Mount Equinox Has Been Tempting Racers to Its Summit for 74 Years

There is a road in Bennington County, Vermont, called Skyline Drive. It starts at 800 feet above sea level and runs 5.2 miles over switchbacks, straights, and never-ending climbs until, finally, you arrive at the summit of Mount Equinox, elevation 3848 feet. The view is spectacular, with wide-open vistas of every other state around.

Over a weekend in August, however, a select group of folks don’t have the time to take in the sights on their way to the top. They’re more focused on apexes, terminal speed, and bettering their previous run. Welcome to the Mount Equinox Hill Climb.

Skyline Drive opened to the public in 1947 and was fully paved in 1953. That didn’t stop the Sports Car Club of America from asking Dr. Joseph Davidson, the owner of Mount Equinox, if they could borrow the mountain for a hill climb in 1950. “Sure,” Davidson said. “You can have it on Sunday afternoon.” It has been an official SCCA event ever since, and in its heyday attracted the likes of Carroll Shelby, Briggs Cunningham, and John Fitch. 

Davidson was an inventor with multiple patents. During WWII, he headed Union Carbide’s gaseous-diffusion project at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which refined the uranium used in the first atomic bomb. In 1939, he bought a large piece of land on Mount Equinox to build a summer home. Then he kept buying land until the whole mountain was his. In 1960, he retired from Union Carbide and built another home, “Windswept,” which was set into the mountainside.

Davidson befriended an order of Carthusian monks and over the years transferred ownership of the mountain in 50-acre parcels to the order. All told, the monks would end up owning 11,000 acres. They built a cloistered monastery called The Charterhouse of the Transfiguration in a valley on the mountain and took up residence in 1970.

Through it all, the annual hill climb continued, though over the years, the cars got so fast that it was hard for the mountain to contain them, insurance became an issue, and the SCCA was having problems filling the grid. Thankfully, in 1973, the Vintage Sports Car Club of America stepped up and became the sanctioning body for the event, and it has run the show ever since. 

Equinox is the kind of event that gets in a driver’s blood. It becomes a special place, and they come back year after year. Equinox is not wheel-to-wheel racing. It’s you, your car, the mountain, and the clock. You line up, and a radio operator checks that all stations are ready. The starter counts you down: 3,2,1. The green flag flies, you jam your foot down, and you are off!

Away from the start, you navigate a series of quick sweeping turns, until you come to a hard right called Caruso’s (if it’s named after someone, they came to grief at that spot). That leads into a short straight at First Parking Lot then into a hard uphill left. Now you’re really starting to climb and your foot is on the floor. Then you downshift, keeping it revving to navigate a series of easy turns until you are hard again on the gas.

You’re over to the right and then back out to the left as you set up for a very long decreasing-radius right. Then you’re running through more serpentine turns, then back to a short straight. From there, it’s a quick downhill left past what is known as Old House, and then you’re hard on it again, pushing toward an uphill right hairpin. Exiting the hairpin you floor it as you climb toward a sharp left, then a sharp right. Lots of gear changes and steering wheel action. Left again past Short Course Finish, where you’ve covered three miles, with two and change hard miles ahead.

In previous years, the road to the top was severely bumpy—frame-cracking bumpy, rim-bending bumpy, car-eating bumpy. Over the years, sections of the road had been repaved, but the road past the Short Course Finish was still a mess until a few years ago. A whole new surface has been laid down, and the washboards have been removed from the hairpins. The road now is as smooth as an infant’s posterior.

There is no snoozing on the hill. You don’t rest from bottom to top. It is a long run-up to the Saddle through a deep green tunnel. You are wringing everything out of your car. Up ahead, all you see is sky; a bit off to the right, you can make out the summit. You arrive at the lower portion of the saddle. In your heart, you know that the road jogs to the left, but you still take it as a leap of faith and blast up the hill. This is where certain brave competitors will be flirting with 100 mph. You keep your eyes on the road and don’t think that there is nothing but oblivion on either side of you.

 At the top of the saddle, your car goes light. The road is nowhere near done with you. There is a short straight where you downshift in preparation for a hard uphill hairpin right. Then it’s a short straight to another hard uphill left. Another short climbing straight to another right-left combo. From there, it’s on to the top.

If you are really cooking up the hill, you can make it in under five minutes. But most are just as happy to take a second or two off their previous run. When you finally see the checkered flag, you arrive at the top and pull in with your fellow competitors, who have just battled time and Equinox.

This year’s event, held August 10–11, was well attended, with a competitive field that staged at the bottom of the mountain, giving the public a chance to mingle with the array of classics and their pilots. I wandered this colorful pop-up car show as the drivers awaited their shot at the hill and had a chance to speak with some of the competitors. 

Will Herman, 1953 Kurtis 500 S (#4 out of the first 25 built)

It’s been a long time since I’ve been here, so it’s almost like the first time again. To me, V-8s are always suited to hill climbs. Power is your friend, and this car has plenty of it. It also has an automatic transmission, so I can keep both hands on the wheel and drive with two feet like a go-kart—a big one! Like any old car, it wanders a bit. When you get it up to speed on the saddle, it does its little dance, but you get used to it. The Kurtis was built as the counterpoint to the Allards. Frank Kurtis took an Allard out for a spin in 1951. After the drive, he went, ‘Hmm ,this is kind of scary. I think I can do better.’ He returned to the shop and created this, and I enjoy every minute with it.

