I had planned to try out my new cross country skis today, but didn’t think there’d be enough snow and switched the plan to a hike instead.  It turned out that it was snowing in Stowe, where I was headed, it continued to snow the whole hike, and there was plenty of snow for skiing.  Oops.

We went to Sterling Forest intending to see the Sterling Falls Gorge.  I naturally assumed the gorge would be on the Upper Gorge Loop and the signs seemed to indicate that as well.

However, the Upper Gorge Loop was all wooded.  We walked uphill one side and downhill the other side.  It was taking a lot longer than it felt because we were hiking through eight inches of new powder for most the trail.  It wasn’t until we were almost all the way downhill again that I realized we hadn’t seen any waterfalls.

We asked a hiker coming in where they were and he directed us to one of the trailhead parking lots, from where the actual gorge and waterfalls are less than a five minute walk away.  Figures.

The falls had a nice picnic spot at the bottom that I imagine is packed in summer.  I’ll have to come back then and see, but I also plan on heading back here soon this winter.  The trails are great for skiing, there are many more miles of trails we didn’t check out, and we found a bunch of historic sites at the end.  They’d be cool to go back and see on a ski tour, as long as I download the information about them ahead of time.  The signs were all iced over and unreadable.