Camping in Vermont by Train: A Car-Free-ish Weekend at Mt. Ascutney

I’ve spent a lot of time on this blog making the case that you can reach real nature from New York without a car. My car-free day trip series is built around it. You start at a subway stop, end at one, and don’t get in a car.

This trip bends that, because we’re going deep in Vermont’s Green Mountains.

This summer I took the Amtrak Vermonter up to Mt. Ascutney in Vermont to go camping for a long weekend.

The train got me almost the whole way there, right into the center of a classic Vermont town. From there, my mom and sister picked me up to get to the campsite 4.8 miles away. So it’s not fully car-free, but it’s still an inexpensive weekend trip in nature that you can do on the train.

(I mean, c’mon, if you want nature, this Amtrak station has a mountain in the name.)

Here’s exactly how the trip worked, who it’s realistically for, and why, even with the car asterisk, it’s some of the best train-accessible nature I’ve found in the northeast.

First, This Is a Weekend, Not a Day Trip

I’ve written about a few day trips from NYC, like Cold Spring or New Paltz.

You can’t do this one and be home for dinner.

The Vermonter from New York is a long ride from near the Canadian border all the way to D.C. It comes once a day in each direction, so this is a weekend trip.

I went Thursday to Sunday, three nights, and I’m glad I did. We hiked a different trail every day, all of them walking distance from our campsite inside the state park. Three nights is the sweet spot: enough time that the long train ride earns its keep, and enough trails at Ascutney that you’re not repeating yourself.

If you’re only weighing whether a train this long is worth it over flying or driving, I’ve made my full case for taking Amtrak instead of flying here. Yeah, the Vermonter is slow, but I get the time back. I read, I worked, I sat in the cafe car and watched Vermont roll by.

Getting There: The Vermonter to Windsor–Mt. Ascutney

The Vermonter drops you at Windsor–Mt. Ascutney station (station code WND). Like a lot of stops on this route, the “station” is really just a platform now.

In a bit of Vermont irony, the building called “Windsor Station” s a restaurant, not the train station anymore. I went in to use the bathroom after getting off my train, to my surprise, people were sitting down eating an early dinner already. (They still let me use the bathroom.)

When you book on Amtrak’s site, search the station code WND if “Windsor” or “Mt. Ascutney” gives you trouble.

This is the same advice I give for the whole route in my Vermonter review. The station name and the town name don’t always match, and Amtrak’s search can send you on a nonsensical transfer if you’re not careful.

My ticket was $48, booked a few weeks in advance. As always with Amtrak, that price is dynamic, so the earlier you book the better. If you wait until the last minute, it will likely be a lot more.

The Vermonter runs once a day in each direction, and because it’s such a long route on the busiest rail corridor in the country, it can be delayed.

Build some slack into your plans and check the train status. And don’t get it close. If you miss it, you’re waiting until tomorrow.

For more on the train, I have ridden it dozens of times, and you can see my full Vermonter Amtrak review here.

Windsor Itself Is a Classic Vermont Town Center

When you get off the train, it drops you right into a charming, walkable Vermont town. Windsor has a few restaurants, a coffee shop, and lodging within walking distance if you’d rather not camp your first or last night. The coffee shop will be closed, sadly, because the train gets in at 6pm (or later with delays).

Crucially for campers, there’s a Price Chopper and a Rite Aid within walking distance of the station.

That means you can arrive with a light bag and stock up on food, water, and last-minute supplies on foot before you head to the park. It’s a small thing that makes the car-free-ish version a lot more doable.

Getting to Mt. Ascutney State Park: The Last 15 Minutes Likely Needs a Car

Mt. Ascutney State Park is only about a 15-minute drive from the station, roughly five miles. But it is a drive.

Uber and Lyft are not reliable out here. You cannot count on tapping your phone and getting a ride the way you would if you were closer to New York City. So you need a plan for those five miles, and I’ll give you the honest hierarchy of options.

You can call a private taxi service ahead of time. I’m sure it wouldn’t be that expensive, but in these small towns, you have to find the local taxi companies and call them and tell them to meet you at the train station (or the Price Chopper or the Rite Aid or whatever).

The easiest way: meet up with someone who has a car.

That’s what I did. I took the train up with just what I could carry, and my mom and sister drove in (they live in Chittenden County, Vermont) with all the camping gear and picked me up at the station.

Camping already demands a lot of equipment, a tent, sleeping bags, a stove, food, and hauling all of that on a train and then five miles on foot is a stupid idea even for the extreme car-free people like me.

If part of your group is driving anyway, the train becomes a great way for the car-free member of the group (me) to join without anybody renting a second car or cramming everyone into one.

The fully car-free version exists, but it’s for experienced thru-hikers only. If you’re someone who already backpacks, you know how to pack light, and five miles with a full kit doesn’t scare you, then absolutely: pack your lightweight setup, walk, bike, or hike the five miles from the station to the park, set up at a campsite, and spend the next few days on some great hikes.

If that’s you, you don’t need my advice on what to pack or how to feed yourself out there. Thru-hikers are built different and you’ve got it handled.

