WILLEM: I'm here today in the town of Eden, Vermont.

Now, the early settlers who named this place after the Garden of Eden must have had a fairly keen sense of irony.

Still, it is a beautiful place.

So, we're going to take a little hike today down to a little secret valley named Devil's Gulch.

And you're invited.

So, come on along.

♪ Welcome to Windows to the Wild.

I'm Willem Lange.

I'm standing today at the trailhead of a short hike into a secluded valley named Devil's Gulch.

Devil's Gulch is part of the Long Trail, which stretches the length of Vermont, from Massachusetts to Canada.

And today, we're only about 30 miles from the Canadian border.

I'm going to be hiking today with a brand new friend, Jen Roberts.

It's a pleasure to have you with me.

JEN: It's a pleasure to be here.

WILLEM: Who has just come out with a new book, Appalachian Mountain Club’s Best Day Hikes in Vermont.

I got to tell you, Jen, the book works... so far!

JEN: Good, good.

WILLEM: It got me to this parking lot, which nothing else could have.

It's a good description of how to get here.

And you brought your sister and your nephew.

JEN: That's right.

AMY: Hi.

WILLEM: This is Amy.

And this is Max, who’s going into the second grade and is probably going to lead this hike all the way in, right?

And out!

Okay.

We're going to get going because it's going to be hot today.

See you soon.

♪ Oh, thank you.

The book.

AMY: All right.

Our hike today is south on the Long Trail from Vermont Route 118 through Devil's Gulch to the Devil's Perch Lookout and Camp.

On the way back, we'll branch off on the Babcock Trail and funnel that past Big Muddy Pond back to our vehicles.

♪ Now, Jen’s guide book says the first thing you do is cross Route 118 very carefully.

JEN: It’s a blind corner here WILLEM: Max, you go first.

[laughter] Okay, here we go.

♪ [laughter] ♪ Jennifer Lamphere has spent most of her adult life on trails, hiking, skiing, biking, and paddling them, building them, and leading young people out on them to learn about the backcountry.

Since earning her degree in Education at the University of Vermont, she’s taught at outdoor-oriented schools in Oregon and Vermont, and worked for the Appalachian Mountain Club in the White Mountains and the Berkshires.

Jen lives in Montpelier, Vermont, where she teaches backcountry skiing and mountain biking when she's not roaming the forest with her husband and daughter.

But where did her love of the woods begin?

JEN: When I was finishing up high school, my parents sent me into the woods.

WILLEM: Where'd you go to high school?

JEN: In Exeter, New Hampshire.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

JEN: I grew up in Exeter and knew I wanted to take some time off before college, and my parents knew about the AMC, and they knew about Pinkham Notch, and up I went.

Was not fully my own choice, but there I went and it was the best thing the best decision that they probably ever made for me.

So, it led to years of jobs in the woods and work on guidebooks and trails and, you know, yeah, a lot of fun work.

[crunching underfoot] WILLEM: The deer flies are thick today, so Max takes his mother's advice and puts on a hat, and off he goes.

AMY: Zoom.

Oh, look at that.

Isn’t that pretty.

Somebody took the oh, I see, it's a power line.

I thought someone took the trouble to cut it out.

Someone did.

JEN: Ooh.

Very nice.

Isn’t that pretty.

MAX: I found it on the ground.

Max's hat reminds me of a picture I saw on Facebook of a guy at a Red Sox game with his cap on backwards going like this.

[laughter] [crunching underfoot] AMC's Best Day Hikes in Vermont describes 60 hikes.

Jen has done them all, from Haystack Mountain on the Massachusetts border to Brousseau mountain up in Norton.

I have tried a few of them.

It would take more years than I have left to go through the whole book and have found her descriptions accurate.

She throws in little tidbits to liven things up like, In the hollows deep under the boulders of Devil's Gulch, winter ice is sheltered and melts slowly through the spring and early summer, keeping the ravine pleasantly cooled.

You may even feel a cool breeze.

Hah.

Not today, boy.

How did you decide which 60 hikes, because these are supposed to be family friendly, after all?

