New northern New England perms

[Andrew LaMarche]

Hey all,

I've added a few new perms in the upper CT river valley that have an emphasis on gravel or adventure segments. These routes often have quite a bit of climb to maximize views or time away from cars. Figured I'd post here since it's not always easy to know about new routes when they pop up.

#05573 - Upper Valley Gravelfest (200k, 71% unpaved)

This route features some of my favorite dirt and gravel roads in the White River Junction area and incorporates several adventure (Class IV road) segments to string together the route. There is a ton of climbing - I plan to roll most of this route into an SR600 route in the coming months (WIP). Your hands and butt will probably appreciate a gravel bike with some handlebar/seatpost suspension or a hardtail MTB. You will get muddy/wet. You will (probably) hike a bike very occasionally. You may curse and shout my name while shaking your fist at the sky frequently.

I have completed an earlier revision of this route in July that had minimal differences - despite the spectacular elevation gain over the 200k, I felt better coming out of it than the times I've completed the VT 6 Gaps permanent. I will be doing a write-up of this route in the coming weeks (hopefully).

#05604 - Northern Rail Trail 300k (55% unpaved)

This route leverages the full length of the Northern Rail Trail (~60 miles from Lebanon, NH to Boscawen, NH) to make a 300K route in a figure 8 pattern. Out of the three, this one is probably the closest to a traditional brevet (though still features 55% gravel, most of it flat, fairly smooth rail trail miles). There are a couple of dirt segments I've folded in to keep it interesting - all have decent pavement alternatives at the expense of some extra miles except the gravel at mile 106. There is one short adventure segment at mile 190 that allows completion of the route without going through retail plaza hell in West Lebanon.

If you start the route in Lebanon, there is tons of free town parking right at the start. There are also tons of options for parking along the rail trail.

I have not ridden this route in full yet. I'm most familiar with the western lobe of the route and the rail trail miles. The eastern lobe was constructed with input from other local cyclists.

#05634 - DIRTY (200k, 58% unpaved)

You guessed it, another gravel route. Features some beautiful remote roads in VT and surrounding Mount Cardigan in NH. There is one segment that passes through a mild mountain biking area at mile 64 and a river crossing at mile 60, where there once was a bridge. Your feet will get wet, generally advise riding this route after June. Outside of that, most of the gravel is on official dirt roads.

If you want to ride any of these routes, I'm within 30 mins of the gravelfest and very close to the other two. If I'm available, I'd be happy to ride them with you or make my yard available for folks in southern NE.

Cheers,

Andrew

[John Buten]

Late notice, but I'm planning to attempt the Dirty 200k this Sat if anyone's interested. Andrew said he may join. Planning to start out of Norwich VT/Hanover NH by 7am.  Open to doing it Sunday as the weather seems just as good.  I have room for at least 2 at our place in Norwich, but you have to get yourself there as i am heading up early tomorrow and back late Mon. I might could pick folks up and drop them off at Dartmouth Coach which reportedly takes bikes as cargo. 

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "New England Randonneurs" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ne-randonneur...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ne-randonneurs/7ab6872a-eb35-492a-80a7-66d5004a1d04n%40googlegroups.com.

[eatbi...@gmail.com]

I can confirm that Dartmouth Coach does indeed allow bikes--no extra charge--with the caveat that they won't take it if the luggage compartment is full. In the numerous trips I've made down to Boston that's never been an issue.

Dave Cain

[Andrew LaMarche]

Based on feedback from riders and my own experience with the DIRTY 200k, the route has been revised to remove trails that were less enjoyable and now lives here:  #05634 - DIRTY · Ride with GPS

A revision for the Northern Rail Trail 300k will be going through shortly for much the same reasons, though no one has ridden it yet. 

-Andrew

[Andrew LaMarche]

I've received some feedback from folks that some of the RWGPS links are dead - sometimes when perms get updated, the perm committee deletes the existing route on the RWGPS account and replaces it with a new entry.

To avoid having to update this thread too frequently, I've started cataloguing my ride reports and the route overviews with pictures and videos here. Hopefully this gives people a better sense for the routes I make. Ideally I can put the route overviews directly in the RUSA DB in the future, but for now it seems it's plaintext entries. 

-Andrew

[Roger Hillas]

Andrew,

Another place to put ride overviews is the Description field of your RWGPS routes.

I doubt the RUSA database will be accepting route overviews anytime soon, and if it does they won’t be something you can edit directly.

My advice would be to update any RWGPS links that change on your site and let riders looking to ride them for credit get the current URL from the RUSA permanents search page.

Roger Hillas

Chair, RUSA Routes Committee
Member, RUSA Permanents Committee

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ne-randonneurs/80c7b480-eec6-4f19-99c6-89efe614ec0en%40googlegroups.com.

[Jake Kassen]

I typically copy and modify perm routes before an attempt. If I like the alternative route, I'll put a link to it in the comments section of the "official" RWGPS perm route as a way of letting other people know.

The RWGPS route comment field is pretty handy and anyone can edit it. (Although the comments will be lost if RUSA replaces the official perm route link entirely.)

Jake

> -------Original Message-------
> From: Roger Hillas <roger.h...@gmail.com>
> To: spaceco...@gmail.com <spaceco...@gmail.com>
> Cc: New England Randonneurs <ne-rand...@googlegroups.com>
> Subject: Re: [NER] New northern New England perms
> Sent: 13 Jan '26 12:50
>
> Andrew,
>
> Another place to put ride overviews is the Description field of your RWGPS routes.
>
> I doubt the RUSA database will be accepting route overviews anytime soon, and if it does they won’t be something you can edit directly.
>
> My advice would be to update any RWGPS links that change on your site and let riders looking to ride them for credit get the current URL from the RUSA permanents search page.
>
> Roger Hillas
>
> Chair, RUSA Routes Committee
> Member, RUSA Permanents Committee
>

> > On Jan 13, 2026, at 11:58?AM, Andrew LaMarche <spaceco...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I've received some feedback from folks that some of the RWGPS links are dead - sometimes when perms get updated, the perm committee deletes the existing route on the RWGPS account and replaces it with a new entry.
> >
> > To avoid having to update this thread too frequently, I've started cataloguing my ride reports and the route overviews with pictures and videos here. Hopefully this gives people a better sense for the routes I make. Ideally I can put the route overviews directly in the RUSA DB in the future, but for now it seems it's plaintext entries.
> >
> > -Andrew

> > On Wednesday, October 15, 2025 at 4:40:34?PM UTC-4 Andrew LaMarche wrote:
> > Based on feedback from riders and my own experience with the DIRTY 200k, the route has been revised to remove trails that were less enjoyable and now lives here:  #05634 - DIRTY · Ride with GPS
> >
> > A revision for the Northern Rail Trail 300k will be going through shortly for much the same reasons, though no one has ridden it yet.
> >
> > -Andrew

> To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ne-randonneurs/08D57B09-4233-4A37-969A-AE588C553079%40gmail.com.
>

[Andrew LaMarche]

Thanks for the reply, Roger. I figured it wouldn't be on the roadmap to change the DB contents, and like you said the difficulty of editing might limit any benefits it could have.

I pretty much pilfered Jake's RUSA.bike hyperlinks in my cycling page templates, so managing that isn't such a big deal anymore.

Eventually I might just anonymize the pages and put links to that in the RWGPS descriptions since RUSA doesn't recognize route owners.