M-M Trail Section 8

September 25, 2012:

Getting colder!  Still no real signs of leave change yet since we haven't had a frost at all, but there are a few individual birches on the Holyoke Range that have begun to yellow.  An east-west range in this part of the world results in vastly different forests - the sunny south side grows an oak-hickory forest which are more common further south of Massachusetts, but on the darker and cooler north side, you find hemlocks, pines, beeches, birches, and maples like most of New England.

The sun was bright and warm, but under the green cover it was cool.  And a steady wind brought cooling breezes to the skin.  Change is in the air!

Today we culminate the Holyoke range by going up and over 1100ft Mount Norwottuck (pronounced "Nore-wah-tuck" as a helpful local on the summit corrected me) - the highest point since Mt. Tom.  We rejoined the trail at the Granby Notch where the State Park visitor's center was unfortunately closed.  The trail skirts around a large quarry that has removed an entire minor mountain from the range, Round Mountain.  Here's the view from Bald Mtn in the last section, with Norwottuck beyond:

While skirting the quarry, the M-M meets up with the Robert Frost Trail, a 40-something mile long trail that connects many of the conserved lands within and around Amherst.  Robert Frost lived and taught there for 20 years.  The two trails are joined in this area, separate after Norwottuck, and re-meet many miles to the north.

Our climb up the mountain began slowly, utilizing a former inter-urban trolley right of way that once ran between Amherst and Granby, seen in the photo at left.


Up and up, once again, with the ever-growing Peanut on my back.  Plus at this point, she fell asleep.  When she sleeps in the pack she slumps to one side, pulling at my spine.  Nonetheless, we reached the summit in short order and took in the two vistas facing north and east, which were nice enough, though a bit washed out since we were out in the middle of the day and the light was beaming down through the perfectly clear sky.  Amherst and the towers of the UMass. is easily seen, nestled in front of Mt Toby in its portion of the larger Pioneer Valley.  Seen from this height, the trees have definitely begun to lose their deep summer greens.  On the far horizon, barely visible on the left half of the photo below, is what I think is Stratton Mtn in Vermont.

Down from the vistas we went, hitting a very interesting rock formation the trail wanders through:

This is the top of the "horse caves" - not a true cave, but a series of cliffs and overhanging ledges.  It was here, supposedly, that Daniel Shays hid from the state militia during the brief Shay's Rebellion in 1787.  Mr. Shays was the reluctant leader of a group of farmers from the western counties who were hard hit during an economic depression following the Revolutionary War.  British traders, on whom the former colonies were still dependent, now demanded payment in hard money for their goods, which was in short supply.  Making problems worse, the state enacted harsh fiscal and debt penalties to solve its debt problem following the war.  Shay's and other groups managed to shut down county debtors' courts in late 1786, and when the State responded by raising a militia to send west from Boston, the Shaysites attempted to seize the Federal Armory in Springfield in January 1787, but were easily rebuffed.  Chased north, they are said to have hid here in the cold and snow:

The only sign of rebellion we found today, however, was a little bee resisting the coming autumn by collecting pollen from a late-blooming shrub.  Better hurry!

We continued from the horse caves, passing a cool town marker along the ridge - "G" for Granby, an Amherst "A" on the reverse side - and came upon Rattlesnake Point.  There we met the well-hiked local gentleman who corrected our Norwottuck pronunciation.

When explained we were sectioning the M-M, he said "ahh, about to enter the boring part!"  I figured he meant the next mile or so, which did wander through viewless woods on the ridge until the summit of Long Mountain.  But in retrospect, I think he meant the next 30 miles, which features none of the dramatic cliffedge views that frequent the Metacomet ridge and Holyoke range.  Either way, I was ready to move on from the ridge.  Enough of the traprock and its loose scree.  Enough of the similar views of Amherst and the Berkshire foothills.  Peanut and I were ready to enter the second province of the M-M Trail which would begin soon: the eastern highlands.

Our final summit in the range, Long Mtn, offered us a fitting vista looking back to the west and south, where we could see where we had come from.  Norwottuck in the near distance, blocking the rest of the Holyoke Range, and the Mt Tom range in the background.  Goodbye basalt intrusion!

Also fittingly, we found a mailbox with a trail register - the first we'd seen on this adventure.  We left our mark, which included getting the name of the mountain wrong.  Dang native words always mix me up:

(I should explain that "Keychain" was my trail name when I hiked the Appalachian Trail in 2008, and I still like to use it whenever I'm in the woods.) 

We ended the section soon after, once again delivered back to civilization by my lovely wife.  While hiking, I did some figuring:  it's now late September, and it's taken Peanut and I a month to do less than a third of the trail - and this was the part closest to our home base.  Looking ahead, I could see some long sections that would be impossible to do without securing rides, and some of these might be time-consuming with unmarked trails because of landowner disputes.  Daylight is shrinking, and very soon the weather will turn cold, which is tough on a baby who isn't doing the hiking part.  If we had any hope of reaching Monadnock before winter, we had to hurry this project up.

Today: 5.0 miles.  M-M Trail completed: 37.2 of 114 miles.