JEN: They are, yep.

WILLEM: How do you decide which ones to include?

JEN: Well, actually, I collected from a lot of resources and from my own experiences and from friends a whole I probably started with 100+ hikes on a list and put them all on the state map, and then partly wanted to have a good range geographically.

I also wanted to have a good variety of you know, most like probably the majority are easy to moderate, but I definitely wanted to hit all of the the big peaks.

WILLEM: And a little history?

JEN: Yeah, so there are some nature and history essays.

And that was a really fun part of doing the book too was being able to help interpret some of the landscape.

There was some Irene damage on one of the hikes.

There was a huge landslide that hadn't been there the year before.

And so that was a neat discovery.

WILLEM: Speaking of discoveries, we're making a few of our own.

JEN: Well, I've been looking for Indian pipe because the last time I was here, I found a lot of it because this hillside is pretty damp.

[crunching] There's a couple.

Yeah.

Doing this book, I didn't know much about plants when I started.

And then when I started walking all over Vermont, you come across something like this and you have to wonder, What is that?

So, I got interested in identifying things along the way.

That was probably the best part about working on this book.

WILLEM: It's what?

JEN: Blue-bead lily.

JEN: Would you like some?

AMY: Isn’t that good?

WILLEM: You bet.

WILEM: What is it?

JEN: A wood sorrel.

WILEM: A wood sorrel!

You want to be careful about eating plants from the wild.

Jen has experience in this field, and I've got some too.

On today's hike, Jen's also brought along a plant identification book.

JEN: This is what we thought might be wild leek.

Yeah, I think that's what it is.

What do you think?

AMY: Mmm.

Yeah.

JEN: Yeah.

WILLEM: Hoo.

That's it.

JEN: Yeah.

WILLEM: Ramps, they call them in Appalachia.

♪ [crunching underfoot] I'm tiptoeing through the tulips.

♪ This is lovely.

We're shaded by the trees, so the hot sun isn't getting in here so much like the Falls in the River trail up in northern New Hampshire.

Very pleasant.

♪ This would be a nice trail for snowshoeing or skiing.

♪ It looks like an AT marker, but it's not.

It’s a Long Trail marker.

I don't know why they copied the AT here, but so it goes.

We're on the Long Trail.

We keep going, we’ll end up down in, God, I think Gilford, Vermont, down near the Massachusetts border.

But not today.

[chuckling] Yep.

♪ [birds calling] Somewhere down here is a view right or a vista of some kind.

That correct?

JEN: Yep.

We're coming to Ritterbush Pond Lookout.

WILLEM: Ritterbush?

JEN: Ritterbush, yep.

WILLEM: Whoa!

Look at that.

JEN: Yeah.

AMY: Oh, wow.

WILLEM: Isn't that lovely.

Little glacial tarn; any fish in it?

You're supposed to know, dear.

You wrote the guide book?

JEN: Yeah, we don't actually go there, so I didn't investigate too closely.

[chuckling] We're going up there.

WILLEM: What's that?

JEN: Spruce Ledge.

Well, it's around the corner there.

WILLEM: Oh, is that where the trail goes?

JEN: Yep.

Well, we're going to go down into the valley here, and then Devil's Gulch is down at the bottom.

And then we'll climb up to Spruce Ledge and get a great view back this way.

Should we stop by and have a swim in the pond on the way?

It's a little out of our way.

WILLEM: I think not.

I don’t want to gross anybody out.

[chuckling] But I could check with Fish and Game, see if there’s any fish in there.

They would know.

Okay, well, I guess that we're going downhill steeply to... JEN: We are.

Down to the junction of Babcock Trail and then to Devil's Gulch.

WILLEM: Interesting how the people who settled here were into the Old Testament.

They named it Eden, after the Garden of Eden.

JEN: Do you think they were just trying to lure people here?

WILLEM: I think they had a sense of irony, perhaps.

[laughter] According to the Town of Eden’s history, a charter was issued in 1781 by Governor Thomas Chittenden to 72 Green Mountain boys who fought in the Revolution.

The governor hoped the Town of Eden would become a Garden of Eden to these veterans.

