Mount Greylock, 2010
When I asked Cris what he wanted to do for his birthday, he said camping.
I was a good girlfriend and let him pick the hiking trail and camp sites
(though he was a good boyfriend and scaled back when my persistent cold
had me going slower than expected), so it was a challenging trip. :) We made it
to the top of the highest mountain in Massachusetts, Mount Greylock, though we parked most of the way up and hiked up the long way, detouring to another mountain first.
Pictures
Friday August 27, 2010
I rented a car for the weekend, getting the Watertown Enterprise office to
come pick me up at 8am on Friday morning, and driving myself back amidst
the morning craziness to park the car in our driveway. I rode my bike to
work, and then home again for 3pm or so, and then threw our packs in the
trunk and headed out. I hadn't put him down as the second driver, so I
drove us out to exit 2 on the Mass. Pike and then up to the north west
corner of the state. We stopped at the visitor centre at the bottom of
Greylock, grabbing maps from the kiosk outside, but not able to to in and
use the washrooms because the building was locked up when we got there at
around 7pm.
I drove slowly up the two lane winding road toward the summit, and
parked at one of the overnight lots. We put on our packs, opened up the
hiking poles and set off for a mile hike into the woods to the Sperry
Road camp site for the first night. It was a fairly flat walk, but I still
felt really weighted down by my pack. We walked along a trail in the
woods and then turned left along a dirt road. The ranger was loading up
his pickup truck to head out for the night as we came up to the entrance
to the campground, but he checked us in and sold us a $5 bundle of
firewood and gave us a map to our camp site. The sun was starting to go
down now, so we threw up the tent quickly, our head lamps resting around
our necks for when we needed them. I had to go to the bathroom, so I went
back out the lane to the main dirt road leading between the camp sites and
tried to find the outhouse marked a bit furhter along. I tried going into
the woods at a gap between the sites where it was marked, and no luck, so
I backed out before I got turned around and went back past our site to the
privies we'd passed on our way in, almost walking through a huge spider
web across the road. Coming back to site 10, it was a bit
eerie when I saw the pair of trees catching the light, I guess they were
silver birches, but I'd never seen them in person before. We tried to
light a fire with the firewood that we'd purchased, but we couldn't get it
going even with the little fire starter balls I'd brought, and we ended up
boiling water on my tiny spirit lamp stove to put into the camper's food
packets we'd brought. It was a bit chilly in the tent, but I had wool long
underwear on, as well as fleece socks and a wool hoodie, and I ended up
being a bit warm with my down sleeping bag, keeping it open during the
night.
Saturday August 28, 2010
In the morning, Cris let me sleep in until close to 10am. We had a quick
breakfast of oatmeal, broke camp and set out at around noon. We took the
Hopper Trail to the Money Brook trail to the Wilbur Clearing camp site.
Cris had hoped to go further, but I was flagging, barely making a mile an
hour on the steep Money Brook trail. At one point a father and son passed
us going down the trail and said it wasn't far now. I was a bit snarky
when I asked, "far to what?" but they said the falls. Turns out that they
were up off the trail at a turn, and I rested there while Cris went up to
look at them. Not too impressive, things were fairly dry. The mosquitoes
were easily dissuaded by bug spray, thank goodness. The weather was nice,
sun coming down through the trees. We ended the day at around 3pm, even
though we "only" went 4 miles or so, it was a steep climb with fully laden
packs. We set up camp on a platform at Wilbur's clearing, the ranger and
maybe three hikers the only other inhabitants (though two of the hikers
were big talkers, settling in the lean to to rest and eat and disrupt the
peace of the woods). Cris ran up to the ridge to see the view point while
I lay down in the tent for a while, trying to get my energy back. We made
supper when he got back, boil in the bag rice and packets of seasoned
tuna. He convinced me to go up to the view point with him to see the
sunset, and we found the ranger up there watching it as well. A hawk
wheeled above us briefly, and we could see the lights coming on in
Williamstown below us. We came back down in the dusk as the sun went
behind the Taconic range. We had a warmer second night out in the woods, I
think I just slept on top of the sleeping bag this time. Unfortunately we
weren't that far from the road to the summit, and I could hear motorcycles
powering up the mountain.
Sunday August 29, 2010
In the morning, I woke up to a loud chorus of bird sounds. Cris started
breakfast, but the spirit lamp ran dry before it finished boiling the
water for oatmeal. He tried using the candle lamp, but as the kettle was
about to boil, it slid off the support and spilled most of the water in
the dirt. :/ Enough lukewarm water was left to damp down the oatmeal +
cranberries + almond slivers and I added a bit of filtered creek water.
We struck camp, packed up, and climbed up to the Old Summit Road trail. We
ran across a free standing chimney, surrounded by glass telling the tale
of nights spent drinking beer in the woods. We did a short section of the
Appalachian Trail from just past the peak of Mt. Williams, over Mt. Fitch
(skirting the summit, walking along a ridge with obscured views over the
valley) to Mt. Greylock. We connected with a bit of the Thunderbolt ski
run, hauling ourselves up the steep meadow that people would ski down in
the winter until we got to the parking lots and lodge and war memorial at
the summit of Greylock. I was a bit overwhelmed by the crowds at the peak,
a lot of people and motorcycles were up there, and cigarette smoke
polluted the air. We had lunch at the Bascom lodge, substantial fair in
the enclosed porch with a nice view over the valley, and we took advantage
of the bathrooms and the water spigot. Then we hiked down another section
of the Hopper trail to the road that went to our first campground and then
back to the car on the fairly flat Campground trail, for a total of about
6 miles the second day (it was a lot less steep). We stopped for gas and
tea on the way back, with me driving the whole way again. We got home just
as the sun was going down, so I had time to unpack and do laundry before
collapsing into bed in time to get up early to return the car on Monday
morning.
My legs were a bit sore the day after (all muscular pain, my knees were
fine (yay!)), and I learned that 25lbs is a good pack weight for me. 30+
kinda sucks, even if it includes extra water so that I don't dehydrate.
The nice thing about camping out for two nights is that you keep eating
more and more of the food and have to haul less and less up the mountain
as time goes on. :)
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