Mountain biking is generally associated with boulder strewn singletrack, daring macho descents and tortuous, grueling climbs. But the mountain bike is a great tool for other activities as well, like cruising Vermont’s tranquil back-roads. It has been said that “the best of Vermont is not touched by pavement.

”This is particularly true of the rolling Northeast Kingdom terrain dotted with quiet hill farms. Some of these historic, out-of-the-way farms have been around for one hundred and fifty years and changed very little. The Town of Craftsbury has close to two hundred miles of lightly traveled, smooth dirt and gravel surface back-roads within a ten mile radius of the Outdoor Center. Sure there's great paved biking options too, but such a concentration of scenic back-roads cruising is what is special to this part of Vermont.

So, on a recent Saturday morning Gina and I headed out on what promised to be a hot day with an ambitious thirty-mile back-road bike plan. Our bikes with twenty+ gears would surely get us up any hills so we mapped out a route with several climbs interrupted by a stop at the Center for a swim.

We passed through the scenic villages of Craftsbury, Eden, Albany, Glover, and Greensboro. Even with temperatures approaching the nineties, the roads were nicely air-conditioned by rows of stately sugar maples. Some climbs required our lowest gears, but a refreshing descent always followed. The back roads here are lightly traveled for a reason:  they don’t go anywhere important for someone in a car. The pace of life on these roads is slow, matched to cows and sheep. This, we thought, is what mountain bikes were really made for!

[Editor's note:  want to enjoy some of these great dirt byways? Be sure to join us for the Kingdom Farm and Food Bike Tours on Saturday, August 20!]