Turns out none of them actually settled here.

♪ Pretty good walking through Devil's Gulch?

JEN: It's a little tricky.

It's pretty flat for a little ways, but then there's a big pile of rocks we got to climb over.

WILLEM: Oh, goody.

I'm looking forward to it.

So, let's do it!

♪ JEN: What makes this trail so special?

In a really short space, there's a lot of really interesting terrain.

♪ WILLEM: There's a rock that fell off the mountain side some time ago.

♪ ♪ [water falling] Little slippery.

♪ [water falling] What's this, Jen?

So, we're at the Babcock Trail.

This is our route out.

Go up the Babcock Trail on our way back.

WILLEM: We're going out that way on the way back.

JEN: We're going to stay on the Long Trail right now and head to Devil's Gulch.

WILLEM: What's this down here?

That's Babcock Trail down to Ritterbush Pond.

WILLEM: Ah, okay.

That's the side trail you mentioned in the guidebook that doesn't have a name or go anywhere.

JEN: It is an extension of the Babcock trail.

But yes, you're right.

WILLEM: So, we're going back that way and, for now, we're going this way, too.

[scary voice] BOTH: Devil's Gulch!

JEN: Are you ready?

[scary voice] WILLEM: Devil's Gulch.

Wooahaha!

Okay!

Let's go pull the Devil's tail.

♪ There.

I did it like Max.

♪ Be kind, Max.

Be kind.

Don't do stuff I can't do, okay?

♪ [chuckling] ♪ Some public-spirited citizen has left us a note here.

Hikers!

Don't drink the water here!

There's a dead moose lying upstream.

You'll see it.

It's in the trail.

Love, Scotty.

And he's written on special waterproof paper called Write in the Rain.

Isn't that neat?

Well, thank you, Scotty.

We won't drink the water, but maybe we will find the moose.

JEN: A little slippery.

[rocks tumbling] [stream filtering] WILLEM: Now, this is the A-frame that's pictured in your In the guidebook.

JEN: That's right.

Yeah, this is the entrance to the Gulch.

[scary voice] WILLEM: Woahohoh.

AMY: No turning back.

WILLEM: There should be a sign up here, Abandon hope, all you who enter here!

JEN: It's a pretty neat place.

It's not really that scary.

WILLEM: How come Max and I are scared stiff?

Hah!

You up for it?

You're going to tackle this?

You're going to tackle it, okay?

[Max nods] Okay.

We got them with us.

We're all right.

Yeah.

Okay.

So off we go.

This is the entrance to the Gulch.

[eery music] When you first walk into Devil's Gulch, the sides of the dark, damp gorge reach steeply skyward and a huge jumble of boulders chokes the gully floor.

Imagine when that came down.

Kawhoomp.

The old timers always associated canyons and gulches with evil spirits and, you know, bad guys.

JEN: Well, it does seem like a good place to be ambushed.

WILLEM: I suppose that, yeah, I’d have a hard time ducking an ambush in here.

[eerie music] [chuckling] According to Larry Becker, the Vermont State Geologist, Devil's Gulch is likely a glacial runoff channel that followed fractures in the rock at the end of the last ice age.

There was a lot of water around here 10,000 years ago, and it's got very impressive valleys that have only little streams running through them now.

♪ JEN: Whoa!

Max, look!

[Willem chuckles] MAX: Dead moose!

WILLEM: How do you know it's a moose, Max?

JEN: Can you tell by that long nose?

Look how long the backbone is!

WILLEM: See the skull lumps?

JEN: Oh, yeah.

Do you see that?

WILLEM: It died in the late-winter.

JEN: See this?

What do you think those were?

MAX: His antlers.

JEN: Yeah, he was just growing them, wasn't he?

MAX: Then he died.

JEN: Do you think it fell down in here off the walls?

WILLEM: Oh, I doubt it.

JEN: Wandering through... ♪ WILLEM: It's time to leave the mystery of the moose bones in Devil's Gulch.

I'm told that Spruce Ledge is our destination for lunch.

But first, we've got a little scrambling to do.

