outdoors – Obscure Vermont

August 24, 2016March 31, 2020

The Hungry Gorge

The deadliest place in Vermont is simultaneously one of it’s least dead places. The head of the state’s public safety commission once dubbed the Huntington Gorge as “the deadliest place in the state”, and according to those who make it their business to track this sort of stuff, this is considered the most dangerous swimming hole in all of New England. But despite that macabre distinction, in the summer the chasm is absolutely crawling with bodies, energy, and canned beer, all which dive impetuously off of the dangerous cliffs.

It’s not hard to see the appeal to this spectacular rocky crevice carved deep into the Richmond hills. Vertical undulating cliffs rise intimidatingly around a twisting boulder deposited river that corkscrews through several waterfalls, ranging from 6 to 12 feet in height, underneath a ceiling of evergreen trees. But this stunning crevice successfully conceals real dangers, masking strong currents that can easily whisk an unsuspecting person away. With high levels of water rushing rapidly down a steep rise constricted in a narrow spot, it’s an easy place to be greeted by the grim reaper.

Some refer to the spot by its unofficial nickname; “The Hungry Gorge”, probably because of the place’s appetite for human beings. Since 1950, a great number of people have lost their lives here, but just how many people is up for debate apparently. A few books, newspaper articles and the Richmond town records list the number at 25, but other accounts say the number is probably high as 40. The victims’ ages so far range from between 15 and 30, and all lost their lives by drowning. This information may even be out of date by the time I actually get around to publishing this entry. The casualties even include heroic would be rescuers, including a state police officer who attempted to retrieve a body and drowned in the process. And the numbers continue to grow, despite numerous attempts to stem the death tolls.

The most tactile approach happened in 1976 when a band of locals got together and blasted away a dangerous underwater chute where several swimmers had gotten swept into and trapped by strong currents. But the gorge continues to take lives.

In 2005, a 19-year-old UVM student became another statistic when he slipped on some rocks and plummeted fatally into the gorge. Frazzled people wanted a solution. There were demands to make the gorge off limits entirely, with heavy trespassing fines as intimidation to visitors. Some even wanted to build a giant wall around the gorge. That same year, Gary Bressor would purchase the property for $20,000 to preserve it and keep it open to the public, so future generations can continue to enjoy the unique area – or as others would argue, so future generations can die here. It’s a matter of perspective I guess.

The purchase made other gorge goers happy, unequivocally saying that anyone can enjoy themselves here, you just need some common sense and some information – something I’d agree with. Bressor was one of those people as well, so he bought the land to stop the quarreling over what to do with it and formed the Huntington River Gorge LLC, who wish to protect and preserve the natural area. Because it’s now under private ownership, an official ban isn’t possible.

But why do so many seem to die here? Apart from entrapping geography, the answer may lie within its tourist population. Many people who drown here are out of towners, who aren’t aware of the gorge’s concealed dangers, seeing things through youthful impunity. The surprising and frustrating thing about Huntington Gorge is that some of the deaths here could have been easily avoided. According to my research, a few deaths were related to drug or alcohol use before diving in. And sometimes, well, accidents just happen.

The locals know when to avoid the gorge, especially when the river is swollen with high runoffs from snow melt or rainwater, and they know where the safe parts are to swim. Some people have lived near the gorge all their lives and have never set foot down there.

A drive up Dugway Road, the dirt thoroughfare that runs along the rim of the gorge, reveals a plentiful amount of parking ban notices and warning signs nailed to any available tree or fence post that would be visible through a windshield. At the top of the gorge sits an official dark green state historic marker chronologically listing deaths here over the years. But the dates end ominously in 1994 which was probably around the time the sign was erected, and an updated replacement hasn’t been commissioned yet – if it ever will. There is talk of even more signs are planned to be erected when the project gets official zoning approval. But, knowing how human nature works, those signs won’t be of much help unless the visitor actually chooses to heed their warnings. Despite the dangers, this swimming hole remains widely popular, partially because of it’s harrowing reputation, or maybe some just have a perverse interest in tragedy. Humans have always had a fascination with death after all. That’s partially the reason why I visited. Also because I run a blog on Vermont weirdness, and love being outdoors.

