On the AT - Church Road to Williamstown, MA

September 10, 2007 | Miles: 14.5
Start: Church Rd., Cheshire
End: Rt. 2, Williamstown
Danielle:
Another gray day... Mom and Dad again acted as taxi service and got us to Cheshire for a 7:45am start. We knew we had a long day ahead of us, with a long hike and a long drive home, so the early start was necessary... and they were driving home to NC so they needed it too! Thanks again guys! Having you around this weekend made filling in these remaining MA sections much easier! We appreciate it :-)

We pretty much hiked in the clouds and mist all day, which made the woods seem sort of dark and spooky... the hike up to Mt. Greylock was long, but fair, and we managed to make the summit in time for lunch. The road is currently closed to cars as they're doing work on it, so the summit was pretty quiet, except for a group of guys working on some sort of weather/wind towers. Who knows? We sat outside the boarded up Bascom Lodge and ate lunch before heading off along the ridge... We had just made it to the Money Brook Trail with 3 miles left in the hike when it really started to rain. Not that we weren't wet anyway, from all the mist and clouds and humidity and sweat! The final few miles were steep, but not as bad as we had feared and less than 7 hours later we were back at Mim's, getting clean. The best thing about today is that now we are done with MA! YEAH! :-) Only took us 3 years to finish it off :-)
Flora and fauna report: 7 orange newts, 5 spruce grouse scared up, 1 bunny. Pretty quiet in the woods today...

Ryan:
A wet day. It only rained on us for about an hour near the end of the hike, but it was about 143% humidity all day. It was dark, too. And kinda spooky. The climb up Greylock from Cheshire is pretty nice. Nothing really hard, just a good steady uphill for 8 miles. We had heard horror stories about the descent off Greylock, but that wasn't that bad either. We moved right along, too, and finished in pretty decent time.
Best of all, we finished MA. It's the first state we've finished since CT in 05, so it felt good to put that one behind us. Our vacation is coming up, and if all goes to plan VT shouldn't be far behind.