West River Trail to Black Mountain and Back Run

Whenever we can, Jen and I like to go for mid-distance trail running adventures on weekends. It satisfies several of our desires at once: exercise, exploring, and outdoor activity excursion, all while spending some quality time together.

This past weekend's adventure took us to a pair of relatively local gems in southeastern Vermont: the West River Trail in Brattleboro and Black Mountain in Dummerston. The West River Trail is a terrific multi-use rail trail that heads upriver from Brattleboro and ends in South Londonderry (minus a missing section in the middle that hopefully can be added to connect the upper and lower ends). Black Mountain is a conservation property owned by The Nature Conservancy, focused on a geologic feature known as a ring dike (other examples of which can be found at Pawtuckaway, Cape Horn, and the Ossipee Range, all in New Hampshire).

striding it out a few miles from the start on the West River Trail

Starting from the eastern end of the trail (actually, from the Marina itself, a few hundred yards southeast of the Marina trailhead), we headed northwest at an easy pace. My legs were really wrecked from a 50-mile training week capped off by a 19-mile trail run the day before, so as far as I was concerned the slower the better. Jen was testing out some new orthothics, so she was OK with the gentle pace as well. We'd waited as long as we could as we watched a big blob of green and yellow swirl around on the radar, but it seemed to just keep filling in so eventually we just threw out the towels and set out in the rain. It was about 50 degrees out, and we felt a bit chilled.

This section of the trail is quite pretty as it variously hugs the side of the valley wall, passes right next to riffles in the river, and goes under the new bridges for I-91. All of it is flat. At one point a short spur trail branches off and crosses a floodplain section in the Riverstone Preserve; we took this worthwhile alternate route on the way out. Around mile 3 we left the cover of the woods and the next three quarters of a mile to Rice Farm Road were in the open along an old dirt road. Then we ran about a half mile along the dirt road to the trailhead for Black Mountain.

crossing under I-91

right between the rocks and the river

along the West River Trail

For the ascent of Black Mountain (a little over a mile of hiking trail), we slowed to a hiking pace, and as usual I kept pausing us to take pictures with my phone. Just before we reached the summit the rain began to let up and we could see spots of blue sky peeking through the clouds to the south. At the top, we enjoyed the limited view to the southeast, but didn't linger too long because the breeze made it a bit chilly up there and we didn't want to cool down too much.

climbing Black Mountain

nearing the summit of Black Mountain

view from the top

Speaking of down, we opted to take the new leg of the loop trail for our descent. It looks to be a little longer than the way up, but not by much. At first it seemed like it was going to be great, but then there was a quarter mile or so stretch where it just dropped on a straight diagonal down the slope and the water followed the same path so it was really sloppy and unpleasant. That section could really use some switchback re-routes. By the time it leveled out and turned right on a rocky old woods road we were regretting our decision to explore it.

But then it got a LOT better. It was super fun to run, and TNC work crews had clearly put a lot of time and effort into creating a great new trail. There were quite a few elaborate wooden structures that crossed streams and helped avoid sensitive wet areas. By the time we reached the bottom of the loop we were really glad we'd done it.

crossing the streams

passing by a pond

The return trip back along West River Trail was fairly pleasant and uneventful. It even got a little warm towards the end. My legs were really ready to stop. We changed in the car and capped our afternoon adventure off with what turned out to be a really terrific early dinner at The Marina restaurant. Our table was right above the river with a great view, and the food really was fantastic. All in all, another successful and enjoyable New England trail running trek.

 our route

elevation profile; guess which part is Black Mountain...

Running along the West River Trail in southeast Vermont