Regardless, it’s easy to fall for this site’s charm and majestic splendor. Even in the dead cold of winter when I first visited, it was impressive. Icy waters churned over the surfaces of halfway frozen waterfalls and the cacophony of solid vs. liquid echoed up over the gorge walls. But I stayed well away from the edges, because a very slick layer of ice had glazed over the rocks, and I definitely didn’t want my name emblazoned on a tragedy induced warning sign.

Having a blog has offered quite a crash course on social culture. One of the benefits is befriending cool people through it. My friend Timothy is one such person. We hit it off last fall and even went on a few adventures together. He grew up down the road from the gorge as a kid and agreed to show me around on a sultry summer day.

After a morning of metal detecting at a ghost town and being pestered by mosquitoes, a dip in the Huntington River sounded fantastic, and visiting with someone who was intimate with the place excited me. I wanted to know it’s secrets and it’s stories. But within minutes of arriving, I wanted to go home. The gorge was thick with people in sports jerseys and cheap beer. Timothy groaned and said he missed the days when the gorge something that really only the locals knew about. Today, it’s all overran with bros and frat boys he complained, who, at least on that particular day, were making quite the ruckus as a crew who set up camp on a rock below were challenging someone’s manhood as they waited to see if the guy would jump off the cliffs as a group of distantly perched girls laughed snootily at them. There’s nothing wrong with people flocking to a great spot on a hot summers afternoon, it just wasn’t my particular scene.

Subsequently, the growth of the college kid crowd pushed out a lot of the locals from the gorge said my friend. When he was younger in the 90s, he loved spending his summer days there as he developed a fascination with diving off of the cliffs. Doing this, he got to know several of the old timers who were very familiar with it and knew all of its secrets and idiosyncrasies, like the best places to jump, when to go, and places to avoid. During this time, he explored every nook he could and got very familiar with it. During one of his dives, he found a wheel from a car that was from the early 20th century. On his other expeditions, he told stories of caves he found, and how if you were patient enough after diving into a pool near the falls, minnows would swim into you, hundreds if you had the patience. There are even certain rocks that have seen so many people sunning themselves or used as a launching point to jump off of that they have grooves in their surfaces now. “I remember always trying to make it down there before ten in the morning when I was a kid – that was always before the crowds would come down – and you’d always see the usual people, all jumping off the ledges and trying to out-do one another in the flamboyance of their dives. But it was all in good fun, and some of those guys were really good. Others looked up to them. Everyone knew each other, it was sort of like a club”. Today, those characters may have more or less, vanished from its boulder strewn walls. To my surprise, one of the last vestiges of older crowds to still hang out here, are nudists. We saw a few on our trek down the ledges to the river.

But the gorge is so popular, its entangled its way inside the frothy forefront of local legends. Some put enough emphasis on the gorge in conversation as if it’s the only swimming hole in the area, sort of like how Vermonters refer to Lake Champlain as “the lake”, even though Vermont has numerous other bodies of water.

As we were cringing at the site of a 20 something-year-old girl try to park an orange VW Bus, which was continuously ending in a position where two of the four wheels would be lifted off the road, my friend postulated that he thinks some of the locals might be hanging out at the upper gorge again. The upper portion of the gorge was the original gathering spot for visitors, and the locals hung out at the lower portion away from the crowds, until bad press moved most of the frenzy down to the lower gorge. But here’s the thing; both parts of the gorge are just as dangerous as one another. The only difference is that one area has been stained by hysteria and numerous signs about death, and one hasn’t.

Not surprisingly, a location with such grim stories attached to it has also spawned a few ghost stories. The only one I heard was years ago, where an unsuspecting swimmer was resting on some rocks and got a creeping feeling that someone was watching them. When they gazed around, they noticed a fully clothed teenage boy staring at them, standing on top of a large boulder down river a bit. But they noticed he was sopping wet, and he was standing there still as a stone. Concerned, the swimmer went to stand up, thinking that the boy may have needed help, but when they turned back around, he was gone. It was an open area, so he couldn’t have managed to clamber back up the gorge walls without being detected. But somehow, he had completely vanished. Whether these grim cautionary stories are preternatural occurrences or a local method of driving people away is anyone’s guess.

