The M&M Trail!

The "backbone" of the Pioneer Valley hiking experience is the Metacomet-Monadnock Trail, aka the M&M Trail.  (Peanut was disappointed to learn it was not a candy giveaway).  This long-distance trail parallels the Connecticut River on narrow ridges and upland areas, running 114 miles from the CT border in the south to the top of 3,166ft Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire.  Despite its proximity to urban and agricultural areas, it offers a pretty remote and wild experience.

Doing the entire M&M provides Peanut and I with a manageable goal, and will help introduce us to our new home here in western Massachusetts.  Our plan is to section the trail, walking off  consecutive pieces as we move north, with an aim of reaching Monadnock before the cold temps and snow(!) ends the season.  We are starting in late August - just as the mosquito season ends, and my guess is we should wrap it up by early November.  Which should give us a few months and give us some amazing fall foliage.

Your geography lesson for today:

The Pioneer Valley, aka the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and shown in green in this map, is a broad rolling valley situated between the Berkshire plateau (the white area to the west and the central Mass uplands to the east.  It is a kind of breadbasket of New England, with rare stone-less soil and lots of active farming.  A narrow ridge of basalt traprock - the Metacomet Ridge - pokes through this valley and runs north-south up from Connecticut, curving east at Mt Tom.  The trail follows this ridge in its southern half.  Its northern half winds among the uplands that frame the eastern side of the Pioneer Valley, and reaches up to into New Hampshire to the magnificent stand-alone Monadnock for a finale.  (The dashed portion shown here is no longer blazed because of landowner wishes, and the trail's guardians are seeking a more permanent solution.)

As you can see, the trail does have an extension south into Connecticut (via 63 miles of the Metacomet Trail), and even connects to the Long Island Sound near New Haven via another trail.  Collectively, these trails make up the recently federally-designated New England National Scenic Trail - a designation which elevates the trail's status to that of the more famous Appalachian Trail and Pacific Crest Trail.  To the north, not shown on this map, 50 miles of NH's Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway will get you up close to the White Mtns.  So, lots of long-distance possibilities if you need to escape.

But since most of the time Peanut and I have to rely on a single car (plus the fact that Vivs is a Very Small Peanut who can only manage a few hours in the backpack and is not ready for overnight trips), we are limited to doing chunks of up to five miles maximum since we have to turn around and walk back the way we came to get to the car.  On the plus side, we'll have hiked the trail twice when we're done. On the downside, it takes us twice as long.  So we are sticking with the "classic" M&M: a northbound hike from the CT/MA line to Monadnock.

Fortunately, this is very doable since there are fairly frequent road crossings where we can begin and end sections.  Plus, residing in Springfield gets us easy access to the M&M, especially the southern portion.  Still, with weather and other obligations this time of year, I'm thinking we'll have to cover ten trail miles or more every week to finish.  Can we do it?  Stay tuned!