Abbey Pond Cascades

These cascades are located on the Middlebury/Ripton border. The access is quite simple. Abbey Pond Road, a narrow dirt road, turns east off Route 116 about 1 mile south of the border between Bristol and Middlebury. Follow this rough road to a dead end and start walking towards the Hogback Mountains. A trail becomes obvious. The falls are about 2/10 of a mile up the trail. One good drop occurs below the foot bridge, the rest are upstream.Abbey Pond is a small body of water draining westward from the Hogback. The outlet tumbles steeply for much of its length, but increases in steepness as it interacts with the native bedrock. This entails a series of cascades and horsetails. Just above the footbridge is a narrow chasm with a waterfall at the head of the formation, while a steeply sloping cascade lies just below. This is the logical terminus of the waterfall exploration as the stream emerges from the heavy woods to run along the perimeter of a large gravel quarry.