But the Huntington Gorge’s grim veneer isn’t exclusive. All swimming holes have the potential to be monstrous places if the right circumstances are applied. And seemingly, it seems to be a certain shade of visitors who ruin these sort of places, as opposed to the places themselves. A bit north, the landmark Bolton Potholes are a good example.

Bolton town is an often interstate passed Chittenden County fringe town where it’s old designation as “the land of boulders and bears” is undiluted verisimilitude. It’s charted land acreage is mostly taken up by steep rises in elevation, which suck for farming, but are great for outdoor recreational pursuits like a ski area and part of the 250 mile Long Trail.

A go-to summer relief for many area Vermonters, the potholes are where 3 impressive glacial waterfalls that pour into emerald-tinted holes are formed where Joiner Brook plunges about 45 feet down the Bolton slopes. It’s a cool area, but now days, the site also draws other sights in the form of large herds and obnoxious visitors, who litter, crowd the road and party there which bothers both long time visitors and denizens of the road that runs alongside of it. I used to go there as a teenager, but not so much anymore, opting for quieter locales.

Every action has a reaction, and now, there is talk of possibly closing it or restricting access to the public. Maybe. There is also a fight against that, wanting to keep these special places accessible for present and future Vermonters, which blew up on the Vermont subreddit page. Only time will tell, I guess. I’m more on the side of using common sense, and that it would be a shame to loose our state swimming holes – a deep-rooted tradition up here which is something that we tend to dig a lot. They’re free, all inclusive, and often outlandishly beautiful. The type of thing that summer memories up here are made of. But if you trash the place, well, your part of the problem.

If you visit, just be careful.

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This summer, my camera has developed some technical problems that are above my ability to fix them, and I’m trying to save up some money to have it diagnosed by a professional, and then for subsequent repairs. Because my camera is self designated as the most important item I own, this is a real bummer for me. Any donations would be hugely appreciated.

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March 29, 2014March 31, 2020

The Hidden Cave

The awkward transitional period between the death of winter and the explosion of spring is a rough one. Looking at the cracked surface of a grey Lake Champlain, the landscape seemed warn down and tired. But there was something different. A warbling, trembling uncertainty rumbled below the atmosphere as the lake surface cracked and groaned, and the distant sounds of water tumbling down dirty cliffs meant snow melt. It meant Spring, and everything was fragile.

Walking along a cold cobblestone beach underneath sentinel cliffs, amazed at how all the trees above me were growing and surviving from their strange perches amidst crumbling stone, I let my cabin fever get the best of me, and started climbing up ledges and over trees, enjoying the “warm” afternoon.

My hands and feet slipped constantly in the muddy banks, a sure sign that mud season is right around the corner. Gripping onto the skeletons of exposed tree routes and getting filth all over my jacket, I found myself staring up at a frozen waterfall of snow runoff, and behind it, the telltale blackness of a crevice in the cliff face. I decided to get closer.

As I got closer, and decided it was safe enough to approach without falling down what I had just climbed up, I realized it was more than just an indent in the rocks, I was starting at the mouth of a cave.

Of course, when you stumble upon a cave, natural instinct is to go inside and check it out, and that’s what I did. This cave was a constant surprise. What I had assumed to be small was actually a very decent sized chamber that went far back underneath the ledges. Greeting me almost right away was a very cool site, a makeshift bench made from driftwood hauled up from the nearby beach, and a DIY fire pit, with the scatterings of ash still inside.

Further behind the sitting area, some artifacts had been left behind. A wicker basket was placed on a rock table, with a pair of Zebra striped glasses left inside.

Now the cave was getting narrow and the ceiling was getting lower, ice water was dripping down the back of my neck. For an awkward section, I had to crouch down on my knees to get back further, and just when I thought I had reached the end, the cave suddenly opened back up again and created a sort of second chamber, with a rock seating area along the back wall, and some cool stand alone ice formations on the frozen cave floor.

