Monday, January 23, 2012
One Hundred Miles in 2012
It is my plan to hike at least 100 miles this year and I intend to stick to this. Mark my words: One hundred miles this year. Now who can I sucker into coming with me....
Middlesex Fells Reservation
I took advantage of the snow storm this past Saturday and went on a short adventure with Nicole to Middlesex Fells Reservation in Winchester, MA. It was only about a 7 minute drive from my apartment in Woburn, and instead of being scared of the snow we decided to brave the weather and go on a short hike there. Neither of us have proper winter clothing so we looked like two well layered rodeo clowns walking thought the woods, but that's besides the point.
From what I could gather there are plenty of hiking trails available in the park, and a good amount of parking at the trail head we went to. We started off hiking on the Willow Spring path and continued for a bit onto Wanapinaquin Rd. There is plenty of information on the park at the Friends of Middlesex Fells Reservation website and also Google maps has all of the major trails outlined.
It was a nice hike through the snowy woods on a trail that followed the coast of one on the lakes located in the reservation. Nicole lost her phone during a furious jumping session, but by blind luck she found in buried in the snow on the way back, which was one of the most epic finds in recent history. We saw plenty of people cross country skiing and hiking through the woods while out on the trek and all and all it was a fun hike and I plan on going back a few more times to check out some of the other trails available and I would recommend anyone else in the area to do so also. For a park that is located 10 miles from the center of Boston it has a very remote feeling with plenty of space to explore without running into many other people, which is otherwise quite impossible in this area. I took my new GoPro along and snapped a few pictures.
Mileage: 2 Miles
From what I could gather there are plenty of hiking trails available in the park, and a good amount of parking at the trail head we went to. We started off hiking on the Willow Spring path and continued for a bit onto Wanapinaquin Rd. There is plenty of information on the park at the Friends of Middlesex Fells Reservation website and also Google maps has all of the major trails outlined.
It was a nice hike through the snowy woods on a trail that followed the coast of one on the lakes located in the reservation. Nicole lost her phone during a furious jumping session, but by blind luck she found in buried in the snow on the way back, which was one of the most epic finds in recent history. We saw plenty of people cross country skiing and hiking through the woods while out on the trek and all and all it was a fun hike and I plan on going back a few more times to check out some of the other trails available and I would recommend anyone else in the area to do so also. For a park that is located 10 miles from the center of Boston it has a very remote feeling with plenty of space to explore without running into many other people, which is otherwise quite impossible in this area. I took my new GoPro along and snapped a few pictures.
Mileage: 2 Miles
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| Yeah..yeah. |
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| Complete Nerd. |
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| Hiking. |
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Pico Mountain
It's been forever since my last update due mostly to the fact that I've been busy with moving and starting a new job and all that fun stuff, also it isn't as much fun hiking in the winter.
So yeah new job and new living area lets talk about that, and since I'm not the best writer I'll sum it up in a list of pro's and con's.
Pro's: I get to live alot closer to some very close friends now which is great, I'm back in Mass so I never had to switch over my license cause I was way to lazy to do that, I get paid more at my new job and I don't have to deal with the handful of unfathomably stupid people I worked with, also I'm close to Boston which i guess is cool but I'm pretty indifferent about it.
Cons: Rhode Island was sweet, I'm going to miss having a kick ass city, the beach, and some fun hiking spots all within 20 mins of my apartment. I'm also gonna miss the good people I worked with and all of the good aspects about my last job. I now have to work with radiation which as you can imagine isn't that awesome or fun unless you like making your chance of cancer increase, annnnd I'm guessing you don't.
OK enough of the updates, back to the purpose of this blog: hiking. So right before moving and starting the new job I rented a cabin in Killington, Vermont with a couple of friends for the weekend. It was a great time filled with a shit load of food and plenty of hickish activities including sling shot hunting and tree tipping, which is a must if you've never done it. I was excited to go back to Killington because I had hiked there years before when I was a freshman in college with a couple of my friends and it was a blast. That trip was the first real hike I had done that wasn't a scout hosted event and the first over night hike I had done in awhile, and in a lot of ways it's why I got back into hiking as a hobby.
So anyways, we finally started the hike after an hour debate whether or not we could finish before sundown, because of course you can't expect a group of 8 hungover people to be ready to hike a mountain at even close to a reasonable time. But we did amazingly decide to hike it and took the same trail up I had done five years prior which is a section of the Appalachian Trail. It was a pretty cold hike since it was late October in Vermont but for the most part nobody complained too much and we got to the top rather quickly. The top of the mountain is part of the Pico Mountain ski area so there was a slope and ski lifts, along with a warming hut which I had insisted would be open and allow us warm up since it had been last time. I was wrong. After eating a lunch in the freezing cold it was more than time to hike down the mountain, and we decided this would be done by running down the ski slop to the bottom instead of taking the trail back. Completely awesome idea. After somehow evading broken legs or peaced out friends, except for Mark who obviously did fall, It was a pretty successful trip down.
At the bottom we hiked through the Ghost town of an off season ski resort, and along the road back to the cars. All and all it was a good hike.
Mileage: 5 Miles
So yeah new job and new living area lets talk about that, and since I'm not the best writer I'll sum it up in a list of pro's and con's.
Pro's: I get to live alot closer to some very close friends now which is great, I'm back in Mass so I never had to switch over my license cause I was way to lazy to do that, I get paid more at my new job and I don't have to deal with the handful of unfathomably stupid people I worked with, also I'm close to Boston which i guess is cool but I'm pretty indifferent about it.
Cons: Rhode Island was sweet, I'm going to miss having a kick ass city, the beach, and some fun hiking spots all within 20 mins of my apartment. I'm also gonna miss the good people I worked with and all of the good aspects about my last job. I now have to work with radiation which as you can imagine isn't that awesome or fun unless you like making your chance of cancer increase, annnnd I'm guessing you don't.
OK enough of the updates, back to the purpose of this blog: hiking. So right before moving and starting the new job I rented a cabin in Killington, Vermont with a couple of friends for the weekend. It was a great time filled with a shit load of food and plenty of hickish activities including sling shot hunting and tree tipping, which is a must if you've never done it. I was excited to go back to Killington because I had hiked there years before when I was a freshman in college with a couple of my friends and it was a blast. That trip was the first real hike I had done that wasn't a scout hosted event and the first over night hike I had done in awhile, and in a lot of ways it's why I got back into hiking as a hobby.
So anyways, we finally started the hike after an hour debate whether or not we could finish before sundown, because of course you can't expect a group of 8 hungover people to be ready to hike a mountain at even close to a reasonable time. But we did amazingly decide to hike it and took the same trail up I had done five years prior which is a section of the Appalachian Trail. It was a pretty cold hike since it was late October in Vermont but for the most part nobody complained too much and we got to the top rather quickly. The top of the mountain is part of the Pico Mountain ski area so there was a slope and ski lifts, along with a warming hut which I had insisted would be open and allow us warm up since it had been last time. I was wrong. After eating a lunch in the freezing cold it was more than time to hike down the mountain, and we decided this would be done by running down the ski slop to the bottom instead of taking the trail back. Completely awesome idea. After somehow evading broken legs or peaced out friends, except for Mark who obviously did fall, It was a pretty successful trip down.
At the bottom we hiked through the Ghost town of an off season ski resort, and along the road back to the cars. All and all it was a good hike.
Mileage: 5 Miles
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| The group at the summit |
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| Happy about frolicking |
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| Sasquatch Mark |
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| Hiking down |
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| Buds |
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| From my original hike 5 years ago, Ski chair at sunrise |
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