JEN: This is a tricky spot here to figure out how to get over this jumble of rocks.

♪ [poles hitting rocks] Then suddenly, it gets much easier.

♪ MAX: Do you have any brothers or sisters?

WILLEM: Do I?

I have a baby sister.

JEN: Is she still a baby?

WILLEM: She's 76.

[chuckling] [footsteps] We're out of the Gulch!

JEN: So, we're here at the trail to Spruce Ledge.

WILLEM: Ahah!

What did Yogi Berra say about a fork in the trail?

JEN: What did he say?

WILLEM: When you come to one, take it!

830 feet?

Straight uphill?

JEN: Only a little up and then downhill.

Don't go too far, though.

There's a good ledge.

[Willem chuckling] So, we're about two and a half miles in.

WILLEM: Yeah.

And this is the water source right here?

JEN: This is the water source.

Yep.

WILLEM: This would be a good place to eat lunch, I think.

Although, I got enough water left for lunch up there.

JEN: Yeah, there's a nice lookout up ahead.

WILLEM: We'll do that.

Okay.

And replenish on the way back.

Okay!

Up we go 830 feet.

[crunching underfoot] JEN: This is a nice little shelter for backpackers along the Long Trail.

It was rebuilt in 1998.

WILLEM: Spruce Ledge Camp is at an elevation of about 1,500 feet and can sleep eight hikers.

It's one of 70 Green Mountain Club overnight sites, spread no more than an easy day's hike apart along the Long Trail system.

JEN: A little further on down, you got to be careful when you head down that way, it drops off pretty precipitously.

But there's a nice little bench.

WILLEM: Now we can see where we've been.

Look at that.

JEN: Ah, very nice.

WILLEM: Oh, isn't that beautiful?

Is that Ritterbush Pond?

JEN: That is.

WILLEM: And that's Mount Belvidere over there.

JEN: It is, yep, with the fire tower up on top.

WILLEM: Fantastic!

All right.

And you is this seat engaged, madame?

AMY: Have a seat!

WILLEM: Okay.

Thank you.

Let's have a little lunch, maybe?

[Willem breathes deeply] Well, this is lovely.

We're sitting on Devil's Perch.

From here, you can see Ritterbush Pond, Belvidere Mountain, and a huge man-made mountain of asbestos mine tailings.

AMY: Is that that mound over there?

JEN: Can you see it?

Oh, yeah.

Max was showing me that.

What is that?

JEN: Tailings from asbestos mining.

WILLEM: The outlook is right at the top of a dramatic vertical cliff.

There are no warning signs or protection, and the edge of the cliff is disguised by weeds that a person could step on carelessly and fall off the cliff.

Watch the camera shake.

And the reaction of Jen, Amy, and me as our producer gets a little too close to the edge.

[rustling] JEN: Huh!

WILLEM: Will you cut that out?

Well, we just about finished lunch and had a little rest.

Now we're off again, back through Devil's Gulch and then a couple miles on the Babcock Trail back to where our vehicles are parked.

JEN: What’d you find?

Ooh.

Nice.

AMY: Look at how it came up.

JEN: Oh, it's a tube of birch bark that slid off a branch.

♪ Through the cave.

♪ WILLEM: Well, we finished the arduous climb out of the Devil's Gulch Valley, and we're now at the height of land at Big Muddy Pond, which, by the way, doesn't look very muddy.

We have a nice north wind.

It kind of makes things decent, and I think it’s pretty much downhill from here.

We should make it.

♪ The worst appears to be over.

JEN: It's a pretty nice hike, isn't it?

WILLEM: It is lovely.

Yeah, yeah.

We now have, I presume, a downhill pretty much till we get to the highway, which I can detect with my ears.

And you pretty much nailed it.

JEN: All right!

WILLEM: Did you do that with all the hikes in this book?

JEN: Oh, yeah.

Nailed em all.

I did!

WILLEM: This one checks out perfectly.

I mean, everything worked out just as you predicted.

And you did say it was a little slippery and crumby going through Devil's Gulch.

I agree.

[chuckling] I fell only twice.

