Following the links between North, South Boquet mountains

Low peaks overlooking Lake Champlain exist in extensive network of CATS trails

By Tim Rowland

Wandering beneath the summits of the Boquets and beneath the radar of hikers is the Boquet Mountain Trail, a footpath that – despite the name – doesn’t end up on top of anything. There are other trails for that. The North Boquet Summit trail ends up … guess where? (Careful with this, it might not be the obvious.)

Oh, bad luck, it IS the obvious. The North Boquet Summit trail does indeed go up North Boquet Mountain, and features a number of neat overlooks both east and west. The Wildway Overlook trail, meanwhile, runs to the top of South Boquet, and is popular due to its relative ease and one of the finest views in the West Champlain Hills.

The North Boquet and South Boquet trails are now connected, thanks to a new link that makes it possible to bag both summits in one hike. The Rocky Ledges Trail is the spine from which these other trails branch off, and the Foothill Trail is in the mix there, too.

So there’s a lot going on in this little neck of the woods, and it’s a good idea to have one of the excellent Champlain Area Trails maps with you to keep it all straight. 

The Boquet Mountain Trail is a 2.5 mile point-to-point route leading from Jersey Road in the north to Cook Road in the south. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago, before we had the lay of the land, my brother Bruce and I had charged out from Jersey Street like a herd of turtles on the Boquet Mountain Trail, intent on bagging what we kind of assumed to be Boquet Mountain. As the trail climbed our excitement built — but then our hopes were dashed when seemingly within an arms reach of a mountaintop, the trail began to descend, viewless, back down to the valley.

Related reading: Grand Hike on a grand day in the Champlain Valley

I am a small, petty man in many respects, and hence the Boquet Mountain route got on my list as a “stupid” trail for faking us out as it did, and we never went back. Until a recent Friday, then Bruce and I, and Explorer editor Melissa Hart decided to give the trail another chance.

The Jersey Street trailhead is west of the hamlet of Essex off of Rt. 22. Take a right on Jersey and after crossing the Boquet River the trailhead is 1.5 miles on the left, marked with a small CATS sign. This is the more dependable trailhead since Cook Road at the other end is what they lovingly call a “seasonal” road, meaning it’s not plowed.

But since there hadn’t been anything to plow, we left a car at Jersey and drove to Cook, 0.74 miles west of Leaning Road, where we started the hike along an old logging road through a young, saplingesque forest that will be quite attractive in time if you want to hold off for 75 years. Hints of rusted metal appear here and there in the woods, hinting at the grounds agrarian past

A quarter mile in, the trail splits and you can take a shortcut by going right — we went left, but doing so doesn’t really add any significant distance to the route. You do get to see a stretch of woods that is almost entirely beech before melting back into a traditional hardwood mix. The main trail rejoins the shortcut in 0.6 miles and begins to skirt South Boquet Mountain to the east.

The trail remains mostly level until about 1.3 miles, where it begins to climb the mountain’s eastern flank. Here you’ll find more evergreens and some attractive rock formations, and you gain enough elevation to get some nice views of Lake Champlain through the trees — something you would not be treated to in summer. 

If you are a normal person you will continue on, arriving at the junction with the Foothill Trail at 1.5 miles, bear left and then cross the junction of Rocky Ledges 0.3 miles after that.

We, however — well, I thought maybe I could get us up to an overlook on the north side of South Boquet, so we left the trail and climbed up the little mountain where we did get some better (obstructed) views of the lake. But alas, while there had not been snow there was plenty of ice cascading down the cliffs, so instead of achieving bushwhacking glory we meekly hooked up with an old logging road we knew of from past off-trail adventures and followed it over a saddle and back down to the Boquet Mountain Trail.

Actually that isn’t even true — we hit the South Boquet-North Boquet connector trail and turned on it after mistaking it for Boquet Mountain. Fortunately, it mostly paralleled BMT so by the time I realized my mistake we weren’t too far off course, so Melissa and Bruce accepted my apologies (I think) and off we went on the sanctioned trail through a sugarbush and back out onto Jersey Street.

The Boquet Mountain Trail is not spectacular compared to others in the neighborhood, but if you want a nice forest walk without much in the way of climbing it’s a solid option where few others are likely to be encountered.