful. Beginning and ending at picturesque Shelburne Beach, you wrun along dirt, gravel and paved roads featuring scenic views. The half marathon runs through the covered bridge twice. The 5K and 10K turn around before reaching the bridge. racevermont.com

8 | Westmore Mountain Challenge, Westmore Climbe Moose - Hor - PisgahHaystack - Bald 1 Day. Run, hike or climbe five mountains in a day over 26 miles. The Westmore Mountain Challenge is about landscapes, endurance and recreation, but it is also about community.northwoodscenter.org

29 | Vermont Ultra Run or Mountain Bike, West Windsor. Bike events include: Vermont 50 mile mountain bike race, women’s two-person mountain bike relay, over 60 two-person mountain bike relay, and a kids’ fun bike ride. This family-friendly event offers lots of kid centered activities such as a hay bale treasure hunt, the fun run, clowns, face painting and more! Proceeds benefit Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports. Vermont 50.com

28 | Fall Festival Fun Run, Montpelier. The festival begins at noon and the 1 mile fun run starts promptly at 1:00pm. Pick up bibs at the Onion River Outdoors tent on the State Street sidewalk. Same day registration will be from 11:30am to 12:30pm. onionriver.com

29 | Shelburne Farms 5k, Shelburne

The course is a combination of gravel paths, wooded and field trails, and dirt roads and it will take you from the Coach Barn, to the wood lot, out past a sugar house, fields, through the woods, and back around passed the Swiss Brown Cow barn and the historic Shelburne Inn. racevermont.com

OCTOBER

5 | Fly to Pie, Kingdom Marathon, Coventry

Run, bike or hike – 26.2, 17, 13.5, and 6 miles – Doin’ the dirt through the gut of the Kingdom at the height of Fall Foliage. We start at the airport in Coventry (or at the Irasburg Common for the 10K option) and finish at Parker Pie, West Glover. All the pizza you can eat, Hill Farmstead Beer on tap, some fine music. Kingdomgames.co

6 | 3nd Annual Three Peaks Mountain Race, Bolton Valley

Choose between the 10K or 25K race. Scenic vistas will greet you as you move up and down a combination of work roads, cross country trails, raw ski slope climbs and some newly built lift-accessed mountain bike trails. boltonvalley.com

6 | Middlebury Maple Run, Middlebury

The half marathon course promises scenic rolling hills into the farmlands around Middlebury and Weybridge with spectacular views of the Green Mountains and Middlebury College. Course is a mix of paved and gravel roads with a short stretch on a gravel trail. Run the full 13.1 miles or a 10K. There’s also a 3-mile fun run. middleburymaplerun.com

14 | North Face Race to the Summit, Stratton

Runners challenge themselves in a 2.18-mile race, climbing 2,003 vertical feet, up southern Vermont’s highest peak for prize money, awards and great views. Stratton.com

15 | Trapp Mountain Marathon, Stowe

A challenging half and full marathon distance trail run at beautiful Trapp Family Lodge. ironwoodadventureworks.com

19 | 29029 Everesting, Stratton

Summit Stratton 17 times, climbing 29,029 feet, the equivalent of summiting Mount Everest, and take the gondola down. Each hike up is 1.3 miles long and gains 1,750 vertical feet. Or enjoy the base camp village with bands, bonfires, luxury tipi tents, food and drink. stratton.com

20 | GMAA Champlain Islands

Marathon & Half Marathon, South Hero

The course is out and back on the west shore of South Hero; a land of farms, apple orchards, and summer cottages. The terrain is flat to rolling. The entire course is paved. The full marathon course is two out-and-backs of the half-marathon course. ABoston Marathon qualifier. gmaa.com

20 | Heady Trotter, Stowe

This fun 4-mile beer race starts and ends at the Alchemist Brewery in Stowe, VT. Participants can create teams and run with friends and family, or run individually. All runners ages 21 and over get a free beer at the finish. A fundraiser for Green Mountain Adaptive Sports. runsignup.com/Race/VT/Stowe/ HeadyTrotter4Miler

26 | Union Bank Field House Fall Half Marathon, 5K/10K

Beginning and ending at Shelburne Field House, the half marathon is a loop course in picturesque Shelburne, Vermont. You'll be running on a combination of dirt and back roads including a portion on the Meach Cove property, running past Shelburne Farms, and a stretch of Harbor Road with beautiful views of Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks. The 5K and 10K courses are both out-and-back courses that run along Harbor Road and back racevermont.com

