Trip Report
After two tough days on Mount Mansfield and Mount Washington, Nabeel
and I were hoping for an easy day today, with mostly driving. Our
plan was to hit the highpoints of Massachusetts, Connecticut and New
Jersey; all in one day. From memory, somehow I had calculated
that none of these hikes would be more than 2 or 3 miles. Well, I
was wrong with the first one. Mount Greylock would be just over 6
miles, as I would find out in a final review of the route before our
hike. Oh well, 6 miles on a nice trail couldn’t be too bad.
With that part, I was right! Whew!
We started at the Cheshire Harbor Trailhead off of West Mountain
Road. Almost immediately, it was clear that this trail was
frequented by snowmobiles. If the tracks went most of the way to
the top, then we would be in for a nice easy stroll this morning.
We started hiking around 7:30 am. Our plan was to hike along a
wooded trail, until about mile 2.5, where we would pop out onto the
summit road. From there, we would hike along trails that would
follow the road closely, until the summit at around 3.2 miles.
As we hoped, the trail was well traveled by the snow traveling
machines. This made for a very easy hike. The only
challenge at all would be the 2,000 ft requisite elevation gain.
As mentioned above, we popped out onto the road at mile 2.5.
Every bit of the first 2.5 miles of trail was well packed down by
snowmobile travel. After we got to the road, the remaining route
was not snowmobile traveled, but it was easy to follow. The snow
was hard, so we didn’t have any issues with post holing.
Although, we could have easily followed the road to the summit,
following the trail was a much nicer hike, and relatively protected
from the winds.
We reached the road in just under an hour, and we made the summit about
20 minutes later. At the summit was a huge war memorial. It
was partially covered by the clouds, which was a neat sight.
Nabeel and I didn’t stick around long. We quickly checked the
memorial door, which was locked. Then, we made a quick trip
around the base of the memorial, and started back down. We got
back down to the road-trail crossing in about 15 minutes, and started
back down the trail. The trip down was nice, and Nabeel and I had
to hold back from running the easy grade. Ultimately, we made it
back down in about 40 minutes, for a 2 hour 15 minute round trip.
Greylock was a big unknown for me. After a VERY tough day on
another unknown – Mount Mansfield – I had serious fears that Greylock
would be similar in difficulty. Well, my fears were
unfounded. It is amazing what 900 ft lower elevation and 150 mile
more southerly location can do to the difficulty of a hike.
Greylock was considerably easier than Mansfield. And, we needed
it, with two more hikes still to get in today. Both of these
upcoming hikes were confirmed to be in the 2 to 3 mile range.
Whew!
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Pictures
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Route Information
TRAVEL
TIMES
|
Approx Time |
Est.
Distance
|
Elevation (ft)
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TH to Summit
Road
|
58 minutes
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2.5 miles
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1,555 gain
(TH at 1,562)
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Summit Road
to Summit
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16 minutes
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0.65
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374 gain (SR
at 3,117)
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Time on Summit
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5 minutes
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-
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at 3,491
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Summit to
Summit Road
|
15 minutes
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0.65 miles
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374 drop
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Summit Road
to TH
|
40 minutes
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2.5 miles
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1,555 drop
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ROUND TRIP
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2:14
hours
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6.3
miles
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1,929
Gain/drop
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