Ice Bed Trail, White Rocks, Clarendon Gorge

May 10,2011

This hike was planned on the spur of a moment. During a recent hike to the Ice Caves in Pittsford I had met a couple of people through networking within my hiking group. They had asked about mid week hiking. I was game.

We choose the Ice Bed Trail that faces White Rocks cliff face in Wallingford, Vt. It's short, offers some really great views and has some steepness with roots & rocks. My kind of trail. The weather was warm in the upper 60's with partly cloudy skies.

The trek starts out with a decent cardio workout. A quarter mile of fairly steep switchbacks that lead to the first vista. This offers views of the cliff face and the valley in the northeast. From here the trail continues on to another vista. This offers views to the south and west as well as the cliff face. From here the trail descends steadily to the base of the rock slide where massive boulders rest. The breeze coming out of the base was quite cold. We then decided to climb the boulders up part of the way. We took a quick break by an old hemlock when Andrea noticed a porcupine climbing up the tree. It's always a joy to observe an animal although he was scared.We then headed back down the rock slide, up the trail and back down the switchbacks to the car. We still had some time to explore so we drove up to Clarendon Gorge a.k.a Swinging Bridge. I was the only one who had been here before and Deb & Andrea wanted to check it out. This is a great rocky place to just hang out for a few minutes. The water was fairly high but not too extreme. Still too cold to swim in.