The Great Green Mtn Singletrack Traverse

When my friend Ryan and I start to ease our minds with delicious IPAs or craft mescal the crazy ideas start to flow. By the time we are a beer and an shot deep there’s no way of stopping them. One idea was Le Grand Fat Tour. Start an international fat bike series… don’t mind if we do!

This year, on the hungover morning following Überwintern (a Le Grand Fat Tour stop) we came up with another idea: link some of the best singletracks in Vermont for a full week of riding. Then and there the “Great Green Mountain Singletrack Traverse” was conceived.  I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

I started to look into lightweight bikepacking equipment and started to plan the route.

We did a couple of 2 and 3 days bikepacking trip in winter and this summer to get familiar with the gear and find out the minimum stuff we needed.

The idea behind GGMST is to ride from the top of Killington Mountain to Hyde Park riding as much singletrack as possible while sampling tasty food and beers with local friends.

When we were planning this route, we heard about the creation of an official bike packing route that covers all of Vermont. It’s called the VMBA Bike Packers Route (XVT). Confirming my proficiency at internet biking, their route was very similar to the course I had plotted. But, for us the corridor they follow is just a way to access one singletrack system to the next. Our plan includes riding the following singletracks: Killington, Pittsfield (Green Mountain Trails), Rochester, Blueberry lake, Mad River Valley, Fayston, Perry Hill, Trapps, Stowe Town loop, Sterling valley and Mud city.

While the fastest riders are completing the 300 miles XVT route into a straight 38 hours or so we are planning to take 6 days to cover half of that but with twice the fun!

There’s going to be 5 of us for the trip: Isabelle, John (JPB), Ryan, Mojo and Me (David).

Rocky Mountain Bikes are lending Ryan and me a new model called the Sherpa’s for the trip. A bike created specifically for this type of expedition using a complex new math formula : suspension + big tires = Fun

The trip is happening early September stay tuned on MTBVT.com and AllezY.net

See you on the trails!