Chelsea, Washington, Corinth, Vershire
4/24/22 and 10/5/24
Clocking in at just 19.74 miles, you might think that this ride is a stroll in the park. Not so! With 2,498 feet of elevation, you are climbing from start to finish (or so it felt).
We parked in Chelsea village, and headed out of town on a paved road, uphill. At Kennedy corners, it turned to gravel, and the climbing continued. 1000 feet of vertical later, the scenery is excellent – with farmland and tree canopy shading the dirt road on the way to Corinth Corners. It felt remote, with very little traffic, lots of woods and few houses.
Eventually the road levels off and the climbing ends (briefly). You turn south and cross the paved road to Goose Green, on the way to Route 113. The road gets very narrow in spots, and is lined with large maple trees. At Route 113, you ride about a half mile west before turning south toward Vershire Center on a wide gravel road.
At the Vershire School, you turn west on Vershire Center Road. At Taylor Valley Road, we turned right on Chelsea Road, a class 4 road just on the outskirts of Vershire (about mile 14) that had us walking almost ankle deep in mud and second guessing our route. We walked back and forth several times – wondering if we should we turn around, or if we should we go forward. Eventually we went forward on some pretty gnarly terrain until it finally dumped us onto a pretty well established VAST (i.e. snowmobile) trail.
That eventually dumped us out onto Vershire Center road which connected us to Jenkins Brook Road, which brought us to VT Route 110 south of Chelsea Village.
From there we found our way back to our starting point and our car.