27 | Autumn Onion, Monteplier

Are you ready for the best Halloween Costume Race in VT!? Join the fun and race through downtown Montpelier in your best Halloween costume. All ages and abilities are welcome! Race will start at 9am! onionriver.com

CYCLING

AUGUST

3 | Tour de Slate, Middletown Springs

Six different routes provide an enjoyable ride no matter what your level or experience. For avid road cyclists there is the metric century (100km, 63.4-mile) ride. Other choices include: a 36-mile route, a 25-mile route or a family ride (off road on a trail). There will also be a 40-mile and a 25-mile guided route with local elite gravel riders — all are welcome, they are “no drop” rides. Proceeds benefit Adult and Teen Challenge, VT . tourdeslate.org

3 | Mt. Ascutney Bicycle Hill Climb, West Windsor, Join in an ascent up one of the U.S.’s most iconic climbs!.The race takes place on a scenic state park road that’s completely closed to traffic. Compete head to head against some of the finest hill climbers on the East Coast and challenge yourself to conquer one of the hardest hills in the country. ascutneytrails.com

10 | Last Mile Ride, Randolph Choose road and gravel routes from 11 to 24 miles. Event=, begins at 9 a.m. with registration starting at 8:30 a.m at the Randolph Rec Field (30 Park St.). at the Randolph Recreation Field. giffordhealthcare. org/lastmile/

10 | Detoor, East Fairfield

Race or ride 35 or 75 miles of Northern Vermont's finest dirt for under $30! Entry includes one aid station and wood-fired pizza. bikereg.com/detoor

24 | Vermont Overland, Ascutney Ride 55-mile (distances fluctuate based on years/course) on dirt roads featuring close to 7,000 feet of climbing, eight sectors of Class 4 Roads (unmaintained ancient public thr ough-ways), two sag stops, a magnificently scenic route and an awesome party afterwards. It’s the ultimate overland adventure ride. Open dirt roads, amazing scenery and an epic course unlike any you’ve ever ridden before. vermontoverland.com

SEPTEMBER

Aug. 30 Sept-2 |Green Mountain Stage Race, Vermont

Four stages of great racing return once again this year. These include the Warren time trial, the Randolph circuit race, the Bioracer Mad River road and the Richard Tom Foundation Burlington Criterium. The GMSR's final stage takes place on one of the best and most exciting criterium courses in North America with a cobbled section, elevation changes and 6 challenging turns in beautiful downtown Burlington, overlooking Lake Champlain. gmsr.info/

7 | 19th Kelly Brush Ride, Middlebury Vermont's own Kelly Brush Foundation is excited to announce the 19th Annual Kelly Brush Ride powered by Union Mutual will be on Saturday, September 7! The day will be jam-packed with fun-filled activities kicking off with a gorgeous bike ride through the Champlain Valley and ending with delicious local food, cold brews, prizes, and live music. Join us in person at Middlebury College and ride one of our fully supported road routes (10, 20, 50, or 100 miles), or our 32-mile gravel ride. kbf.akaraisin.com/ ui/2024kellybrushride

15 | 16th Annual Tour de Farms, Shoreham The Tour starts at the Shoreham Green, and finishes there with Shoreham’s Apple Fest - save your appetite to enjoy pulled pork, apple cider and apple pie! Rain or shine. enjoy panoramic views and beautiful back roads while visiting local farms. Most farm stops along the way will have multiple food producers who will offer you a taste of something they are known for. Bring cash to purchase products along the way. A farm van delivers your purchases to the finish. ! Choose from a 10-mile ride (or a 30-mile ride. Much of the course is along dirt and/or gravel roads. acornvt.org/tourdefarms

26-29 | Fox US Open, Killington Professional and amateur mountain bikers from around the world compete in the Open Class Downhill for one of the largest cash purses in racing, and as always, the Fox US

Open also offers amateur racing classes in Downhill and Dual Slalom. Also a Next Gen Youth and Best Whip contest. killington.com

29 | Vermont 50 Mountain Bike or Ultra Run, West Windsor. Bike events include: Vermont 50 mile mountain bike race, women’s two-person mountain bike relay, over 60 twoperson mountain bike relay, and a kids’ fun bike ride. This family-friendly event offers lots of kid centered activities such as a hay bale treasure hunt, the fun run, clowns, face painting and more! Proceeds benefit Vermont Adaptive Ski and Sports. Vermont 50.com

