Camel's Hump rises to 4,083 feet in Vermont's Green Mountains, the state's only undeveloped peak above 4,000 feet. The mountain's silhouette is visible for miles across the Champlain Valley; the Waubanaukee knew it as Saddle Mountain, and early French explorers called it "lion couchant." Its profile is a product of glaciation: the northern flank is smoothed where ice advanced over the ridge, while the southern face drops steeply where the glacier plucked rock on the lee side, forming a classic roche moutonnée.
The exposed summit cone hosts roughly 10 acres of alpine tundra, one of only three such zones in Vermont. Bigelow's sedge, crowberry, mountain cranberry, and Labrador tea survive here, remnants of a plant community that retreated upslope as the climate warmed after the last ice age. Hikers are asked to stay on marked paths across this fragile zone, which the Long Trail traverses on its ridge-running course. An October 1944 training flight ended when a B-24J bomber struck the mountain near the summit; pieces of the wreckage remain on the slope today.
Two routes suit most hikers. The Burrows Trail climbs roughly 2,280 feet over about 2.4 miles from the Huntington trailhead to the west, while the Monroe Trail gains 2,588 feet over 3 miles from North Duxbury to the east, joining the Long Trail for the final push above treeline. Both routes expose hikers to open ridge terrain; afternoon thunderstorms build fast in summer, and the summit rocks hold ice well into May.
