Gravel rides tell Vermont’s story top to bottom on VTXL cycling route

By Charlotte Oliver/Community News Service

Editor’s note: The Community News Service is a program in which University of Vermont students work with professional editors to provide content for local news outlets at no cost.

From the top of the Northeast Kingdom down toward the Berkshires, the VTXL carves a path the length of Vermont. The biking route takes cyclists along the chatter of dirt and gravel roads in a ride that stitches together the state’s character. Breathtaking views come after hard climbs, and tunnels of trees spit out riders into small towns.

In central Vermont the route passes through East Barnard, Pomfret, Woodstock and South Woodstock. See route map at: bikepacking.com/routes/vtxl.

“The whole route was insane,” said Jake Bleggi, a cyclist from Utah who rode the VTXL in 2022 as an ode to Vermont, the last state he visited in the continental U.S. He called the roads “incredible” and the people “super nice.”

The trail demands much of the rider and offers rewards. Its 301 miles are peppered with 30,300 feet in total climb — all on public dirt roads between a dozen rocky Class IV sections. 

Loosely defined as cycling on unpaved roads, gravel biking has been on the rise in Vermont. “From just about any point in the state you can get on a pretty terrific gravel ride,” said Dan Hock, owner of Winooski Wheels bike shop in the city of the same name.

The VTXL both represents the trend and reflects the state it spans. 

Still charmed, Bleggi recounted stopping by a farmstand with homemade goods where “you could just grab whatever and then just leave cash,” he said. 

“We were at a point where we needed a morale boost, and that was the best morale boost we could have asked for,” he said. 

Joe Cruz, a self-described “adventure cyclist” who lives in Pownal, designed the route in 2020 for retired World Tour road racer Ted King. King, a Vermonter by way of New Hampshire, had been set to ride in a Kansas gravel race that year, but it got postponed — and later canceled — due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

King was itching for a gravel ride back home like the event in Kansas would’ve been.

So the pro reached out to Cruz, asking if he knew any that went the whole length of Vermont. He replied “no.”

“I think that got his wheels turning,” said King.

Cruz remembers the following days. “It stuck with me, and two days later I wrote back to him and was like, ‘You know, I think we could probably make one of these’,” he said. 

Gravel biking started as a “combination of riding mountain bikes but trying to achieve the aesthetic of hiking and backpacking,” said Cruz.

Cruz then spent six weeks drafting. He started with digital maps, then drove with his bike to sections he wanted to put his “eyeballs on” to make sure he got “the right kind of texture,” he said.

To him, putting routes together is about creating a “rhythm” and a “story,” he said, “a story about your own effort and a story about the landscape and a story about the history of Vermont in this case.”

When the route was finally mapped out, King set off May 30, 2020, with the goal of finishing in under 24 hours — and finished with a moving time under 21 hours. He left the Canadian border at about 11 p.m. and reached the Massachusetts border at about 9 p.m. the next day. “It’s just a constant flow — a constant, really challenging flow,” said King. 

“You really do have to put down a lot of power to get up there and then immediately be on your toes and be paying attention as you go screaming down the other side,” he said.

Although King was a pro cyclist, Cruz encourages everyone to get out and try it. “I want to make sure that anything that I create in the outdoors is not some secret thing for the experts,” he said. Online he’s shared about 25 major routes he created around the world, along with hundreds of shorter ones, he said.

Gravel biking started as a “combination of riding mountain bikes but trying to achieve the aesthetic of hiking and backpacking,” said Cruz, who started biking around Vermont in the late ’80s when he was a student at Williams College in Massachusetts. Living close to southern Vermont “meant riding on Vermont dirt roads, because that’s where the interesting terrain was,” said Cruz.

Hock, the bike shop owner in Winooski, said one of the main draws for gravel riding is experiencing the roads themselves. He estimates between 30% to 35% of his bike sales are gravel or bikepacking bikes.

“Everybody’s just trying to get more people involved,” Bleggi said.

King understands the hype. “I mean, it’s tremendously fun. I think people like skidding around on dirt,” he said. He rode the VTXL a second time in October 2023 over three days, and it still proved a challenge, he said. 

Bleggi, the Utah cyclist, loves biking because it gives him “this freedom to explore an area human powered, while still getting to cover so much distance,” he said. 

“You can hear or see things that you wouldn’t hear or see traveling in other ways,” he added. 

On the VTXL he encountered “insane roads and cool bridges,” along with many friendly locals, he said. People gave him helpful directions, and one woman at a campground let him and his pal sleep “in the game room underneath the pool tables” to stay warm and dry during bad weather, he said.

Since Cruz posted the route online during winter 2020, he estimates hundreds of people have traveled it every year, and he gets around 50 messages a year from strangers online about it, he said.

For those who aren’t pros like King, Cruz guesses it usually takes four to five days, though people can take it whatever pace they want, he said. He figures most people find it on bikepacking.com, a site with biking routes on every continent, for which he’s a contributing editor. Past riders can share their experiences on the site and post useful information for prospective champions of the route. 

Bleggi’s experience riding the VTXL inspired him to design a route for bikepacking.com in Wyoming. “Everybody’s just trying to get more people involved,” Bleggi said about the cycling community. 

For his part, Cruz is content knowing people like Bleggi get to see the scope of Vermont. “And I think, maybe, they’re made better for doing it.”