Kingdom Heritage Trail in North East Kingdom Vermont. An absolutely amazing trail. This is a MUST Trail. Conditions were extremely well kept and the trail was incredibly well marked. The toughest part is the traverse part and the drive to Lewis Pond is not accessible via Rt 105-Lewis Pond Rd; you have to take Hemshaw Rd-Lewis Pond to make it to the northern finished point. None the less, epic and amazing trail!
Strava Caption/Write Up:
This is a definite bucket list trail to run! The Kingdom Heritage Trail is a secret epic run through amazing remote and wild terrain. Extremely runnable, yet I did not run anywhere near the pace I thought I would. I figured I’d roll 9-10 min pace, and felt that I was easily running this (as it’s what I run every day on my hard trails), yet was about 60+ sec slower every mile. I did not set out to hammer this FKT, as the terrain and route was unknown, yet wanted to run free and see what that got me. It get like the twilight zone at times bc of how good I felt just running and yet feeling that “normal” food was just slower today. So it goes. Maybe I left 2-3% energy out there from the tri-crowning run I did a couple days ago and was not as recovered as I thought. The crowns were worth it, and did not take away from the fun of today.
The run starts with a gnarly steep climb, and right at the top, I started seeing all the local fauna paired up, as seconds later; biblical apocalyptic end of days rain started coming down. This lasted for 5 miles and was really enjoyable and refreshing. The problem was as fast as the rain started, it ended and hot blue skies made it steamy for the last few miles. Gore Mtn is so awesome; absolutely awesome trail that leads up and over, which was so enjoyable to be on. Yet, the trail was too epic and fun for that to be an issue.
Issues would arise as soon as I finished, with a new FKT of 3:48 for 19.35 miles. As soon as I finished, at the Lewis Pond Overlook, I noticed my ride was not there yet.
Legit, something came from the ground and grabbed my ankle and stung the ever loving cuss out of me and I started my watch again and kept running.
To be fair and honest, the previous two people to upload this traverse seemed to be hiking as much as running, and there are only 3 known finishers of this traverse.