As with other one-way hikes, I brought my bike along on the back of the car, parked at the end of section 4, and then biked around to the beginning of section 3.

Section 3 begins on the Northern bank of the Westfield River at a point in West Springfield (but very close to the Westfield line).  The river flows behind a bunch of businesses on US-20, and I locked up my bike in a parking lot there, then took a very short path down to the river to get some pics.  Here’s the view upriver to the West:

And downriver to the East:

From there, I went back up and crossed Route 20, to begin the hike in earnest.  This involved a bit of walking on side streets until I got to the spot where the trail actually goes into the woods.

Once that happened, I spent nearly half a mile walking near a quarry, partially using its dirt access roads.  Then, the trail went off into deeper woods near a marshy area.  Just a little ways into those woods, I came across this structure:

It was very run-down, so I don’t think it gets used any more.  Who knows what it was used for in the past – maybe camping for hunters?  (there is a sportsman’s club of some kind near the quarry)

Just after that, I came across some large and weird fungal growths:

There’s nothing in the pictures for size reference, but each of these big ones was a good 8 inches in diameter.

The trail started skirting the edge of the marsh, so I started getting pestered by mosquitoes.  I also got a few more pictures:

That lower area wasn’t completely wetland, I think, because there’s a sort-of road there, which is probably for access to the power lines that ran overhead.

Lots more traipsing through woods followed that area, without much to photograph, but I did come across an open area where a tall tree had split:

Not sure what caused it.

Eventually, section 3 comes out of the woods by the Massachusetts Turnpike.  At that point, one has to walk West alongside the pike (and a bit downhill), until you come to an underpass for an old quarry road.  Apparently, a number of people have been here – and they’ve left their marks.  Here is the underpass before I went through:

And inside:

At the far end of the tunnel is a gate you have to climb through:

Here it is from the other side:

On the far side there are railroad tracks coming by at an angle, which also go under the Pike:

And a bunch more graffiti – these being focused on flowers!

Perhaps someone wanted to help Nature reassert itself on all this concrete in its midst.  

Once I crossed the train tracks, I was at the end of section 3.  I sat down and ate the lunch I’d brought.  It was a very hot day (temp in the 90′s) so I was trying to make my 2 bottles of water last.  Fortunately, I’d packed a nice, juicy peach, and didn’t need to drink so much with my food.  (a peach has never tasted so good)

Having eaten, I commenced section 4.  It differs from section 3 in being on higher ground, so even though it’s also very wooded, there are views to be seen.  Also, there are old communication towers:

Those are 2 different towers that I passed.  These are on a ridge that runs North-South, and which has a number of views to the West. Here’s a view of Barnes Airport in Westfield:

Last Fall, I had taken a picture of that airport from the other side, while biking past on Route 202.  At the time, I remember seeing the ridge and the towers beyond, and though of that this time.

I was also high enough up to have birds of prey flying around.  Here are 2 that passed almost directly over me:

Later in the section, I saw some views of the Western part of Holyoke:

Soon after that, I got a little lost.  The M-M trail is marked with white paint blazes on tree trunks (and occasionally on rocks).  There was a point where I found a double blaze, which indicates a change in trail direction, and then saw a blaze on a tree off to my right.  I headed off in that direction, and then had trouble locating another blaze or a well-traveled path.  I did find one old, faded blaze, but nothing beyond that.  I tied looking in several directions for 15 minutes or so (worrying about my water supply), until finally I made my way back to the double-blaze marker and looked further along that trail.  Sure enough the trail continued on what looked like a trail, and then made a slight turn to the left.  So, I got underway again.  After nearly another hour, I came down to US-202 in Holyoke, near the McLean Reservoir, where I had parked the car (in which I had extra water stashed).

Total hiking distance was about 8 miles.

I hadn’t had a chance to explore these trails much the last time I was on them, but I had time to go further this time, hiking uphill on something called the “College Trail.”  This leads up the North side of the Holyoke Range, joining other trails and eventually linking up with the Metacomet-Monadnock trail.  I didn’t make it quite that far up, as it was late in the afternoon and I needed to get back home before sundown.

I did see something I don’t think I’ve noticed on other local trails – a tree with graffiti carved in it:

The oldest carving seems to be from 1979, assuming that it was actually carved that year and not backdated by the carver.

In an unrelated event, I was in the grocery store the following day, and I saw an unusual sign in the frozen foods aisle.  This is something one hears a lot about in modern American political discourse, but I didn’t think it was available for purchase at one’s local supermarket:

There you have it.

