Over Memorial Day weekend I went on my first decent hike of this year. I did another section of the Metacomet-Monadnock trail - namely Section 5.
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.
I went on a hike this past weekend with my friend David. It was the same hiking trail we went on in July, but we scheduled to do it again over Columbus Day weekend specifically to see the Fall colors from on high. It turns out that not that many trees’ leaves have turned. The weather has been warmer than it should for leaf turning (I hesitate to say ‘unseasonably warm’, because warm October seems to be the new norm).
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).
Last weekend I hiked section 8 of the M-M trail, which I had done once before (about a year ago). This was different from my other hikes, in that I got up early and hit the trail at 7:15am, as opposed to hiking in the afternoon. This had the big advantage that it wasn’t blazing hot - the temp was around 60 degrees when I started out.
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The weekend before last, I went on a hike through the Mt. Tom state reservation with a friend I hadn’t seen in several years. The path of this hike is also known as Section 6 of the M-M Trail, and passes over 3 or 4 mountains (depending on how you count).
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.
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Well, I went to Section 10 of the M-M Trail a couple of weeks ago, and it is a very pretty hike. Unlike other hikes I’ve done in the area, it does not have great views (there’s only one place where you can sort of see a view through the trees), but the first bit of this section is a rocky forested area with a stream flowing and falling among the rocks.
I took a few pictures, but they didn’t turn out great. Part of the problem was patches of sun coming through the tree cover, which created a very high-contrast environment. That’s the kind of thing that film is much better than CCD image sensors at capturing.
Here is a picture of the stream soon after I entered the trail section:
After I went further into the woods, I came upon a waterfall:
From this point the path goes upstream right next to the water for a while. Eventually, you have to cross the stream, and when I did, I saw something fall from the bank that I thought was a leaf. However, it then leaped a few times in the water to get out of my way. It turned out to be a little brown frog:
You can’t tell the size from the photo, but it was less than 2 inches long.
I didn’t take any more pictures after that, though there were a few more interesting things I passed, including an old stone wall in the woods which the path follows near and crosses a few times.
Unfortunately, I didn’t get to complete the section that day, as I got to a point where my trail guide book said to cross a street into the woods, but there was a newly constructed house across that street. There were trail marks on a couple of telephone poles along the side of the street, but then they seemed to disappear, so I had no idea where the trail went. So I headed back at that point (fortunately I had already planned to return to my starting point, so that’s where the car was parked). Later, upon checking the online guide, I saw a note from last year that the trail was moved because of the house being built (the print guide was published in 2005).
Ah, well. At least I got to do 3/4 of that section.
BTW, for those confused about the title of this post, the question is from a movie, and the answer, in this case at least, would be “Section 10!”
This past August, I went hiking on Section 8 of the M-M Trail. Unlike the previous hike in section 7 (see previous post), I did this one by myself. I hiked this section from East to West, starting at Mt. Harris Rd. in Southeast Amherst, and finishing at the Notch Visitor Center on Route 116. In order to do the hike just one-way, I first drove to the Visitor Center with my bike in tow. I parked the car there, and rode the bike along surface roads to the other end of the trail section. Then, locking the bike up there, I did the hike, and had the car waiting for me at the end (so I could drive to pick up the bike and then home).
I also took some pictures on the hike. Click Here to Read More »
Here in Western Massachusetts, we have a lot of hiking trails, and some of them go over mountains (they’re really more like big hills, but we call them mountains).
In particular, trails run along the Holyoke Range, which is just to the East of the Connecticut River. Every year, the students and staff of the Hampshire College Summer Studies in Mathematics go on a hike over part of the range, and I’ve gone along the past 2 summers. This year, I took a camera, so there are pictures to be seen (and posted).
This particular trail is part of the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail. Specifically, it’s Section 7. We started at the Eastern end of the section, at Hwy 116, and hiked West to the summit of Mt. Holyoke in Skinner State Park (so not quite all the way to the Western end of the section).
Here’s what I saw along the way: Click Here to Read More »