28 | Peacham Fall Fondo, Peacham Ride 50 miles, with the option to finish the ride at 25 miles at the Peacham Library pie stop (half of the figure-8). Included is a postride meal of choice, beer/cider/NA drink and a pair of custom Peacham Fall Fondo socks. peachamfallfondo.com

OCTOBER

5 | Grafton Gran Fondo, Grafton Beautiful, challenging, and inspiring, the Gran Fondo traverses 97 miles of scenic outhern Vermont in peak Fall foliage beginning and ending at the idyllic Grafton Trails & Outdoor Center. With nearly 7,800 feet of climbing, it includes ascents near Mt. Snow, Stratton, and Okemo, and picturesque sights along Vermont's scenic byway, Rt-100. graftongranfondo.com

MULTI SPORT & OTHER

AUGUST

2-11 | NEK Swim Week, Northeast Kingdom Lakes

NEWK Swim Week involves swimming 8 lakes over the course of 9 days, fortotal 46-60 miles. Swim one. Swim several. Swim them all. Aug, 3, Crystal 5 miles ; Aug. 4., Island Pond, 4 miles; Aug. 5, Massawippi, 9 miles; Aug. 6, Lake Seymour, 6.2 miles; Aug. 7, Echo Lake, 6K or 12K; Aug. 8, Lake Memphremagog, 6.5 or 12 miles; Aug. 10 Lake Willoughby, 10 miles; Aug. 11, Caspian, 3 miles. kingdomgames.co

t4 | Lake Champlain Dragon Boat Festival, Burlington

The Festival is a charity event that supports cancer survivors in our local community, including Dragonheart Vermont and a pledge partner–in 2024 Osher Integrative Oncology at UVM Cancer Center. We have three divisions for racing: Community Teams, Breast Cancer Paddler teams, and Sport teams. secure. dragonheartvermont.org/event/lcdbf2024/E

17 | River of Light, Colchester Full Moon Paddle on the Winooski River. Meet at the Heineberg Bridge Access (on the Colchester side of the Rt 127 bridge over the Winooski River) at 7:00 PM. Participants leave their boats and drive their cars to the Colchester

Point Fishing Access. Please note: there is no shuttle service provided at this event. Participants are responsible for self-shuttling. Everyone will launch at sunset and paddle the 2.5 miles to Lake Champlain as the full moon rises. All paddlers must wear a properly fitted PFD. All paddlers must be facing forward or in the case of a row boat, there must be a passenger in the bow, facing forward. Every boat MUST have lighting for the safety of all participants. winooskiriver.org/river-of-light

18| Vermont Sun Triathlon, Salisbury Race a 600-yard swim, then a 14-mile bike and a 3.1-mile run in this USAT State Championship Race. Race starts at Branbury State Park and course runs by beautiful Lake Dunmore. Awards for top 3, age group, top 3 and relay teams. vermontsuntriathlonseries. com

30 - Sept. 1 | Kingdom Climbing Weekend, Averill

Quimby Country hosts climbers for an inclusive weekend just a short distance from Black Mountain, Vermont’s premiere crack climbing destination. The weekend includes accommodation and food for up to 40 climbers in charming rustic cottages on the shores of Forest Lake and Great Averill. Immerse yourself in the vibrant climbing community, forge new bonds, and tackle the multitude of top-tier routes and join us in celebrating CRAG-VT’s recent designation as the climbing Recreation Corridor Manager for Black Mountain. https://quimbycountry. com/kingdom-climbing-weekend/

SEPTEMBER

14-15 | Spartan Vermont, Killington Welcome to where the Spartan Race was born; and that means anything goes. Death MarchA race where Spartan's wear their DNF's with pride. Grueling climbs, unpredictable weather and the infamous death march serve the ultimate testing ground. race.spartan.com/ en/races/killington-vermont

19 | Discraft’s Green Mountain Championship, Smugglers’ Notch Since 2013, this disc golf championship has swiftly gained prominence with elite disc golfers. Having attained high-level PDGA sanctioning, it officially joined the inaugural Disc Golf Pro Tour in 2016, serving as the culmination of the regular season and the commencement of the Tour Championship. smuggs.com