Something that’s interesting about the park is the variety of different types of forest and other vegetation found there.  The first trail we hiked was through a fairly deciduous forest, with some tall pines (and wild blueberry bushes!), and it came out on a tidal bay, pictured here:

Here’s a slightly different part of the bay, seen at a different point on the trail:

I don’t know exactly what this thing is for, but I would guess it’s supposed to be visible from well out in the water:

The next trail was a boardwalk that went out onto a dune and barrier island:

Dune grass:

A sandpiper:

The estuary between dunes and shore:

After that, we took a short trail that went through a salt marsh.  Here’s a picture of the marsh grass:

According to one of the signs, some of what grows there is known as elephant grass, which can get as tall as 3 meters!

On the way back from that trail, near the parking area, I spotted this critter:

To give you an idea of its size, here it is in front of my foot:

Next we went on a trail through a cedar forest.  The cedars are traditionally considered sacred by the Mi’kmaq Nation, and the tribe has a wigwam near the trailhead for teaching visitors about their customs and culture:

Nothing was going on inside while we were there:

The trail itself certainly had a number of cedar trees, some of which had a strange-looking moss growing on them:

We went on one more trail after that, which supposedly contained an abandoned beaver lodge, but at the point where a sign talked about the lodge, it was completely hidden from view by bushes.  No pictures from that trail.

The total hiking distance was around 10 km, and we spent about 4.5 hours there (including a break for lunch).  It’s a lovely park, and I hope to go again sometime.  If you should ever find yourself there, though, bring some mosquito repellent, because there are great hordes of the insects there.

The hike started out in pretty Holland Glen, which is home to this waterfall:

From there the path crosses the stream and ascends along the bank for a while, then eventually heads away from the water and along a ridge.  Then it descends a ways and comes to an old dirt road, then gets away from that and follows an old stone wall for a while, before meeting up with a horse riding trail (some of which is described in the post from 2 years ago).

At one point, the horse and hiking trails are together, but the white blazes which mark the M-M Trail have been erased from that section, at the request of the land owner (though you can still hike it).  The trail comes to a junction where one can go straight or turn right, and the signs for the horse riders point to the right.  I thought I remembered that right was the direction to go for the M-M as well, so I went that way.

I remembered wrong.  The trail twisted around a while, and went over some rickety bridges made of logs and wood pallets, which were broken in spots.  I did fine crossing the bridges, but I can’t imagine that horses would have a very easy time with them.  Eventually, this trail dumped me out on a road.  If I had kept on the correct trail, I would have come out on a road as well, but a different one.  Gulf Road was what I wanted, and walking to a nearby intersection told me I’d come out on Gold Rd.  This was the intersection with Gulf, so I hiked West along Gulf to where I would have come out, and then kept going down the road to the new point where the trail continues into the woods (I had read the online trail updates this time).

Once I was back on the right trail, there wasn’t too much left of section 10.  I did come across an interesting sight before reaching the end of this section – a tree that grew in a circular path (perhaps helped by humans?):

I got to the end of that and took a bit of a rest, and then continued with section 11, which I’d never hiked before.

At first, section 11 ascends a hill known as Mt Lincoln.  At the top is a radio installation and old fire tower:

The guidebook mentions the great 360-degree view from the fire tower, but there are “No trespassing” signs on the tower, so I couldn’t go see for myself.  I did take a picture of a tall radio tower, though:

From here the path went down through more woods, eventially crossing the somewhat busy Amherst Road in Pelham.  On the far side of that crossing, the guidebook warned of poison ivy, which I noted and avoided.  The trail then went through a lot of pine forest, with little to no undergrowth.  There were just a lot of dead needles all over the ground, so the trail markings on trees were very useful, as there wasn’t always a clear path.

The trail came to a dirt road, and went along it a bit, before heading into more woods.  I saw a couple of people walking dogs on the road – besides them I had encountered 2 other hikers earlier, and those were the only people I saw the whole time (except when I crossed a road and cars went by).  Just after leaving that dirt road, I was in water supply land for the towns of Pelham and Amherst, and came to a stream just past a reservoir dam.  Here is the waterfall coming off the dam:

Best shot I could get, really.  The path followed this stream for a while after that.  Here’s another shot of the stream:

I think this might be Amethyst Brook, but I’m not positive.

