Green Mountain Club secures easement to reroute 3 miles of Long Trail off road

The Green Mountain Club finalized the final easement needed to move approximately three miles of the Long Trail in Johnson off West Settlement Road. This action concludes a negotiation process with local landowners that lasted more than 30 years. The new route will place hikers on a forested feature known as Dry Ridge rather than a public road.

Currently, hikers traverse a half-mile segment of West Settlement Road to continue the 272-mile trail. This section is one of the last remaining road stretches on the entire route. Hikers also walk roughly one mile of road in the Winooski River valley and another mile near Manchester. Mollie Flanigan, the club's director of land conservation, noted that the Lamoille and Winooski valleys present difficulties due to fragmented property parcels and competing land uses.

The reroute relies on seven separate agreements with owners in the Lamoille River valley. The trail will cross timber lands owned by Forest Investment Associates. While the club gains access to manage the forest within 20 feet of the new path, the landowner retains rights to log the surrounding property. Flanigan stated that the area will remain an active part of the Vermont timber landscape under private ownership.

Construction on the new trail is scheduled to begin in 2030. The club will work with the landowner to finalize the specific route, which is expected to wind through the woods while avoiding a wetland and pond on the property. This new easement brings the total protected portion of the Long Trail to more than 98 percent. Approximately four miles of trail along 13 properties remain without legal protection.

The club also completed a separate project on Belvidere Mountain in Eden this fall. The organization rebuilt a stretch of trail north of Route 118 that had eroded due to heavy foot traffic and rainfall. The old path followed a steep, crumbling former logging road. The new design accounts for climate change impacts and avoids a swath of bear habitat. The project moved roughly a quarter-mile of the trail from private land onto the Long Trail State Forest.

Keegan Tierney, director of field programs for the club, explained that the original trail was built 100 years ago and did not anticipate 500,000 to 1 million annual visits. The hike up Belvidere Mountain is a 6-mile round trip. Hikers can expect a smoother surface and may encounter bear-scarred beech trees along the new route.