Training Log Archive: Ari-o

Sisters! Where is dry and hilly and not super-nearby? The Holyoke Range! Parked at the visitor center and ran the 7 Sisters course out, which is always lots of fun, swooping up and down. Started cold but was down to a t-shirt at the top of the first hill. At the end, we took the southern low trails back, Melanie then got bonky (turns out, it's low salt bonky) so we slowed down as we cut over a pass and then I got to orienteer our way back. Used this map, it's basically a ski-o map. Definitely the best route choice. Still, I should have dug out my O map to bring along.

So, then, we recovered and Mel ate all the salt out of the bottom of a bag of cheez-its and we went off again. The idea was to go around Mount Norwottuck. She had the mostly-useless state park map up, and I had downloaded the Norwottuck Map (thanks, Alex, and I also found this great exchange about Earls). But I didn't look at it that well. We got to a junction and went left, and started to climb, and realized a bit too late—when I got out a good map—that we had not gone far enough and instead of going around the mountain we were going over it.

Oh well.

So we got to the top, then took the trail east to where we would have been, and jogged the lovely Robert Frost trail back to the start. And the woods looked amazing, too.

It also was a sneaky 1400m of vert. This place does that.