Ethan Allen Biathlon Club

2024 Summer Race Series

DATES July 11, 18, 25, August 8, 15, 22

Ethan Allen Rd., Jericho, VT TIMES WHERE

5:00 pm - Mandatory Safety Clinic

5:30 to 6:00 pm - Zeroing 6:10 pm - Race Start

Ethan Allen Biathlon Club

BATTENKILL BICYCLES 1

99 Bonnet St.,  Manchester Ctr, VT

802-362-2734 | battenkillbicycles.com

IKE SHOPS

AROUND THE REGION

Manchester's bicycle shop since 1972, Battenkill Bicycles is a Trek and Specialized dealer offering advice and sales to meet all your cycling needs. The service department offers tune-ups and repairs for all brands. Come rent a bike or get information about group rides. Battenkill Bicycles is the number one e-bike seller in southern Vermont and an authorized e-bike service center.

BERKSHIRE OUTFITTERS

RR 8, 169 Grove St., Adams, MA 413-743-5900 | berkout@bcn.net

A full-service bike shop at the base of the Mt. Greylock State Reservation. We also border a beautiful 12-mile paved rail trail. We carry Jamis, Rocky Mountain and G.T. We offer sales, repairs and rentals for the rail trail.

3

BOOTLEGGER BIKES

60 Main St. Jeffersonville, VT 802-6448370 & at 82 Main St., St. Albans. 802.782.8747 bootleggerbikes.com

A full-service shop near Smugglers' Notch and a new shop in St. Albans. We offer new, used and custom bikes as well as custom-built wheels for mountain, road, gravel, fat bikes, bikepacking and touring. Rentals offered at our Cambridge Junction shop on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail. Bikes are a passion here.

4 THE BOOT PRO

44 Pond St. Ludlow, VT

802-228-2776 thebootpro.net

A full-service bike and ski shop staffed for sales & service of mountain and gravel bikes, E-bikes, kid’s bikes. Rentals: Mountain & E-bikes. Guided rides: Mountain bike & gravel. Wide selection of clothing & accessories. Level-2 Specialized certified E-bike technicians. On the corner of the Okemo Access Rd.

BURROWS SPORTS 5

105 Main St. Brattleboro, VT 05301

802-254-9430  | burrowsports.com

There’s no off-season for sports in Vermont! Burrows Sports provides year-round sporting goods, services and repairs in Brattleboro, VT and surrounding areas. For 90 years, we’ve taken a personalized, small-town approach to providing our customers with the equipment they need to fully enjoy the area - skis, snowboards, tennis, bicycles, e-bikes, cargo bikes, running gear, skates, and all the accessories! Brands you can trust from Cannondale, Bianchi, Trek, Diamondback, GT, K2, Rossignol, Rome, Saucony, Salomon, POC, Darn Tough, Skida, Turtle Fur & Vermont Glove.

CHUCK’S BIKES

45 Bridge St. Morrisville, VT 802-888-7642 | chucksbikes802. com

40 years selling the best brands in all categories of bikes. Transition Norco Jamis KHS & Devinci. We have the largest inventory and best service in Northern VT. PS Be kind to trails and do trailwork Mon.-Wed, & Fri 105, Sat & Thurs 10-2. Be well by being smart.

EARL’S CYCLERY & FITNESS

2069 Williston Rd., So. Burlington, VT 802-864-9197 | earlsbikes.com

Earl’s Cyclery has been serving Vermont’s cycling and fitness needs for more than 65 years. With over 12,000 square feet, Earl’s has the largest selection of bikes from Trek, Norco, Giant, Electra, Bianchi, and more. The service center at Earl’s has professionally trained technicians who are certified to work on all makes and models of bicycles. Whether you need a flat tire fix, or a suspension rebuild, the service staff is ready to help. Estimates are free! Stop on by or give us a call!

439 Route 114 East Burke VT 802-626-3215 eastburkesports.com

Located in the heart of town, we pride ourselves in expert knowledge and friendly customer service. A full-service shop awaits you and your repair needs. We have 100 rental bikes with an enormous selection of clothing, parts, and accessories. Hours: 9 - 6 daily.

