Bristol Cliffs Wilderness

Directions: Take 116 north from Middlebury. Bear right on Bristol Notch Road; then left on Lower Notch Road. Park anywhere below the cliff.

Most mountaineering expeditions and hiking trips are planned well. Equipment is assembled in advance. The weather report is closely monitored. Gear lists are checked and re-checked; the map is studied and memorized. Preparation can lead to a seamless adventure--but often a somewhat boring one as well. "Order brings the ordinary," a particularly flamboyant friend of mine likes to say, "while chaos brings adventure." Chaos did indeed bring life, and fun, as I spontaneously set out one January afternoon with three friends to investigate the Bristol Cliffs Wilderness.

We set out on one of the coldest days of the year--a day when the car groaned before it turned over and the exhaust spilled out, blue, thick and heavy with complaint. It was a day better to stay inside-- but the sky was a deep blue and the sun shone down brightly with its slanted winter rays in an attempt to heat the frozen land. It was a beautiful day. We drove towards Bristol with only an off-handed idea of how to find the cliffs; after stopping at a gas station once for directions (but only after chiding from Dani, riding shotgun, who insisted I was not allowed to be a typical guy) and turning around several times, we found the intersection with Route 116. 116 crosses Bristol Notch Road, a small dirt strip in the wilderness, which in turn led to a smaller one: Lower Notch Road. Driving along it, the cliffs suddenly sparkled above us through the trees. Now all we had to do was find a place to park.

My friend had come here last week, parked on the road, and gotten towed--out forty bucks! This western edge of the wilderness area has no parking lot, so we knocked on a local's door for advice. "Good morning," I said, smiling as a man opened the door. "How are you?"

"Just fine, thanks." He looked confused.

"My friends and I here wanted to explore the cliffs, and were wondering where to park. A buddy of mine got towed here the other day."

"Yup, I saw the cops come."

"Do ya have any suggestions for us?"

"Well, yer best bet is to just try and find a place to get off the road. A logging road or something."

No shit, I thought. That's helpful.

". . .or, you could park in my father-in-law's house down the street. It's under construction. No one's home. Just pull in the driveway."

"That'd be great!" I responded.

With that issue settled, we parked next to the plywood shell of a framed house, on a snow-dusted frozen gravel driveway, and started trudging up through the woods on the other side of the road. The Bristol cliffs begin in a thick, tangled forest; downed trees litter the area, and there is no trail. I lead our little group on a meandering path up the slope, skirting the property of several houses marked by red ribbons on the trees. Then, as our route wove through the woods, we began to encounter the first ice-flows. Streams finding their source at the base of the cliff trickle down through these woods in frozen channels of deep blue, like a precariously stretched-out skating rink. We followed one for a while until the trees thinned as we approached the cliff base. At this point, each of us took a separate, chaotic path through the woods, meandering like the still stream. In finding our own routes we found the beauty and freedom of having no plan and no set trail--the adventure of chaos was beginning.

Finally we were greeted by mammoth, tabletop boulders at the base of an enormous talus field (later, from above, the flat-topped boulder looked like the roofs of small houses-- they were that big). Glacial erratics? No, we imagined, they must have broken off from the shattering cliffs that loomed above us. I could almost picture how one of them might have broken off the upper portion of the cliffs, perhaps in early spring when the sunlight grows more intense and the fracturing ice begins to melt. It would have plummeted a thousand feet or so, hitting the first rocks below with an artillery-like concussion that may have been heard all the way to Middlebury--students walking the campus years ago may have heard the noise and wondered. It would have tumbled through the talus, crushing rock with sparks. The distinctive burning smell of crushed rock would have been pervasive. Finally, snapping these trees easily, it would have come to a stop right next to where we now stood.

We continued up through the talus field, covered with smaller boulders that have fallen off the cliffs over time. Now they are snow-covered and slippery. Walking through talus is exhausting under any conditions; each step must be planned, and rarely do your eyes leave the ground. The rocks are constantly settling, unpredictable with their movements; they pose a continuous hazard to ankles.

