Snake Mountain

Author's Comments

Snake Mountain rises alone from the Champlain Valley, and that isolation is the whole point. There are taller summits in Vermont and more famous ones, but few that give you this particular geometry - the lake stretched out below to the west, the Adirondacks rising sharp on the far shore, the Greens piling up behind you to the east. The valley floor is flat enough that a 1,287-foot rise behaves like something twice its height. You see the curve of the land in a way you rarely do in New England. The trail is straightforward. A steady three-and-a-half miles round trip through hardwoods, nothing technical, nothing that asks more than time. The summit opens onto exposed ledges and the foundation stones of a hotel that stood here in the nineteenth century, when people came up by carriage to take in the view and dance on a wooden floor that is no longer there. The ruins are subtle. You could walk past them if you were not looking. I have been up in late September when the valley below was already turning and the lake held that particular hard blue that comes after the summer haze burns off. Golden hour is the hour. The sun drops behind the Adirondacks and the light comes back across the water and washes the ledges in something close to amber. The wind is almost always working at the summit, so bring more layers than you think you need, and give yourself enough time to stay through the color and into the blue that follows. A wide lens does most of the work here. The composition is already there. You are mostly waiting for the light to find it.

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