While we adjust to life as a family of 5, a few local bloggers kindly agreed to keep MiniBury readers entertained with tales and adventures from their own lives. Today Julie Barry shares the third installment of her series”Little Explorers,” reports on her hiking adventures with her husband and her two and four-year old. Take it away Julie! 

Trail: Pleiad Lake (on the shoulder of Worth Mountain)

Distance: .8 mile one-way to Pleiad Lake

Level of Difficulty: easy-moderate

Baby Jogger Access: no

Of Interest to the Kids: stepping stones across mucky areas and small streams, the lake

How to get there: On Route 125 just east of the Middlebury Snow Bowl, trail head for Long Trail south

Our Experience: Because I was on my own with the kids I wanted something that was short but still had the feel of a hike and not a nature walk.  This was perfect – short enough and varied enough that there was absolutely no whining from tired kids.  Hooray!  It was 30 minutes (one-way).  My 2 year-old rode in the pack on my back pointing out trail blazes, woodpeckers and chipmunks and my 4 year old ran nearly the entire trail, racing up hills, hopping happily from rock to rock.  At about 20 minutes a marked trail branches off to Pleiad Lake, where we arrived in 5-10  more minutes.  (The Long Trail continues on, of course and arrives at the top of Worth Mountain after perhaps another 45 minutes of steeper climbing. We had great views from the top last fall, but I wasn’t up for the climb today without adult reinforcements!) The trail crosses several ski runs and passes by the Sheehan chair lift and my son enjoyed checking out what it all looked like with no snow – telling me about each run and his favorite spots. Since Pleiad Lake is the pond that skiers see from the Worth Mountain chair lift it’ll be fun next winter to look down on the lake and remember our hike. If you don’t count snack, the highlight of the day was Pleiad Lake itself, of course: sticks to throw in the water, big expanses of rock to climb on, salamanders in the water to investigate.  The air temperature was pretty cool on our hike; on a hot day we would have been tempted to cool off in the lake.  Does anyone swim there?

(My map called this Pleiad Lake, while the marked sign post on the trail called it Lake Pleiad.)

From MiniBury: We took our family to Pleiad Lake this past weekend and agree with Julie, it’s a great hike for young families! We also noticed a significant lack of pesky bugs, which of course won’t last long, but it certainly was a nice perk of hiking at a higher elevation in the early season.