As noted in County Highpointing and Peakbagging most of the Vermont county highpoints are on the list of New England's Hundred Highest Peaks, a list that I had completed in July 2000. Gillespie Peak, one of the remaining peaks, is on the Long Trail, about 3½ miles from Brandon Gap. I had been thinking about it all summer, but never got to it. I decided to do it on November 16th 2003.
I drove from the east, coming from New Hampshire. The intelligent way to get there would have been to drive south on I91 to its junction with I89, and then go north-west on that road. Looking at the map I succumbed to the temptation to take a shortcut, taking VT132 to avoid several miles of travel in the wrong direction on I91. A big mistake, that was as slow and as winding a country road as I ever drove on! Once on I89 I followed it until I took VT 107 to VT 100 to VT 73.
Climbing up VT73 to Brandon Gap I began to see snow at higher elevations. Parking is immediately (0.1 mile) west of Brandon Gap, the snowy lot was on the south side of the road. There is a path from the north side of the road opposite the parking area that soon joins the LT north of the gap. Since I had not seen that path I walked along the road to pick up the LT at the height of land.
The trail went over several peaks, never very steep, and mostly in open hardwoods that are so beautiful in winter, nothing was missing but some sun.
The GMC's Guide to the Long Trail map shows three peaks, Mt Horrid (3,126 feet), Cape Lookoff Mountain (3,320 feet) and Gillespie Peak (3,366 feet). Neither the map nor the text shows a small knob on the south side of Gillespie Peak that could be mistaken for the summit, fortunately my altimeter showed it to be over 100 feet lower than Cape Lookoff Mountain, whereas Gillespie Peak is slightly higher. There is a sign at the summit of Gillespie Peak, a totally undistinguished wooded summit. Undistinguished as it was, it still provided a logical lunch spot with no views.
The distance one way is 3.3 miles and the net elevation gain (summit elevation minus road elevation) is 1,183 feet. The latter figure is not very meaningful, I estimate that about 500 feet of elevation are lost (100 feet going down Mt Horrid, 300 feet going down Cape Lookoff Mtn and a final 100 feet going down the unnamed bump), for about 1,700 feet of total elevation gain on the way up, and 500 more feet of elevation gain on the way "down".
The sun came out for the only time that day on my final descent from Mount Horrid to the road, and the open hardwoods its south face were very beautiful, white birches standing in the midst of white snow.
In Vermont the roads are quite close to the mountains, and so as
usual I spent about as long driving as hiking.