Bear Mountain from Sunrise

Bear Mountain from Sunrise

Today is just one of those lazy Sundays. The kind of day that you know you should be doing something important, but you just forget about it because you can do it on another day. Since the weather outside was quite temperate for February, Mary and I decide it would be a great day to just take a hike out into the woods.

Killington is such a diverse area, it is hard to comprehend it's total scope. A few years ago, Killington abandoned skiing and riding in an area called the "Northeast Passage", just below Sunrise Mountain adjacent to Bear Mountain. The terrain in the area was fairly gentle, but the trails were also somewhat interesting as they wound their way through the forest towards Route 100. Instead of just closing the area, however, Killington now uses it to support snowmobiling, cross country skiing and snow shoeing. We decided to take our hike this afternoon at Sunrise to check the area out.

Trail map for Sunrise Back County Ski and Snowshoe Trails

From the inn, to get to Sunrise the quickest way is to take East Mountain Road over towards Bear Mountain. From there, you enter into the Sunrise Condominium development. We accessed the trail system from the Falls Brook Common area just below the Sunrise Triple Chair.

Since there is only around a foot of snow on the ground, we just used hiking boots, instead of bringing our snow shoes. I did bring some ski polls for stability purposes, as I had never hiked these trails before. We wandered around a moderate trail named the Wintergreen Loop. The trail itself had been packed down slightly by a snow mobile, so the footing was excellent. If there were a lot of new snow, snow shoes would have been a must, but where the terrain was fairly gentle, our hiking boots were fine this afternoon. All in all, a nice walk through the woods on a lazy Sunday afternoon.