Mind the Gap: Mud Season Continues for Some Roxbury Residents 

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• Courtesy Of Melanie Hall
• Walking the muddy gap road

Mud season isn't over just yet.

Residents in Roxbury Gap — located between the towns of Warren and Roxbury — are still dodging ditches after a wicked cold winter and soggy spring. The slop generally dries up by the beginning of May, but Melanie Hall said this year has been one of the worst in recent memory.

Roxbury Mountain Road has been "impassable a couple of times this season," she said. "We had to park our car down the road a little bit and walk to even get out of our house. We couldn't even drive through the mud right at the end of our driveway. It was bad."

The road is closed to through traffic, but the sign warning motorists of the dangers ahead hasn't always deterred drivers, according to Hall. Many use the road as a cut-through from Interstate 89 to get to the ski resorts in the Mad River Valley. When the road is closed, it adds about 30 minutes to the trip, Hall said.

"So many people got stuck this year," she said. "We had people knocking on our door at three in the morning, stuck and asking for help. It was a daily occurrence there for a little while, and all these people drove right around the sign."

To combat the problem, Hall created a Facebook page in January 2017 called Roxbury GapStat. On it, she and others post updates about the road — or weather — conditions.

"Happy Spring!!!" someone posted on Saturday above a photo of snow falling on the mud.

Preventing people from driving on the road is better than dealing with the aftermath. There's spotty cell service up the gap, and some tow companies won't respond to the area because of the muck, Hall said. It's often left to the residents to dig out the drivers.

"I definitely want to be like, 'Wait a minute, you just drove by this sign, come on,''' Hall said. "'And you want us to get out of bed and tow you out?'"

That said, she'd never leave someone in the lurch.

"We do our best to help," Hall said, "and definitely remind people to never come this way again when the road is closed next time!"