Micro hikes and Microbrews: Little River and Trapp Lager Brewery

By Erin & Evan Meenan

Welcome to Micro hikes and Microbrews where we are going to review some of Vermont’s great hikes that are 3 miles or shorter and the nearby breweries where you can quench your post-hike thirst.  For our first installment, we hiked the Dalley Loop trail in the Little River State Park in Waterbury and then visited the Trapp Lager Brewery in Stowe.

The Dalley Loop is a wide gravel trail with a moderate incline for about half the hike.  This trail is great, in part, because it offers a self-guided historical tour of several farms and family logging operations dating from the late 1800s to early 1900s.  Some of the things you get to see are old logging bridges that have been converted into culverts, beautiful stone walls, family cemeteries, and the old stone foundations of some of the farm houses.  The natural vegetation growing around these historic sites is also refreshing after a long winter.  

After our hike, we took Route 2 to Route 100 and then Moscow Road to Trapp Hill Road.  Anyone who has seen the Sound of Music will be familiar with the Von Trapp family who has operated the Trapp Family Lodge for years and recently started brewing their own lagers.  Their new brewery is currently under construction, but you can still enjoy their beers in any one of the three restaurants on site.  We chose the Lounge in the Main Lodge so we could sit outside on the stone patio with the mountains as our backdrop.  We sampled three beers: the Dunkel, the Veinna, and the seasonal black amber.  All were amazing and our votes for our favorites were split.  You will just have to try all three and decide for yourself!

Stay tuned for the next installment of Microhikes and Microbrews.