Eventually, it came together with another brook, and the path started heading upstream along the other one.  I took a picture of this bit of falls/rapids:

and then found that I was at the end of the trail section just after that.  I passed a sign that labeled this area as the Buffam Falls conservation area, so I think that last picture may be Buffam Falls itself (alluded to in the guidebook).

Overall, I covered about 7.5 miles (maybe closer to 8 with some backtracking and my wrong turn).  Total hiking time: 4.25 hours.

This is a catching up post, which I intended to put up here months ago.  Back in October I went for a hike – my longest one to date.  I hiked all of section 8 and most of section 7 of the M-M Trail.  Total distance was about 10 miles, over lots of rising and falling terrain (including a few small mountains – or big hills by some standards).

I had done both of these sections before, but on separate occasions.  To start out, I drove to Skinner state park, and left the car near the Western end of section 7.  I had taken my bike with me, and I then biked home.  A bit later in the morning, I got a ride to the Eastern end of section 8, and started walking.  As we had recently moved into a house with a wood stove, and needed to start making fires in the near future, I collected birch bark as I went (it makes the best tinder).

Just past the first summit (Long Mountain), there is a nice vantage point looking ahead to the West.  Above is a picture of Mount Norwattuck seen from that vantage.  Here’s a closer view:

From here I descended a ways, and went through some low areas.   Eventually the land rises to a ridge, which has a lookout facing back East.  Here’s a picture of Long Mountain from there:

Just after this, one starts to ascend Norwattuck.  The top of it is the highest point in this hike.  It was a nice place from which to see the Fall colors.

The descent from Norwattuck is fairly long, and drops one off at the Notch visitors’ center.  I stopped there to eat lunch.  The center was closed, since it was after Columbus Day, so I couldn’t go in and refill on water.  Fortunately, I’d been careful, and had only drunk half my supply.

In the Notch, I crossed highway 116 and started section 7, which begins with a steep climb up Bare Mountain.  Here is a pic from the top of Bare, looking at the other side of Norwattuck:

Near the base of Norwattuck, just South of the visitors’ center, is a gravel quarry which you can see a bit of in the picture above.  You can also see a random person who is not me (the hair is a dead giveaway).

There is a lot of up and down climbing after Bare Mt., but not much in the way of views.  I was getting pretty close to Skinner Park before there were more vistas to look at.  From one of those, I took this shot of the Connecticut River, and farmland on the other side in Northampton:

Asthe trail enters Skinner, it goes down to the park’s access road, in Taylor’s Notch.  From this point, the trail continues up to the summit of Mt. Holyoke, which is where the road winds its way as well.  I was pretty tired out by the time I got to the road, though, so I walked downhill on the road, to the parking area at the bottom where I’d left the car.  My total time was about 6 hours, including the stop for lunch.  Hopefully more longer hikes will happen this year.

In mid-July I went on a solo hike through the Mount Tom Reservation, which I had done with a friend in 2007.  Since I was doing a one-way hike by myself, I had to park the car at one end of the trail and ride my bike back to the starting point.  Unfortunately, this involves riding up a steep hill on Mass. route 141, just before getting to the trail head.  It was quite a warm day, and I had to rest a few times on the way up the hill.  I also used up 20 to 25% of my water supply, and had to rest up a bit before starting to hike.

The trail does start out easy, and is almost completely level for the first 10-15 minutes.  Then it ascends and ascends and ascends.  I took the above picture at the summit, but didn’t need to take many, as I have plenty of the same view from last year.

Further along, when I was near the second summit (Whiting Peak), I noticed something that I’d missed the previous time: wild blueberries were growing among the rocky slopes.

I ate several handfuls of them as I worked my way along the cliffs.

The total hike along through the reservation is about 6 miles, but about 60% of the way through one descends to a park road and picnic area, and there is a drinking fountain where one can refill on water, which I did.  In the remaining part of the hike, I crossed Goat Peak and Mount Nonotuck, each of which had features that we’d not taken the time to see last year.

First, on Goat Peak, just off the path a little ways, there is a lookout tower:

I went up and took a look.  What’s great about this tower is that you have a 360-degree view.  All the vantage points on the trail just look to one side of the mountain range (Northwest).  Here are pix from the top of the tower, looking in various directions:

The path passes near, but not directly over, the summit of Nonotuck.  It does cross an old road, though, that you can follow up to the summit.  At the summit are the ruins of an old hotel, The Eyrie House, which burned down about a century ago.  Here I’m looking up at the ruins from below:

and here I explore a little bit:

Those are all the pictures from that hike, and nothing too eventful happened on my way down to the car.