It was definitely a cool place, something I’d most likely build myself if I had more ready access to a cave. I wondered, who put the effort into making this cool cliff side hangout, when and why? And maybe the best question, how many people know about it? But all was a mystery. Even the few marks of cave graffiti very neatly painted on the walls offered no incite.

The cave was an awesome discovery, and I can imagine it being the perfect place to hang out on cool summer nights. I know when I left for a walk today, I never expected to find a hidden hangout spot underneath a cliff. You never know what you’ll find if you don’t venture off the beaten path.

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September 14, 2012March 31, 2020

Grave Concerns

Every once and a while, I’ll have someone tell me a bizarre or strange tale that they swear has supposedly happened to them. Some of them are entertaining at best, but others surpass that, and create long lasting impressions. I don’t know, maybe I love these tales because they make me think that perhaps we’re something else than meat and bones, or perhaps it’s the allure of the ability for things to still exist that can defy any explanation that can be backed by science. Simply put; they challenge my very logical way of thinking and make me look at the familiar in an unfamiliar way. These are the stories that I would like to feature on this blog, and I think I found a good one to start with.

A Lost Town

Little River State Park in the town of Waterbury has shoreline on the beautiful Waterbury Reservoir, and extends into a grand patch of bumpy land that climbs up the mountains that form the back spine of lofty Mount Mansfield. Driving up Little River Road as it follows the sand banked river of the same name, it immediately becomes apparent that the area is wildly beautiful. But it’s tumbling topography yields another truth; the land up this way is rugged and rough. While outdoor enthusiasts really dig the state park, a century ago, the people who settled here weren’t as fond of the place – but their desperation for independence and land to build that on outweighed the many pitfalls.

The sinuous reservoir that snakes around green mountains was built for more practical purposes; to attempt to prevent ruinous floods that wiped out the town that once used to be here.

A century ago, real estate worked a bit differently than today’s trends. Prospectors pretty much settled anywhere where there was available land, including topography of the rough and rocky variety. Higher elevations were also less prone to flooding than down in the valleys, which is why many old stage roads or settlements can be found in higher elevations or places we may consider strange.

The slopes of Western Waterbury were cleared in the 1800s, and a small community of about 50 people formed, unofficially called “Ricker Mills”, “Ricker Basin” or sometimes, “The Ricker Mountain District”, all monikered after the large cluster of people who settled there with the same last name.

The settlement would eventually grow to encompass about 4,000 acres on the southeastern slopes of Ricker Mountain, which also took on the prevalent surname. But their choice of location made life up in the hills pretty rotten.

Most settling families were impoverished but they got by alright, their farms -which were hard to support on land that was mostly rocks – never prospered. The only other industries to really take off here were sawmills, taking advantage of mountains of timber and the many streams that picked up speed as they tumbled down to the valleys below.

Even today, some elderly residents who live in neighboring towns can still recall Ricker Mills as an existing place, and tell nostalgic stories of hardships. Families all had to pitch together to work on the farms in order to run a successful operation, and if one member wasn’t doing their job, the farm would limp or come to a stand still.

Eventually, younger generations began to slowly move away, looking for better opportunities. But the town’s death was sped up by the infamous flood of 1927 on November 3rd and 4th, when torrential rainfalls and frozen ground created a disastrous flood that paralyzed Vermont. The little river’s rising waters drove the valley residents to their roofs and isolated the settlement from the rest of Waterbury when the roads were washed out. In 1934, a second flood put an end to the already crippled community. Those who already hadn’t moved away were forced out when the state decided to close the roads into town for good, then began buying up all the land. The flooding inspired the creation of the aforementioned Waterbury reservoir and dam, a toilsome task built by five thousand men of the U.S. Army Corps Of Engineers and the Civilian Conservation Corps, who finally finished the massive retention project in 1938.

I attempted to go back roading back in March with a buddy, which was really just us sliding around wash boarded, muddy dirt roads a lot and wondering if it was a good idea.
We found ourselves at the foot of the Waterbury Dam. I was really digging the Art Deco detailing I was seeing.