8749 VT RT 30, Rawsonville, VT 21 S Access Rd, West Dover, VT 802-297-2846 | equipesport.com

16 Pleasant St., Randolph

GEAR HOUSE

802-565-8139 gearhouseVT.com

A family-friendly shop located in the center of Vermont, we offer Rocky Mountain, Salsa, Bianchi, KHS, a rotating inventory of used outdoor gear, and full service repair shop. Randolph has newly revived mtb trails that combine classic old-school singletrack with machine built zones. Start the 12/12a loop from the shop for 38 miles of well maintained pavement, or map countless gravel rides from town. The shop is also home to ROC's trail hub featuring topographical and printed maps. Stop by and plan your next adventure!

Sales, Service and Rentals of mountain and gravel bikes. Carrying brands from GT, Rocky Mountain, Santa Cruz and Jamis. Stop in to either of our locations near Stratton and Mount Snow. Open 7 days. GREEN MOUNTAIN

HOLLOW BIKES

74 Main St., Middlebury, VT 802-388-6666 | froghollowbikes.com

Take advantage of the most advanced and courteous service and sales in our region, with quick turnaround in our shop downstairs. Upstairs, we offer a variety of road, gravel, mountain, lifestyle, electric and children's bikes and gear. Brands include Trek, Cannondale, and Open that offer superior products that balance innovation and performance with reliability and value. We also offer bicycle rentals and weekly group rides. MondayFriday 10 -5, Sat. 10 - 4.

Located in the heart of the Green Mountains, we are surrounded by terrain that calls to mountain and road bikers alike. Whether you ride twisting trails or back-to-back gaps, we service, sell, and rent all styles of bicycles, featuring Kona, Jamis, Juliana, Raleigh, Santa Cruz, Transition, and Hinderyckx bikeshand crafted by our own Rochester boy Zak Hinderyckx. So STOP READING and RIDE YOUR BIKE! Hours: 7 days a week, 10 – 6. 12

105 N. Main Rochester

800-767-7882 | greenmountainbikes.com

EAST BURKE SPORTS

EQUIPE SPORT

BIKES

2733 Main St., Lake Placid, NY 518-523-3764 | highpeakscyclery.com

The Adirondacks' source for cycling and outdoor gear and adventures since 1983.RIDE THE ADIRONDACK RAIL TRAIL. Lake Placid to Tupper Lake and Beyond. Paddle. Bike. Hike. Fish. E-Bikes. Guides. Shuttles. Tours Adventure.

HITCHHIKER

394 Mountain Road Ste. 6, Stowe, VT | 802-585-3344 hitchhikerbikes.com

We are Stowe's local bike shop. Located adjacent to the Cady Hill trails in the Baggy Knees shopping center. We are your source for all things MTB and gravel. We have you covered with everything from sales and service, to clothing, parts, and accessories! In store you'll find bikes from Rocky Mountain, Cervelo, Otso Forbidden, Chromag, and more!"

LAMOILLE VALLEY BIKE TOURS

19 Creamery St., Johnson, VT | 802-730-0161 | lamoillevalleybiketours.com

OMER & BOBS 18

20 Hanover St. Lebanon, NH 603-448-3522 | omerandbobs.com

The Upper Valley's bike shop since 1964. Offering mountain, hybrid, road, gravel, electrics, and kids bikes from Electra, Norco, Specialized and Trek. Featuring a full service department, bike fitting, bike rentals, mountain and e-bikes demos, and a kids trade-in, trade-up program. Hours: Mon.-Friday, 9am-5:30pm, Sat., 9am-5pm

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89 Main St. Montpelier, VT 802-225-6736 | onionriver.com

VT's premier bike, rack and outdoor gear shop. Friendly and knowledgeable sales and service. We carry Specialized, Rocky Mountain, Salsa, Surly, and Seven Cycles and a variety of clothing and accessories including Giro, Smith, Club Ride, Patagonia, Pearl Izumi and more. Visit our website to learn about our clinics, events and rentals.

POWERPLAY SPORTS 22

35 Portland St. Morrisville, VT 802-888-6557 powerplaysports.com

North Central Vermont's Trek and Giant Dealer nestled in the heart of bike country. Selling new and used bikes for every budget and every type of rider from beginner to expert. We service all manner of bike and sell tons of accessories and apparel. Bike rentals for the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail just 200 yards down the road.

