With the current events being a little hectic. I decided to hike local and stay within Mass this past weekend. I decided to check out one of the areas I used to hike all the time when I was just getting into hiking. It boasts 3 sometimes 4 tiers of water falls depending on how much rain or snow melt is present.
I got up around 4am and was out there door by 5am. I arrived at the trail head around 6am. As I had expected I was the only one there. After donning my pack and walking up not even 200 feet I could already hear the roar of the stream. It was at this point that I knew I was going to have a raging waterfall. I had brought climbing gear with so I could rappel down a waterfall if the conditions looked ideal. Being solo I was being very careful with whether or not I went through with it.
I made my way to the lower falls and it was an incredible sight. I had been ice climbing here in the winter and for some reason it just never disappoints. The water was flowing very strong making some maneuvers pretty tough and you did not want to fall. I had with 70M(220 feet) of rope hoping to rappel down the falls but decided against it based on the risk vs reward ratio. From this point I continued on the trail heading to Appalachian trail campsite and working my way to the junction to the AT. Obviously there were only 2 ways that you could go , North or South. I opted to go south, leading me to Mount Race. The sky was cloudy so it looked like I would not be getting any views this hike. I made my way up to the top of Mount Race and was surrounded by 360 degrees of no views. I had a quick drink of water and began my decent. It was at this point that I realized that I no longer had my hat. This was one of my favorite hats that had been through so many of my adventures. If I had lost it I would have been completely devastated. For the next 1.5 I scoured up and down the trail looking for my hat. With no luck I decided to head down the trail past the camp site hoping that I would find it on my way to the trail. I soon came to a bridge and saw my hat about 5 inches away from the water. That was a close one.
For the rest of the short hike I didn’t see anyone else. With this trip I had also not brought my camera so I could listen to the sound of nature and truly appreciate everything in this moment. When I went back about a week later I brought all of my cameras and I did rappell off one of the falls, so be sure to pay attention for that blog post coming out tomorrow.
Thanks for reading