Today, old cemeteries, sawmill remains, old town roads, bridges, and many cellar holes can still be seen as evidence of a past community. Surprisingly, a lone farmhouse from the settlement’s existence also survives off one of the trails; the ramshackle and haunted looking Almeran Goodell farmhouse, which was at one point a hunting camp before the park took possession of it. Little River State Park owns the land know, and a walk on one of its many hiking trails make these ruins easily accessible for anyone who wants to see them. Local lore maintains that when the water levels are low enough in the reservoir, which is now a popular place for outdoor recreation lovers, you can see the soaked and rusted remnants of the old iron bridge that once bridged Little River and was the main entrance into town.

Though the ghost town is an almost unsatisfyingly easy place to get too via Little River Road that parallels its river namesake, once you’re on one of the well-trodden hiking trails, it’s a surprisingly vast and desolate place, almost otherworldly. Tromping around the scattered ruins through bushy foliage that is brilliant in the fall, you can actually get a good sense of vanishing history.

DSC_0022_pe — Stone foundations and a variety of constructions can be found throughout the woods on the trails.

dsc_0029_pe — If you wanted to travel anywhere in the mountains, you had to cross plenty of streams, so local communities built “high bridges”, or, bridges built atop stone culverts to better withstand flood waters. But they often didn’t.

dsc_0032_pe — The old road has long faded into obscurity.

Last remaining house at Little River — The Goodell House is the last remaining house on Ricker Mountain, partially thanks to help from local Boy Scouts who fought to restore it, at over 140 years old.

DSC_0115_pe — Foundation at Little River

But does something else remain here other than stone foundations and weathered gravestones? Does something unknown skulk among the trees and silent swampland? I’ve heard more rumors than I thought I would that Little River State Park was haunted, but never have actually heard any specific accounts to back them up. Most details fall flat and don’t offer anything credible. A ghost town in the middle of a pretty remote stretch of woods is certain to conjure up some sort of folklore, though. Vermont is a state of extremes where either a topic has been written about to monotony, or it hasn’t been covered at all. I was hoping to break some ground here, and I knew I was onto something good when I heard this story.

A Night In The Woods

I’m proud to have been entrusted with this story, and to write about it in my blog. This is the first time this has ever been written down or told beyond a quite campfire in my backyard.

A few years ago, John, an experienced hunter took a hike into the wilds of Ricker Mountain. His plans were to spend a few days in the woods hunting and camping under the stars – a little much-needed rest and relaxation. Being an experienced woodsman, he planned carefully. He found a suitable spot for his campsite, and began to clear it of brush and tree branches. He even found some nice flat stones nearby to construct a fire pit from.

People generally are in two different camps when it comes to spending the night in the woods. John loved it. The first night, he was almost asleep inside his tent when he heard a strange noise. In the darkness, he listened carefully. It sounded like fingertips that were scratching the outside of his tent. He knew he had cleared the area of any tree branches, and it was a windless night, so he thought it had to be an animal. But he noticed that the woods had descended into an eerie silence, a silence he has never heard before. After a while, the tapping stopped. He waited for it to start up again, but it didn’t. He soon shrugged it off and fell asleep.

The next night, he awoke to the sound of someone or something, tugging at his tent straps. Again the woods fell into that eerie silence. He sat up in his sleeping bag and tried to assess the bizarre situation, but couldn’t really think about what to do other than wait for something to happen. The tugging soon stopped, and nothing ever happened. But he didn’t go back to sleep – and spent the rest of the night in anticipation, waiting until the sun rose. The next morning he noticed that the tent strap hadn’t just been pulled, it had been cut! It was a clean-cut, as done with a knife, yet he hadn’t heard the sound of tearing fabric, or the noises of any other human around.

Weighing his options, he decided to stay another night, trying to jump to a logical conclusion that could explain the previous night’s events while also falling into the gravity of his stubborn nature. He nonchalantly assumed that whatever it was, it didn’t really pose a real threat to him, and it didn’t know how long he was camping here because even John didn’t know! Surely it was gone by now. He wanted to leave when he’s good and ready, because it was hard enough to get time off from work and he wanted to enjoy the little time he had. So he decided to stay.