This section is less mountainous than other sections I’ve done (like 6, 7, and 8), but still hillier than I thought it would be. There is a nice ridge that one climbs and hikes along for much of the path, and it has some good views.

This trail section starts in the Southwest part of Holyoke, and heads up to a point near the city’s border with the Town of Easthampton. Here are a couple of pics of the first good view I came across, looking off to the West at the Town of Southampton.

And a little further along the ridge I saw similar views:

Shortly after those vantage points, I ran across some small trees whose leaves looked as though they were a bit…infested.  I don’t know what might have done this to the leaves, or whether it’s harmful to the tree.  If anyone can tell me anything based on these pics, I’d love to hear it.

There were other views like the ones above – so much so that I didn’t take pictures.  I did get to one point that looked out Eastward toward the river and the town of South Hadley, and here is a picture of that:

This section of the trail goes past an old radio beacon tower, long out of use at this point.  I always think it’s cool to find abandoned human-made stuff in the middle of otherwise wilderness settings.  It’s kind of like visiting ruins, only they’re relatively recent ones.

Here are pics of the tower:

Soon after this point I got a bit lost.  The trail is marked with white blazes on trees and rocks, but part of the trail had been moved in the recent past, and they didn’t do a good job of marking the new path.  I could only find blazes that had been painted over, marking the old path which one wasn’t supposed to use any more.  This happened because a piece of the trail was on private land (many pieces are), and the owner had changed their mind about allowing hikers, or the land had been sold to someone who didn’t want to allow the use.  I eventually followed something that turned out not to be much of a path, but took me quickly downhill (and I almost stepped on a snake).  I knew there would be a road soon, and if I got to it quickly I could walk along it to find the correct path again.  I did get to the road without incident, and found where the path actually comes out and enters the woods again.  The rest of the trail section was pretty short at this point – only about a mile or so.  This piece was not very hilly, so I made quicker progress.

When I was almost to the end of the section, I saw 3 odd, puffy flowers growing alone in the middle of the woods.  I couldn’t identify them, but here are some pictures in case anyone else can:

That finished section 5, which is just over 5 miles.

Nevertheless, it was a fun hike, and I took some different pictures from the last time. As we hiked up to the summit of Mt. Tom, I did take this photo of the view:

And I had David snap this photo of me, proving that I was on top of the mountain:

These photos were taken in a spot just a few feet below the summit itself. Instead of a trail or rocks to climb for those last few feet, though, this mountain has concrete stairs:

These stairs and the walkway they lead to are the remnants of an old hotel that stood on the peak. You have to be a bit careful, though, because the concrete has crumbled away in places:

The mountaintop is now home to several towers supporting all manner of radio antennae, satellite and microwave dishes, etc.:

After that peak, the hike went quicker than last time, because we knew where to find the trail (we had lost track of it shortly after this area the previous time, because you have to get really close to the cliffside to follow it). Quite a ways further along, after a bit of descent, we ascended again to Whiting Peak, and there we saw what we thought at first to be hawks. On closer inspection, we decided they were probably turkey vultures. It helped that one landed on a tree downhill from us, so we could get a better look at it:

We did a shorter section of trail than the last time – about 2/3 of the distance – and so finished up less than 3 hours after we’d started. I definitely plan on doing some more hiking this Autumn, hopefully to see more spectacular colors and to take advantage of cooler temps (so as not to get so sweaty).

There was an added interesting feature to doing a morning hike. Namely, that as I drove from Northampton to the Eastern end of the trail section in Amherst, I passed through a bunch of fog that as covering the river and half of the town of Hadley.

Luckily for me, much of the fog was still there when I reached the first scenic lookout, on the Western slope of Long Mountain:

It looks kind of like other pictures of clouds seen from mountaintops, until you realize that the mountain I was on only rises a few hundred feet above the valley floor.

The only other pictures I snapped on that hike were of a beautiful spider-web in the woods, which isn’t really visible in any of the shots. Too bad. It was a notable hike, though, because I got to the Western end (the Notch visitors’ center) in about 2 hours and 25 minutes. Last year the same hike took me 3 hours and 10 minutes. It’s true that I stopped to take pictures less this time, but some of that 45 minutes I shaved off is because I didn’t have to rest as much. Spending a good chunk of this summer hiking has put me in better shape, with better endurance.