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RANCH CAMP

311 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT 802-253-2753 | ranchcampvt.com

TYGART

57 Pond St. STE 1, Ludlow, VT (802) 228-5440

Info@tygartmountainsports.com, Tygartmountainsports.com

We are a full service bicycle sales and service center offering a variety of bikes from Cannondale, Scott, and Kona. We also offer a full line of tools, clothing, and accessories. We have 4 Park Tool School Certified technicians with a combined 52 years of industry experience offering a full range of services including in-house suspension work and full build-outs.

Ranch Camp is Vermont's MTB base lodge and your hub for bikes, gear, food, and apres! Ranch Camp offers a full service trailside bike shop, tap room, and freshcasual eatery all under one roof. We're proud to work with some of the best brands in the business and carry bikes from Ibis, Yeti, Revel, Norco, and Trek. Located at the foot of Stowe's Cady Hill Forest we've got a demo fleet of pedal assist and analog bikes so you can try before you buy.

Trailside, 2099 Darling Hill Rd. East Burke, VT

802-626-8444| villagesportshop.com

Established in 1978, we are a family-owned, passion-driven sporting goods store serving customers for four seasons of adventure. Strongly focused on bike and ski, we have highly skilled knowledgeable technicians and sales staff to assist in all needs of purchase, rental and service. With a location trailside on the world-renowned Kingdom Trails, we’re here to make your adventures happen!

37 Church St., Burlington, VT

21 Essex Way, Essex Jct., VT Madbush Falls, Warren, VT 888-547-4327 | gearx.com

Located trailside on the 93-mile Lamoille Valley Rail Trail! Lamoille Valley Bike Tours has been getting riders out on the rail trail with local knowledge and friendly service since 2016. We offer E-bike and Bike tours, rentals and sales and a new Rail Trail Bike Shuttle service. We carry E-bikes, bikes and gravel bikes from Diamondback, Batch Bicycles, Cannondale, Izip and Surface 604 with a wide selection of used E-bikes available for sale. We offer private consultations and a try-before-youbuy customer experience. We service Bosch and Shimano E-bike systems. Come visit us at our fully stocked Trailside Bike Center at mile 55 on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail

MOUNTAINOPS

4081 Mountain Road, Stowe, VT

802-253-4531 mountainopsvt. com

WATERBURY SPORTS 28

SKIRACK 24

85 Main St. Burlington 802-6583313 | skirack.com

Locally owned and operated since 1969, Skirack provides the best selection of outdoor gear for running, downhill & cross country skiing and snowboarding. We specialize in all things bike and e-bike: service, rentals, car racks, expert fitting and knowledge. Head to Skirack.com for updated hours and more information.

STARK MOUNTAIN 25

We offer bikes along with fast, friendly service. Dealers of Niner, Scott, Devinci and Jamis, we carry a large assortment of mountain and gravel bikes including a 60bike demo fleet. Our techs have years of experience and our local trail knowledge is second to none. Our converted 1893 barnturned-bike-shop houses a huge selection of bike and lifestyle clothing and parts and accessories. Looking for a more mellow ride? Rent one of our cruisers for a trip down the Stowe Rec Path right from our parking lot!

OGE is an award-winning, premier bike shop with knowledgeable, friendly, and honest staff. now with three locations. We offer a wide range of gravel grinders from Marin, BMC, and Niner. Our selection of mountain bikes from Marin, BMC, Niner, Pivot, Rocky Mountain, Transition, SCOR, and Yeti will blow you away. Plus, we offer super affordable kids' bikes, commuters from Batch Bicycles, and fat bikes. We also have consignment bikes as well as a demo fleet. Our efficient service department is capable of everything from tuning your vintage road bike to servicing your new mountain bike and offers full Fox shock service. Get fully outfitted for bike packing, touring, or fat biking to the slopes for a multi-sport day—any conceivable adventure!

144 Main Poultney, 802-884-8429 | porcupinebikes.com

Friendly hometown service near Slate Valley Trails with all your bicycle needs in one place: repair & service, new & used bikes, bike rentals, accessories & apparel. Brands including Transition, Esker, Salsa, Woom, Strider, Skida, Wild Rye, Troy Lee, Sock Guy & more.

9 RTE 17, unit b   Waitsfield, VT 802-496-4800

Find us on Facebook

Located at the lowest spot in the Mad River Valley so you can coast in when you break your bike on a ride! 21 years of advice,directions and fixing anything that pedals. Thinking about a Yeti? Come ride one of ours,we have been selling Yeti since 2006! Hours: Tues-Fri 9-6*, Sat 9-4, and Sunday 10-2. *Closes at 5 on Thursdays for the Shop Ride.

