Hike: Mt. Holyoke
Date: 7/11/98
With whom: solo
[Previous Hike] [Hiking
Index] [Next Hike]
The Notch across the Seven Sisters to the Summit House Mt. Holyoke via Metacomet-Monadnock trail.
Then back to the Notch to Long Mountain and Harris Mountain Road via Robert Frost/M-M trail
Distance: miles roundtrip
Elevation:
I was in Boston for a meeting and stayed the weekend with my sister in Amherst. I wanted to go on a
hike (of course!). My sister's friend recommended this trail.
My sister and her friends were off to a wedding shower so they
dropped me off at the Notch sometime around noon.
I had my cell phone and pager so they would call or page me or I
would call them so that we could arrange for a pickup when they were done.
I went to talk to the ranger to find out what trails to take.
The hills here seemed very modest and I was a little cocky having hiked Haleakela and Mt. Baldy
in recent weeks. It would be a good learning experience...
One difference from the California hikes to which I was accustomed was the humidity. Along with
this moisture was a much greener environment and a lot of bugs. After I became too irritated by
mosquitos, I broke out the Jungle Juice made of some high concentration of DEET. It definitely
helped. I didn't have much water to spare so I didn't wash my hands off and didn't think much
of it. Later, I noticed that I had white paint all over my hand - the Jungle Juice on my hands
stripped the paint (logo, markings) off of my Nalgene water bottle.
Another thing that is quite different than the trails to which I am accustomed
is that even though the net elevation gain (400' gain) to Mt. Holyoke (elev. 935')
was not that great, there is a lot of gain-then-loss (then gain-then-loss) on
the trail. Along the trail, I hiked to Mt. Holyoke, I passed Bare Mt. (1000'),
Mt. Hitchcock (1000'), the Seven Sisters, dropping down into Taylor Notch before
Mt. Holyoke.
Another interesting
thing for me was the use of the blazes to follow the trail - I hadn't been on a trail that had
blazes. I followed blazes, but at some point I got lost anyway by following some other
trail. Backtracking to the last blaze helped me get back on course.
Eventually, I made it up to the top. It took me quite a bit longer to traverse
the 3+ miles to the Summit House on Mt. Holyoke than I expected. 
After touring the Summit House and wolfing down some food, I headed back. The
return trip went a little more quickly, but not much faster with all of the up
and down on the trail. After I returned to the Notch, I only had about one-half
a liter of water and surprisingly, there wasn't any please I could fill up.
It was about 4:00pm and although I did bring some books to read while waiting for my sister, I
decided to continue hiking on the Robert Frost trail. The Robert Frost trail was a very wide
trail for the first part and then became a more conventional trail.
I wanted to conserve my energy so instead of taking the trail to Rattlesnake Knob, I skirted
around it by taking the South Side trail. The different blazes were very handy in identifying
the different trails.
On my way up Long Mt. (906'), I received a page from my sister. I was able to call her back
and let her know where we could meet, across from Gramby Gate on Harris Mtn. Rd.
[Main Index] [Hiking
Index]