Thursday, July 14, 2005
Beartown State Forest info
photo slideshow
Beartown is another place I visited frequently back when I lived in the Berkshires. There are miles of trails, as well as sparsely-travelled paved and dirt roads - great for running and riding. You can be out for hours in much of the park and not see other people. It's great!
Ann was visiting for my birthday, so after a morning of taking it pretty easy we packed up the bikes and headed down to Massachusetts. I had gone for a run at Beartown back in May, and really wanted to visit the park again. After the long-ish drive we parked at the old CCC camp and headed down the road on the bikes.
Unfortunately, it’s very hilly, very muddy, and apparently very buggy… I tend to enjoy the former two (well, hilly can get old pretty quick) and I hadn’t noticed the latter before, maybe because I was always running along fast enough that the bugs didn’t catch me, or maybe it was just a good year for bugs. In any case, Ann found the terrain challenging enough that we walked a lot… and also got chewed up big time by the ‘skeeters, despite having used bug spray when we started. Ann is very vocal in her dislike of annoying insects, so that part wasn't much fun for either of us.
We briefly tried riding on the Airplane trail, which has been chewed to pieces by ATVs and was mudhole after mudhole. I guess I should be happy we didn't encounter any of the culprits, but it's still frustrating - that trail was one I ran and skiied a lot, and I'm sorry to see the section we were on in such bad shape from idiots being irresponsible with their toys - I'm not sure I could have ridden it even had I been by myself (though I'm stubborn enough that I might have tried.) I'll have to try running it again sometime.
After that we hiked the bikes up the very steep Sky Peak Road and carefully "zipped" down the the other side (it had been recently graded, so the surface was pretty loose.)
Wrapped up the day with a drive through Lee and Lenox and dinner up in Pittsfield... too late to visit either the Ashuwillticook Rail Trail or Mount Greylock, unfortunately. We'll just have to go there some other time...
JMH