But they also provide a shifting trail to explore, like the unknown dirt roads that we had navigated earlier. Again, we each found our own chaotic path through the boulders, sitting down every so often to admire the view. It was wretchedly cold-- maybe forty below with the windchill--and our faces stung. But slowly a view emerged that prompted us to continue our climb.
Finally, mercifully, the talus ended, and we reached the base of the cliffs.

Above us stretched an enormous sheet of rock-- textured, fragile, ice-covered. Rivers of ice ran down the lower slabs, glistening in the sun; from the upper portions hung giant icicles--almost thick and sturdy enough to climb, with the right equipment--dangling precariously five hundred feet above our heads. We should be wearing helmets, I thought.

The cliff face stretched at least a thousand feet in both directions, until it wrapped around out of our sight. Multi-hued ice covered everything: blue, green, black, white; as water freezes, the oxygen content and temperature determine its final color.

But the cliffs were not the only attractions here. Our backs were to a view of the Champlain Valley, but when we turned around we were greeted by the long and rolling farm fields stretching far away. Silos stood shining in the sun, monuments to a state knee-deep in farming. Lake Champlain, we knew, lay hidden behind the hills, but then the Adirondacks loomed as the last thing we could see gazing west, sitting on the eastern border of New York. Today they were partly obscured in clouds, appearing as mysterious mountains. Far below, through the trees, I picked out my little black car sitting lonely in the unfinished lot of a small house in the middle of the woods. The lot somebody's father-in-law owns.

The landscape and the cliffs are not the only sights here, though. At our feet the small scrubs of bushes, upon close inspection, are covered in some kind of snow crystal.

We all got down on our hands and knees to examine these delicate, impossibly thin sticks of snow which coated the tiny branches, fuzzy and seemingly soft. Like feathers. Or like pipe cleaners. I get too close, and my breath instantly melted some-- gone. These bushes, like benign winter versions of a prickly thorn bush, line the entire base of the cliff.

Exploring, Benji led us along the base of the cliffs into a deep gully, hidden from the sunlight and therefore frigid. Fallen trees clutter this natural bowling alley, and today a dusting of snow covered the precarious ice. Farther in we carefully ventured, until ribbons of blue and green ice appeared, flowing secretly down the gully. It's a cold, dangerous place--once, two years ago, a friend had taught me how to ice climb here; what was planned as a fun day became a nightmare of broken crampons, ropes that were just five feet too short, and several near-falls. After finishing at sunset, we had walked down, silent and cold in the dark. But today was even colder, and I was happy to leave the gully, a dark scar in the cliff, almost as quickly as we had entered it.

Now we were really cold. The sudden shade had chilled our feet, numbed our hands; the sunlight we walked into as we left the gully was a welcome change, like steeping out of a cold swimming pool on a warm fall day. Quickly we walked down, away from the cliffs, scampering down the talus--always carefully. The tabletop boulders were strewn about below us--maybe they were houses? From here you could convince yourself that they were anything you wanted them to be.

Down the talus, past the boulders, through the woods we came, silently. Again we followed the meandering path of the icy stream, still and bubbly, a kind of guide towards and away from the cliffs; it was a frozen finger showing us the way through this clutter of rocks and trees and logs. Each of us again on a slightly separate route, individual explorers. Finally we made it to the road, hopped across the dirty and salty snowbanks and onto Lower Notch Road. We walked down it, four abreast, as if we owned it. There was no traffic.

We got back to the car, which was sitting warmly in the sun--it started like a dream. Chaos had brought life, my friend would be happy to know. Unfamiliarity with this trail-less landscape had brought us great surprises. Our trip had been unpredictable, like the shifting talus landscape or the way that, ages ago, the house-sized boulders tumbled every-which-way off the cliffs. We got in the car. I drove us home.