But on the third night, John got the surprise of his life. He woke up suddenly when the bottom of his sleeping bag, which had moved in his slumber and was touching the tent wall, was grabbed violently “as with human hands” and forcefully yanked towards the tent door. He instinctively grabbed his shotgun next to him and yelled “try that again and you’ll be sorry!” and waited with bated breath and adrenaline for something to happen. But nothing did. Again he noticed the eerie, almost unnatural silence of the woods. Nothing was making a sound, and this time, he recalled being incredibly uncomfortable by it. Surely he would have heard whatever the intruder was, retreating across all the brittle fallen leaves near the campsite, but he didn’t.

He knew it would be foolish to leave in the middle of the night, especially because he didn’t know exactly what was out there waiting for him. He knew it would be a foolish attempt to get back down towards the road. So he spent the rest of the night awake, shotgun at the ready, and as soon as dawn cracked the dark, he began to frantically pack his things.

As he took down his tent, he noticed something peculiar. As he was ensuring that the embers in the firepit were extinguished, he noticed something about one of the stones he had used to form the circular wall that he hadn’t noticed before. Somehow, unknowingly, he had used a fallen headstone from a forgotten and neglected cemetery nearby, now almost indistinguishable from years of dead leaves and fallen branches.

John doesn’t believe in ghosts, and doesn’t subscribe to any of the mythology of the paranormal and the tales that other people chase, but he managed to choke out an out of character diagnosis. “Well, man I don’t know. Maybe it was one of the ghosts of Ricker Mountain, angry that I used their headstone as part of my firepit.”

I asked John if he would ever go back to Ricker Mountain. He just shook his head and said “nope”. I guess I can’t blame him.

Digging into Trouble

Upon hearing that strange tale, my own father came forward with a story of his own, one that was as unusual, if not frightening to me. Whether it actually happened or not…well, I’ll let you decide for yourself.

When he was in his early 20s, he and his cousin were fly fishing along The Housatonic River in the small Connecticut town of Kent, in the rural Litchfield Hills. It was a perfect spring afternoon, and they were having good luck on the river.

As they fished down the riverbanks, they came to a spot where a large row of power lines crossed over the river and up a nearby mountain. Mounted above a rather steep ledge above them was a large copper plaque. Being curious, they both got closer to read it. The plaque was commemorating a tragic death that took place on that very spot 100 years ago, when a copper mine collapsed killing an unknown amount of miners. They were standing on a mass grave. What happened next has no explanation. One of them suggested digging up the grave – or what appeared to be the grave site. The earth was soft and seemed easy to dig through. My father agreed. Being young and immortal, they began to pick away at the hillside. And within minutes, the pleasant spring weather turned ugly. The skies turned a dark black and before they knew it, a freak bolt of lightning struck the power lines directly above their heads.

Terrified, the two of them stopped their digging and hastily retreated back to the safety of their car. And that was when they realized that this wasn’t just an ordinary storm.

“I looked back, and noticed that the lightning was striking and hitting every tree or pole that we were running by! It was – it was like it was following us!” my dad said animatedly, getting caught up in his memory. They scrambled back onto Route 7, both breathing heavily and scared out of their minds. And just as soon as the storm started, it stopped. The skies were clear again. It was like nothing had ever happened.

They scrambled back onto Route 7, both breathing heavily and scared out of their minds. I guess anyone would be in that situation. And just as soon as the storm started, it stopped. The skies were clear again. It was like nothing had ever happened.

So is there an explanation here, supernatural or other? Was this just a bad freak storm that passed right over their heads? After all, New England is known for it’s weird weather. Or was it something more, perhaps it really was an act of vengeance from the angered ghosts of the dead minors who lost their lives under that very spot. Neither of them have an explanation, and the only conclusion I have is that they did experience something. One thing is for certain, they have never done anything that stupid ever again.

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To all of my amazing fans and supporters, I am truly grateful and humbled by all of the support and donations through out the years that have kept Obscure Vermont up and running.

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