Bob Millstein, 1965 Jaguar E-Type

(Bob returned to the mountain after a long absence. He wanted to be there this year, as it was the 50th anniversary of his first run up the hill. He did it in the same car that he ran the first time, his Jaguar.)

I only had the car for a few months. I got it as a payment for a $350 debt. The bonnet was crushed, so I bought another junked Jaguar, which was luckily the same color, and put it on. That was also the first year I started my business. The Jaguar was not just a race car; it was my daily driver. 

I heard about the hill climb and wanted to give it a try. I jumped in the deep end. I had never raced before. At the end of the weekend, I was the second-fastest time of day. I was hooked. Coming to Equinox is like coming home.

Steven Dibdin, 1969 Rover 2000 TC P6

I have had it for about 10 years, and over that time, I’ve made a number of modifications. It is now a 2.2-liter motor with a reprofile of the factory cam as a fast road cam by Piper. I designed an adjustable suspension to lower it, but it still drives like a Rover (quite comfy). It is still very compliant, even with stiffer springs and a lower ride height. Like no other car, it tells you what it’s going to do in three seconds. It’s quite gentle about it. If you go into a corner and make a mess of it, it tells you: ‘You can carry on doing this, but if you carry on doing this for another three seconds, my back end is going to come out.’ It makes you look like you know what you are doing. A good friend, Santo Spadaro, told me I should visit Equinox, that I would enjoy it. I had been developing the car, and I wasn’t sure it was ready. Santo drove the car and said it had plenty of torque, so I should have a go. My first time on the hill, I realized it needed more torque and it should lose 500 pounds, as it was probably the heaviest car on the road. Still, I worked with the car, and over the course of the weekend, I was able to shave 25 seconds off my time. I was very proud of that.

Santo Spadaro, 1952 PBX (custom-bodied special built on a Fiat chassis with a Crosley engine)

It is a big deal for me to own a car that has history on all my favorite tracks in the Northeast. Equinox was extra special for me as the road is basically unchanged from 70 years ago, when Candy Poole raced there. According to Candy’s account, before he died, the PBX still holds an HMod record on Equinox.

Candy would prepare for an event like Equinox with four different sets of wheels and six different rear-end ratios. I only have one rear end, so I went with a page out of Candy’s playbook and put 13-inch rims on the front and 12-inch rims on the back, with the smallest-diameter tires that would fit, so I reduced the size by three inches. I was in a more livable rpm range. 

This is a little car on a big hill, so I first changed my driving style. I would shift to third for the first couple of runs and watch the revs go in the wrong direction. After that, I would go to 7500 in first gear and the same in second. When I would shift into third, I would wait for it to drop to 5000 rpm and shift down to second, get a burst of acceleration, and do this a few times up to the summit. That was worth eight full seconds off my time. 

For the next few runs, the back end would hang out, and I would have to get off the throttle to keep the back end following the front. Doing that in a little car is death to a fast run. I dropped the pressure in the rear tires by three pounds, and all of a sudden, instead of lifting, I could stay on it, and my little tires got a lot more grip. That dropped my time by another five or six seconds. I also changed the jetting and got another 400 rpm out of the car, and that gave me just that extra bit to knock even more time off my runs. To me, the biggest joy is to take on the hill the way the builder of the car took on the hill.

Steve Silverstein, Healey Chevy

The car started racing in Florida around 1956. After a while, it was converted to 100M spec. In 1958, they dropped in a Chevy V-8. At Daytona in 1962, the car competed in an SCCA event and was hit hard in the front by a Ferrari California Spider. A new front end was built in Superleggera style with thin-gauge tubing. The rear deck damage was repaired with a narrowed rear trunk lid from a 1960 Oldsmobile 88, and part of the original trunk lid was added for good measure. 

I like the hairpin turn at the Short Course Finish as it sets you up for the run-up to the saddle. I like it because I never get it right, but I always have fun trying.

Chuck Schoendorf, 1952 Cunningham C4 RK Replica

It is the one and only re-creation of the one and only C4 RK Cunningham built in ’52. I have had it on the road for six years and put thousands of miles on it. I love coming here for the diversity of the cars and the great people. I was here last year with a six-cylinder Arnolt-Bristol with half the power. The Cunningham has plenty of power on tap with a 351 Chrysler Hemi engine with four carburetors. 

Sandy Green, 1925 Bugatti Type 35

I bought the car in pieces in 1997 and spent five years putting it back together. I have been using it continually since then. I love competing on the hill. It is a total challenge. All the switchbacks get my attention. I know at the saddle, the road goes a little to the left, so I get to the right side of the road and steer left.

Stefan Vapaa, 1959 Quantum 2

They made two. My dad owns the 1, and I own the 2. It’s based on all Saab mechanicals out of a GT 3 750. [Nuclear physicist and IBM engineer] Walter Kern built the chassis, and we believe he borrowed the skills of the local HVAC contractors to build the body. You can’t accuse it of being pretty. The body was not important to him at the time. He was more interested in doing an engineering prototype. The body was very rudimentary. The car doesn’t have much power, but it corners exceptionally well. You turn in, and it just dives into the corners. You have to try your very, very best to maintain momentum. 

I love this event, as your time is spent bullshitting with your friends at the bottom of the hill and at the top of the hill, divided by five minutes of sheer terror.