Moss Glen Falls
Waterfall · Stowe, Vermont
The tallest waterfall in Vermont, a few miles north of Stowe village in the C.C. Putnam State Forest - a horsetail fall dropping in several cascades down a steep gorge wall, reached by half a mile of trail that begins on boardwalk over wetland and then forks. Sources cannot agree on how tall it is: some say eighty-five feet and some say a hundred and twenty-five, which is a wide disagreement about a single waterfall and nobody seems minded to settle it. It is free, it is close to the road, and the left-hand fork above the falls is where people get hurt, because the edge is loose and the drop is real.
Moss Glen Falls Road, Stowe, Vermont, 05672, United States
FREE and open at all times - state forest land in the C.C. Putnam State Forest with no fee and no gate. ⚠ PARKING IS A SMALL LAY-BY on Moss Glen Falls Road and it fills on summer weekends and in October; go early and do not block the road. From Stowe village take Route 100 north about three miles, bear right onto Randolph Road, then the first right is Moss Glen Falls Road, with the parking about half a mile along on the left. The trail is about HALF A MILE EACH WAY with roughly 55 feet of climb, thirty to sixty minutes return, starting on BOARDWALK laid to protect the wetland - stay on it. ⚠ PAST THE FORK, THE LEFT-HAND PATH CLIMBS STEEPLY ABOVE THE FALLS AND THIS IS WHERE PEOPLE GET HURT: loose debris at the edge and a real drop below. Stay well back from the lip, and do not go up there in wet or icy conditions. ⚠ THE ROCK IS WET FROM SPRAY YEAR ROUND and ices hard in winter, when the fall freezes into a column and the trail needs microspikes. ⚠ IT IS NOT A SWIMMING HOLE. ⚠ THIS IS THE STOWE MOSS GLEN FALLS - there is another of the same name at Granville, sixty kilometres south, in the Granville Gulf Reservation.