Smugglers' Notch

The Notch announces itself by getting smaller. You drive north out of Stowe on Route 108, the valley closes in, and then the road starts threading between boulders the size of houses with cliffs leaning over from both sides. At one point I had to fold the mirrors in and trust that the car coming the other way would do the same. Lia narrated the rock formations with growing alarm. Then it opens out at the top and the whole strange, hemmed-in beauty of the place lands at once.

Smugglers’ Notch is a high mountain pass that wedges between Mount Mansfield, the tallest peak in Vermont, and the Sterling Range. The name is honest history. In the early 1800s, when Jefferson’s embargo banned trade with British Canada, this hidden defile became a route for moving goods and livestock north and south out of sight. Later it carried fugitives heading to Canada, and during Prohibition, liquor coming the other way.

The Road That Closes

What makes the Notch feel different from a regular scenic drive is that the state simply gives up on it every winter. The road is too steep, too narrow, and too prone to ice and rockfall to keep open, so from roughly October to May the upper section is gated and abandoned to the snow. It becomes a ski touring and snowshoe route, silent except for the occasional crack of ice releasing somewhere on the cliffs.

We went in early autumn, with the road still open and the maples just beginning to turn. We parked at the top and scrambled around the boulder field, where cold air pours out of the gaps between the rocks even in warm weather — you can stand at the mouth of one of the talus caves and feel the chill leaking out like an open freezer. The locals call them the cold caves, and they hold ice well into summer.

Up Toward Mansfield

From the height of the pass, trails climb steeply in both directions. The path up toward the ridge of Mansfield is a proper New England scramble — roots, slick rock, the occasional iron rung bolted into a ledge. We didn’t go all the way to the summit; we got far enough for the trees to thin and the view to open south down the valley we’d driven up, the road a thin ribbon between the cliffs.

Coming back down, we passed a couple in their seventies moving uphill with hiking poles and unbothered determination. Vermont is full of people like that. It is a state that takes its modest mountains personally and expects you to keep up.

Practicalities and a Warning

The drive through the Notch is not for large vehicles — RVs and trucks get stuck in the switchbacks every single year, despite signs the size of billboards telling them not to try. If you’re in anything bigger than a regular car, take the long way around. And if you come outside summer, check whether the road is even open before you point the car at it.

When to go: late September to mid-October for the foliage, which is genuinely as good as the postcards. Summer is lush and busy; deep winter turns the closed road into a beautiful, quiet ski tour for those equipped for it.