A bit later the same day, I went to the swampy portion of the Norwattuck trail to look for herons. And indeed, I saw a few. The first one I saw was closest to the trail:

I walked further along and saw one a ways away:

After walking a bit more without seeing another, I headed back. When I got near the point at which I’d seen the first one, some other people walking past noticed a heron in a tree:

I think this might have been the same one I first saw, as there was no longer a bird in the spot I’d seen it. Continuing back toward the car, I just managed to distinguish one more a longer distance off:

I also checked out some water near the trail that was full of lily pads. In there, I found a frog on top of a pad:

And also a frog partially submerged:

Frog head!

This is the first hike that I’ve done on the West side of the river (which is the side I’ve been living on for nearly a year). I think it’s one of the most traveled sections, and the summit of Mt. Tom itself was voted as having the Best Views in this year’s reader poll in the Valley Advocate. Which makes it even stranger that the trail blazes seem to be farther apart in this section than others, and that the trail is confusing to follow at times.

We began on Route 141 in Holyoke, at the Southwestern end of the trail section, and headed Northeast into the woods. The land slopes up gradually for a while, then starts to get a lot steeper. After one somewhat steep climb, we came to a wide sort of switchback piece of path, and the blazes seemed to indicate that we should head downhill for a bit. This seemed odd, but we went that way, and then came to a double-blaze (which indicates a change in trail direction), but there was no side trail to take. If we went in the same direction, there were no more blazes. We started to head upward , back the way we came, and ran into another hiker. We asked him about the path of the M-M Trail, but I’m not sure if he got what we were saying (he said he was hard of hearing). He asked if we were trying to get to the summit, and we said yes, and he indicated that we should keeping going up this path. So the correct way was up the gradual switchback. As we continued up that way, we found trail blazes as the trail got steep again.

After 45 minutes of hiking, we were most of the way up the mountain, and came to the first lookout point. I took some pictures of the view, looking mostly South:

At this same point, we started to notice hawks flying around. We moved further up the path to a more level lookout, where the birds were flying directly above and in front of us. It was a little difficult to get non-blurry pictures of them in flight, but here are a few silhouettes:

It’s a good thing those clouds were present, otherwise the sun would have been right behind the hawks.

Soon after that point, we reached the summit of Mt. Tom, the highest point of the day’s hike. The top of the mountain is occupied by a large gaggle of radio, tv, and cell towers (none of which I took a picture of). Looking away from the towers, though, yield some views that are pretty cool:

These views are looking mostly West, at the town of Easthampton. Apparently, this summit was once the site of a hotel, which is why there is a crumbling concrete platform with handrail along the edge of the cliff (the set of radio towers is behind a chain-link fence). Found along this railing is:

Star o’ Mountain!

The star has some lightbulbs strung on it, though it’s actually more empty light sockets than sockets with intact bulbs. I have no idea if this thing is ever lit up – I think you’d have to be in Easthampton to see it, and I haven’t really been there at night.

Soon after this, we spent some more time wandering around, trying to find the blazes that indicated the continuation of our trail. The problem is a combination of not enough blazes and a few trails that aren’t the path of the M-M. Eventually we located the path continuing very close to the cliff edge from a point that looks like a dead-end lookout until you’re up near the edge.

There are a number of places along these cliffs where you can see broken and eroded rock faces:

Pretty!

The land levels off for a while until the next peak, Whiting Peak, is reached. A little before Whiting, there is a windmill:

As you can see from the close-up, it’s owned by UMass. Frankly, though this is described by the trail guide as a windmill, and marked as such on maps, it looked to me like it wouldn’t actually be able to rotate (and it certainly wasn’t doing so when we saw it). Maybe the blades can be moved into a different position for that.

From there we passed Whiting Peak, and descended a long way to the road that allows cars to access much of the reservation. Then we headed up Goat’s Peak. We didn’t realize when we had reached the peak, because there is supposed to be a lookout tower, which we never saw. We concluded later that it must be off a side path a bit, and obscured by trees. Next time I’m up there, I’ll know where to look for it.

The last mountain in this section is Mt. Nonotuck. The trail doesn’t go to the summit, but skirts near it at a slightly lower elevation. There is an old road that one can hike up to the summit, where there are apparently ruins of another old hotel, but we opted not to take the side trip, as we were both pretty tired at that point (we’d been hiking for close to 4 hours), and getting low on water. Speaking of water, though, just before this road is a lookout with a view to the North of the river’s oxbow:

So then we continued on the trail down the mountain, onto the street in a residential neighborhood, past I-91, and to the other car parked on route 5.