A third option for serious cyclists: bring a bike. You can bring a bike on Amtrak for a few extra bucks, and Mt. Ascutney is a great mountain biking area. It’s probably an even better mountain biking area than hiking area. We saw tons of mountain bikers at the campsite.

If you can get your camping load light enough, biking those five miles is easy and not on busy, sketchy roads and opens up the trails once you’re there. Or skip camping altogether, bring the bike, and stay at lodging in or near Windsor.

For most people, this is a “meet the people with the car” trip.

The Camping: A Classic, Cheap Vermont State Park

Mt. Ascutney State Park is exactly what you want a Vermont state park to be, and like most state parks, it’s cheap. That’s a big part of why this ends up being an inexpensive weekend away despite the long train ride.

We stayed in a lean-to site. My mom booked it, and as a Vermont resident she paid $30 a night. For a non-resident it’s $49 a night, and regular tent sites are a bit less than the lean-tos.

There are cabins at Mt. Ascutney State Park, but they are a few miles up the mountain road, not down by the main campground.

The Hikes: A Different Trail Every Day

Okay, now the payoff, and where doing this car-light work. We hiked a different trail every day, and every trailhead was walking distance from our campsite. That’s the dream setup: no car shuffle between hikes, just wake up, eat, and walk to the mountain.

Grab the map from the state park entrance and start planning.

The biggest trail we did was the Futures Trail. Including some detours to see the Steam Donkey (old logging equipment they left on the mountain), we ended up hiking over 11 miles in one day.

It’s not a technically challenging hike, but it’s a long one. There are several great view points (vistas) along the way, and shorter versions if you don’t want to do the full thing. It took us 7 hours taking our sweet time, eating lunch at the time (and walk the extra .3 miles to the West Peak is worth the view.)

Our “recovery” day, we did the swoops and loops trail, which was mostly flat and less than 4 miles, so there are lots of hiking trails for all experience levels here.

The mountain itself has a summit with an observation tower and long views, and Ascutney is well known as a hang gliding spot, so keep an eye on the sky. [PHOTO: summit + observation tower + the view, ideally with a person in frame for scale; hang gliders if any were up]

How This Compares as Train-Accessible Nature

I’ll say it plainly: as train-accessible nature, this is pretty damn good. Mt. Ascutney and the parks around it give you more hikes, more mountains, and more rivers than anywhere I can reach on a day trip.

It’s rural. Let’s be clear. This isn’t like anything inside the five boroughs, and the feeling of being in nature will surpass the famous spots within an hour or two of the city as well, with all due respect to Cold Spring.

What a Weekend at Mt. Ascutney Costs

The train aside, this is a cheap weekend, because the two big costs, transportation and lodging, are both low.

• Train: Less than $100 round-trip, booked a few weeks out.
• Camping: $30/night as a VT resident, ~$49/night non-resident for a lean-to; tent sites a bit less. Over three nights, that’s roughly depending on your rate and site.
• Food: whatever you buy at the Price Chopper plus a meal or two in Windsor.

There’s no daily fixed cost the way a hotel weekend racks up. State parks keep this affordable, and if you’re splitting a car ride and gear with family or friends, your personal cost is basically the train and your share of the food.

Be a Good Guest

Windsor is a small Vermont town, and the state park is a shared resource that Vermonters fund and maintain. Carry out everything you carry in, keep noise down at the campground, tip well at the restaurants in town, and leave the trails better than you found them. The resident-vs-non-resident pricing exists because, well, the residents subsidize part of what you’re enjoying.

Why I’ll Keep Taking Trains to Trailheads

Standing on a trail at Ascutney, a five-mile drive from a train that came all the way from New York, I kept thinking how great a train weekend trip this is for people in New York, and how I wish we had more trains to nature like this, that so much of the nature in this country didn’t rely on a car.

You can argue that trains are worse at reaching those rural places. That’s true. Trains need riders, and having lots of riders is challenging for rural places. (Although I’d argue Eurpean villages show a different model, that’s a convo for another day>)

This is still a choice about what we build and fund. Amtrak, and the states that fund it like Vermont, get people close, gets me up to Vermont without clogging highways or polluting air.

But on that drive from the train to the state park, I think about what could get us those last five miles. Shuttle buses? Protected bike lanes and bike share? How can we envision our society to be less dependent on cars, freeing up land from parking lots and giving it back to nature?

Still, I’ll take it. A weekend in the Vermont mountains, reached mostly by train, for the price of a couple of tanks of gas, is exactly the kind of trip I want more people to know is possible, car in the group or not.

More Car-Free (and Car-Light) Nature Trips

If this is your kind of weekend, here are a few others I’ve written up:

• Cold Spring Day Trip From NYC Without a Car
• New Paltz Is the Perfect Car-Free Day Trip From NYC
• I Ranked 7 Transit-Accessible Nature Spots in NYC
• The Vermonter: My Complete Guide to the Route
• My Amtrak Packing List
• East Coast Summer Amtrak Trips

Questions about doing this one yourself? Drop them in the comments.