46 South Main Street, Waterbury, VT

802-882-8595 | waterburysportsvt.com

A full service bike shop selling Trek and Giant bikes in one of Vermont's most convenient locations. Nestled in downtown Waterbury a short distance from the Perry Hill MTB trails, WBS services all bikes and can handle any repair you might have. We also have a fleet of demo bikes and an excellent selection of parts and accessories. Open 7 days a week!

49 Brickyard Lane, Putney, VT

802-387-5718

westhillshop.com

Right off I-91 Northbound! Proud to be a tier-1 Specialized shop, and one of the longest-standing independent shops in the region, with bikes also from Banshee, Cannonade, Devinci, Evil, Transition, and Salsa. Our curated garment selection from Patagonia, POC, and Specialized is based on what we have chosen for our own use in all of Vermont’s glorious conditions. The WHS service department is widely recognized as one of the best in the region. Call about walkin service availability on Fridays and Saturdays. Ask us about custom wheels, suspension service, and set-up.

VILLAGE SPORT SHOP

WEST HILL SHOP 29

ENDGAME

People are curious, driven, weird. We naked apes do these things for adrenaline and challenge, yes, but more fundamentally we do these things in order to explore a new experience, to gain a new perspective, to expand both ourselves and the earth.

If you are anything like me, you saw the movie Honey, I Shrunk The Kids when you were an impressionable child, and from that day onward fantasized obsessively of disappearing into the jungle of backyard grass, into the exotic adventure of so-called common, boring ground.

And if you are anything like me, you also read, around the end of high school, the essay “Crawling” by the great eco-thinker Gary Snyder who celebrates the oft-ignored art of backcountry crawling, i.e. getting nose-close to nature, i.e. exploring the world from a chipmunk’s perspective, a slug’s perspective, a strange and exciting perspective. And finally, if you are anything like me, you once worked at a summer camp and led half a dozen 13-year-old boys on a two-hour crawl through a forest, a swamp, a lake’s shallow cove, and somehow—really?— didn’t get fired.

One boy nearly sliced his palm on a rusty can. Another got black gunk in his mouth (“We’ll be outta this swamp in a jiffy,” I reassured him, “and you’ll be able to swish-and-spit in the lake.”) My lumbar killed me, ditto my knees. Nevertheless, we all agreed to do it again later that week. Maybe crawl straight up the side of a mountain or something?

Crawling. I’m dead serious. Why wouldn’t I be? People jump off cliffs in squirrel suits. People freedive into underwater caves. People bike from Alaska to Patagonia and circumnavigate the planet in cramped sailboats. People are curious, driven, weird. We naked apes do these things for adrenaline and challenge, yes, but more fundamentally we do these things in order to explore a new experience, to gain a new perspective, to expand both ourselves and the earth. The earth is a kind of Slinky, far as I’m concerned: coiled up, sitting there at the top of the stairs, familiar, almost sort of bland. And then, with a nudge, by simply dropping to all fours...

HOW TO EXPLORE THE MICROWORLD

WE SPEND TOO MUCH TIME CHASING SUMMITS. TRY GETTING DOWN ON ALL FOURS AND SEE WHAT YOU MAY DISCOVER. BY LEATH TONINO

GET DRESSED

Like any good crawler, Snyder addresses this issue of appropriate gear right off the bat in his essay: “Leather work gloves, a tight-fitting hat, long-sleeved denim work jacket, and old Filson tin pants make a proper crawler’s outfit.” Personally, I prefer roofer’s knee pads and, in a pinch, old ratty tube socks for my hands. Protective eyewear is a boon, definitely, and footwear that protects the toes from undue abuse. Goes without saying that at best you’re going to get a little dirty, at worst utterly fouled, and thus the Louis Vuitton and Prada and Patagucci should be left in the closet.

START SOFT

Bermuda grass lawn leads to Class IV alpine ridge? Deep piles of autumn leaves are a portal to the East Antarctic Plateau? It’s like they say about dieting and quitting smoking and learning to play guitar: Don’t set your sights too high—I’m going cold turkey! I’m going to practice for three hours every single day!—because inevitably you will fall short of the ideal, feel discouraged, and give up. Ease into crawling. Ten minutes and a hundred feet to start, then maybe the local football field, the Gobi Desert.

