This Vermont lake near the Canadian border has granite walls taller than most skyscrapers

A slice of Scandinavia in New England

Tucked into Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom, there’s a lake where granite walls shoot straight out of the water and frame a view most people associate with Norway.

You’re a half hour south of the Canadian border, in a town most Vermonters couldn’t point to on a map. The cliffs rise hundreds of feet above your head.

The water goes down even farther. And the story of how it got here starts with ice that covered the entire state.

Westmore sits in the Northeast Kingdom

You’ll find Lake Willoughby in Westmore, a small town in Orleans County that sits in the part of Vermont locals call the Northeast Kingdom. The area stays remote on purpose.

Few roads cut through it, fewer towns break it up, and the Canadian border runs just 30 minutes north. When you round the bend and see the lake for the first time, the cliffs on both sides rise straight out of the water.

People who have been to Norway say the same thing every time. It looks like a fjord.

The deepest lake inside Vermont

From end to end, the lake runs about five miles, and it measures roughly a mile across at its widest spot. The deepest point drops more than 320 feet below the surface.

Only Lake Champlain goes deeper, and that one slips across the border into New York, which means Willoughby holds the title for the deepest lake fully inside Vermont.

The water stays cold and crystal clear in every season, so cold in places that your breath catches when you wade in past your knees.

Mount Pisgah and Mount Hor frame the gap

Two mountains do the framing. Mount Pisgah rises 2,751 feet on the eastern shore, and Mount Hor stands 2,648 feet directly across on the western side. Locals call the space between them the Willoughby Gap.

Both peaks sit inside the 7,682-acre Willoughby State Forest, which keeps the whole basin wild. If you’re driving in from the north on Route 58, the road bends and the gap opens up in front of you all at once.

That first view makes people pull over.

Climb Mount Pisgah for the payoff

Three marked trails lead up Mount Pisgah from the south, north, and east. Most people pick the South Trail because it’s the shortest and the most direct.

About a mile in, you’ll reach Pulpit Rock, a ledge that juts out over nothing and hangs 650 feet above the water.

From there, keep climbing to the summit, where the lake stretches out below and Mount Hor fills the view across the gap. In early October, the fall colors here get photographed more than almost any spot in New England.

Mount Hor stays quieter and feels older

If you want fewer people on the trail, cross to the western side and take the Herbert Hawkes Trail up Mount Hor. The route runs shorter than the climb up Pisgah, and you’ll see far fewer hikers.

The path uses old roads built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, which gives parts of it a broad, graded feel that newer trails don’t have.

From the top, you can see across to Mount Pisgah, down to the lake, and all the way into Canada. The state forest holds more than 12 miles of trail in total.

Peregrine falcons nest on the sheer walls

The rock faces that make the lake look like a fjord also give peregrine falcons a place to raise their young. These birds dive faster than any other animal on earth.

During nesting season, rangers close parts of the cliffs to keep the chicks safe from climbers and hikers. Look up anywhere along the shore and you might spot one carving the sky above the water.

More than 100 bird species have been recorded here, including loons, herons, warblers, and hummingbirds.

Arctic plants hold on from the Ice Age

Life on the cliffs gets stranger the closer you look. Plants that normally grow hundreds of miles north cling to the cold, shaded rock walls here.

They survived when the glaciers pulled back and never left.

The state designated the zone as the Willoughby Cliffs Natural Area, which covers about 950 acres, and no hiking trails cross the protected faces.

You can only look up at these plants from below, which is probably the reason they’re still hanging on after 12,000 years.

Swim at the beaches or jump off Devils Rock

Free public beaches sit at both the north shore and the south bay, so you don’t need to pay or park at a resort to get in the water.

The lake stays calm enough most days for kayaks and canoes, and paddling along the eastern shore takes you right under the Pisgah cliffs with hundreds of feet of rock hanging over your head.

On that same side, Devil’s Rock has drawn local cliff-jumpers for generations. A red devil figure painted on the rock dates back to the 1800s.

Trophy lake trout hide in the cold depths

Anglers come here for the cold, deep water and the fish that live in it.

In 2003, someone pulled a 35-pound lake trout out of Willoughby and set the state record, which still stands.

Landlocked Atlantic salmon swim up the Willoughby River to spawn, and the lake also holds rainbow trout, yellow perch, and rainbow smelt.

Once the surface freezes in winter, shanties go up across the ice and stay until the thaw. Drop a line through the hole and you never know what you’ll pull up.

Winter turns the whole basin into something else

All that depth means the lake freezes later than its neighbors, but when it locks up, the whole basin shifts.

Frozen waterfalls streak down the eastern shore, and ice climbers drive in from across New England to go up them. The Pisgah cliffs have ice routes that climb as high as 600 feet straight up.

Around Bartlett Mountain, about 12 kilometers of groomed trails stay packed for cross-country skiing. Snowshoers use the same summer hiking routes, just a few feet higher off the ground.

Nobody can agree on how it got its name

Ask around and you’ll get a different answer every time. One story claims two brothers named Willoughby founded the town of Westmore.

Another says a man named Willoughby drowned crossing the lake on winter ice and never came up.

Local folklore even insists an underground channel connects Willoughby to nearby Crystal Lake, though nobody has ever proved it. Robert Frost had his own take and called it a fair, pretty sheet of water in his poem.

That description still holds up pretty well.

Visiting Lake Willoughby in Westmore, Vermont

You’ll find Lake Willoughby on Vermont Route 5A in Orleans County, about 80 miles northeast of Burlington International Airport.

Free public beaches sit at both the north and south ends, so you can swim without paying a dime.

Willoughby State Forest has more than 12 miles of hiking trails, with the Mount Pisgah South Trail drawing the biggest crowds. Plan your trip for the first two weeks of October if you want peak fall foliage.

Bring layers. The wind coming through the gap has teeth.

This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.

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