JEN: You picked your landings well, though.

WILLEM: Yeah, I did, yeah, but it wasn't funny!

Did you have any surprises?

JEN: One of the things that I thought was really fun about doing this book was that Vermont seemed to me more geographically homogenous.

When I first started, I thought, well, it's just mountains north to south, east to west, pretty much, except for the Champlain Valley.

Doing the book, I realized how much variation there is.

You know, the northern Greens are very different than the southern Greens.

And the Piedmont, you know, along the Connecticut River Valley is very different than the main chain of the Green Mountains.

So, that was a really fun discovery.

And then, of course, down in southwestern Vermont, the Taconics.

You know, the Equinox.

WILLEM: How are you on the Equinox?

That's a good climb.

JEN: That's a quite a climb, yeah.

[chuckling] WILLEM: That's great.

But now, where is there a picture of your daughter?

Someone told me there were pictures of JEN: Right near this hike the hike right before Devil's Gulch there’s a picture of her.

WILLEM: Oh, okay.

Her name is Indy, right?

JEN: Indy.

Yep.

WILLEM: Which is short for what?

JEN: It's just Indy.

WILLEM: Independent?

JEN: Independence.

Yeah.

[chuckling] WILLEM: Oh, there she is!

Oh, yeah.

JEN: She had just turned two.

That's Prospect Rock.

WILLEM: What a sweetie!

[chuckling] JEN: Yeah.

So, she accompanied me on a lot of hikes, which made it easy to be able to describe which hikes were going to be good for kids and what age they might be good for.

WILLEM: Oh, yeah.

JEN: A lot of the hikes are intended for families and kids.

WILLEM: Yeah.

Yeah.

I found myself as we came down over the height of land, wanting to say, How much further, mommy?

[laughter] Because I knew you’d know.

JEN: And I think Max did a few times, didn’t he?

♪ WILLEM: Jen has just checked us out so they know that we're not back in the woods there along with the dead moose that somebody mentioned in the register.

And we’re safe back in, I guess you'd call it, civilization.

JEN: We’re almost there, yep.

WILLEM: We're about to cross 118 which is probably the most dangerous part of the hike.

And then we got about, oh, a little over a quarter-mile back to the vehicle 0.4, something like that, back to the vehicles.

And then, c’est toute fini.

JEN: Down to the ice cream shop.

WILLEM: That's it.

You bet.

Okay, let's do it.

Après vous, madame.

♪ Well, as you can see, we made it once again.

We cheated death, and we're back at the cars.

And it's been a great trip, thanks to you and your great book, your great guidance, and your incredible nephew JEN: I know.

WILLEM: Without whom I couldn’t be as jolly as I am.

JEN: He led the way.

WILLEM: He did!

Yeah.

What a guy.

Thank you very much, ladies.

Just a great, great day.

AMY: It was fun.

WILLEM: Don't forget to get the book if you possibly can.

It really works.

At least it worked today.

And a couple of other hikes I've done before, I checked.

It works.

It's a good book.

So we come again to that time I hate.

You know, the time we have to say goodbye.

So I shall.

I’m Willem Lange, and I hope to see you again on Windows to the Wild.

♪ When I got home, I called Vermont Fish and Wildlife and asked about fish in Ritterbush Pond.

They had no record of any or records of any stocking going way back into the 30s.

Well, it's a pretty pond anyway.

♪ AMY: If you say the word orange very slowly, like extremely slow, it's like gullible.

JEN: What?

WILLEM: Orange?

AMY: Yeah.

Try it very slow.

WILLEM: Ooorrraaannngggeee.

AMY: Well, I guess not.

WILLEM: What were you expecting?

AMY: I was expecting you to be gullible and it worked.

WILLEM: Whatever!

[laughter] Did you invite her?

JEN: I had to put up with this for years.

I can't do it by myself anymore.

WILLEM: Well, no wonder.

Support for the production of Windows to the Wild has been provided by: the Alice J. Reen Charitable Trust; the Fuller Foundation; the Mount Washington Cog Railway; and from Viewers Like You.

Thank you!

♪