IMITATE THE MASTERS

Evolution has generated so many unique types of locomotion: the porcupine waddle, the snake slither, the dog-scooching-his-butt-acrossthe-carpet. Try borrowing hot moves, stealing cool techniques. Find out what works for your body. Perhaps the traditional GI Joe crawl inflames the balky hip, whereas the frog hop

mysteriously soothes your arthritis. Regardless, it’s just really friggin’ awesome to study how other critters travel and dance and live.

BOOK A GUIDE SERVICE

Stalk a spider. Pursue a millipede. In my essay collection The Animal One Thousand Miles Long, which is about odd excursions in Vermont (about nudging the Slinky, basically), I wrote these lines: “I would like to follow this newt… crawl into the great forest fastness, through the Christmas ferns, over braided roots and slabs of polished schist, in and out of moist shadows and drying sun… A newt-guide! A newtlens!” I guarantee that if you crawl behind an ant for a full mile, it will be the most mind-warping outdoor experience of your year. (Tracking also comes into play here. Bundled up on a subzero, fresh-snow morning, you can trace the cursive script of fox and coyote prints forever.)

STUDY THE MICRO

What’s tricky about crawling isn’t crawling. What’s tricky is convincing yourself to crawl, finding a reason to get excited about it (as you would a day skiing or rock climbing). A wildflower book, a lichen primer, a gemstone guide, a dichotomous key to invertebrate phyla—anything that generates questions and necessitates zoomed-in focus is a potential gateway drug. Buy a hand lens or a jumbo magnifying glass and pass through the gate.

FALL TO YOUR KNEES

Certain places demand crawling: caves, subnivean tunnels, hollows in

dense riparian shrubbery. You think “real” explorers are always upright and bipedal? Doubtful. I suspect that even the ultra- civilized, this-tea-isn’t-likeback-home-in-Britain explorers of the Victorian period did their fair share of groveling. Choose the correct type of terrain and that terrain will in turn choose (for you) the trusty crawl. A terrifying situation often compels one to get low—for instance, a disgustingly exposed ledge in the mountains, a sidewalk in the sky. Cue the dog-oncarpet?

LOSE SOMETHING

Once upon a time, sitting on a downed log, watching huge white clouds scud across the huge blue sky of my empty mind, thinking nothing whatsoever of crawling, a blank notebook open in my lap… I fumbled my pencil. It was one of those stubby golf pencils, extra stubby from having been used and sharpened and reused and resharpened. A truly tiny pencil, that’s what I’m saying, and that’s what magically disappeared. I found the thing after ten minutes, but more importantly, I found a rainbow of sand grains, a mouse’s bleached jawbone, various desiccated berries, the land’s elaborate surface maze. Sometimes dropping your car keys or wedding ring catalyzes wonderment. Quit your bitching and embrace these moments.

SCREW THE HATERS

Yup, you’re assured to look like a weirdo, especially if you dwell in a city and practice crawling at a public park or in the financial district (and especially especially if you wear a diaper, to say nothing of a crap-filled diaper). But who cares? You’re essentially bowing down, prostrating yourself before Mother Earth. She won’t judge. She’ll thank you for your attentiveness and reward you with untold surprises. I’ve always loved this quote from the late American Zen priest Robert Aitken, a wise man whom I picture inching along the corridors of his retreat center in Honolulu, roofer’s knee pads obscured by the folds and swirls of a black robe: “It is possible to train yourself to be dull. Don’t pay attention to things. Preoccupy yourself with brooding. The dull person is one who has practiced not noticing closely.”

HALF MARATHON, RELAY & 3-MILE FUN RUN

MIDDLEBURY, VT

OCT. 6, 2024

• BEAUTIFUL, SCENIC ROUTES with views of the Green Mountains and Adirondacks.

• A mix of TRAIL (10%), PAVED (45%), & DIRT roads (45%) for the half marathon; all paved for 3-mile fun run.

• USATF-CERTIFIED COURSE that is well supported, with rolling hills & foliage views.

• WELL ORGANIZED, GREAT SWAG, INSPIRING MUSIC ON COURSE

• POST-RACE BREAKFAST

• TOP FINISHERS RECEIVE VT MAPLE SYRUP!