Tuesday, July 24, 2007
October Mountain State Forest official site
October Mountain State Forest trail map
October Mountain State Forest is the largest of Massachusetts state parks - its 16500 acres are home to miles of dirt roads, doubletrack, and singletack, as well as half a dozen ponds, lakes, and reservoirs. I ran there a little over 8 years ago, when I was first trying to get ready to run NIPMUCK, and had a fairly miserable run... I ran along the Appalachian Trail and ended up walking a lot of the time, either because the trail was too steep or too rocky. On the plus side, I remember spending 10 minutes watching a beaver swim in a pond - the first one I ever saw in the wild.
I planned today's run a little bit differently, adapting several the routes of several rides from two excellent mountain biking guides, Paul Angiolillo's Mountain Biking Southern New England and Anna Milkowski's Mountain Biking the Berkshires. In addition to the promise of no major climbs, this let me choose dirt roads and ORV trails, which I hoped would be a bit easier to run than the rocky singletrack I remembered from 1999...
Getting there was a bit of an adventure in and of itself. First I realized that I'd forgotten my camera, so I checked the disposables at the Lee travel plaza... for some reason, $16.99 for a disposable camera seemed like highway robbery (literally, in this case!) Then I reached one of the last turns I needed to make, and found the road blocked by a "no thru traffic" sign. So I ended up wandering over some roads that generally went in the right direction and hoped that the one I was looking for would have a sign when I reached it (it didn't, but I passed a side road indicated on my park map shortly after, so I made it! Of course, I found out after my run that if I'd stopped and checked my Berkshire County map, I could have gone directly to where I parked in about half the time and distance. Oh, well!)
Parked in a huge dirt lot (complete with numerous tire tracks from folks in ORVs tearing around... I'll rant about that more at the end) and geared up for my run, which I planned to split into 2 parts - 10 miles and 5 miles. Sprayed myself liberally with bug spray, despite loathing the stuff (that turned out to be a good move) and headed off down West Branch Rd toward Washington Mountain Marsh. Started out on a hard-packed dirt road, which was pleasantly easy running. After about a mile that turned into a multi-use trail through the woods that was fairly eroded and rocky in spots, but still nice running - shady and quiet.
Unfortunately, this was the point where the deerflies caught up with me... they weren't biting all that often, possibly due to the bug spray, but they buzzed around and landed in my hair, making a general nuisance of themselves. I crushed as many as I could, but reinforcements continued arriving for most of the first three hours, and after about 90 minutes I gave up and put on the hat I had with me, which at least kept them out of my hair. Fortunately it was cool enough to wear a hat!
Eventually the trail came out on another dirt road, which I ran mostly uphill and past an open viewpoint that gave some great views of the mountains to the northwest. That was one place where I really wished I had my camera. About six miles in, I headed back onto trails and was on trails and ORV roads for the rest of the first loop. Some uphill, some downhill, some eroded and rocky, and many places with deep scummy mudpuddles due to irresponsible ORV use (well, at least the multitude of frogs seemed happy... I suspect the 'skeeters like it too.)
Took one wrong turn (or rather, missed a turn) and ended up taking an access road past the northern end of Ashley Lake out to the paved road. Oh, well. That added about 2 miles to the first loop... found my way back to the trail I wanted, and took a 2nd intentional detour down the access road at the southern end of the lake (unfortunately, I mis-remembered reading that there was a 15 foot fountain of water at that end of the lake... rather ironic, since you can barely see the lake through the trees and undergrowth!) Continued on down the very eroded jeep road, and was passed at one point by two kids in an SUV - to their credit, they were very careful passing me. Passed the Sandwash Reservoir, which is the actual site of the fountain, but it wasn't running, unfortunately. Finally came back out on a hardpacked dirt road, and made the short run back to the car, with about 13.5 miles under my belt. (At the time, I thought it was only 12-12.5 miles...)
As I replaced my fluid bottles and munched some granola bars, I checked my map for 2nd loop possibilities... there was no way my legs would survive the original loop I'd planned to run at this point. I quicky decided on a 3.5 mile loop along the dirt roads surrounding the October Mountain reservoir, doused myself with more bug spray, and set out on my tired legs to complete the run.
Even though I ran all of this on fairly clear dirt roads, the time and distance I'd already spent on my feet were clearly taking their toll. It helped that much of the first half of the run was downhill, but that meant I'd be going uphill for the 2nd half... oh, well. The lowest point of the run passed between October Mountain Reservoir and a marsh, where I startled a heron (he flew off) and had a wonderful view of the moon rising over the marsh... another moment where my camera would have been nice. After a long uphill that included a lot of walking, I finally came out on County Road, the final stretch that would take me back to the car. Two pickups blazed by me along this part. Despite the general uphill trend, I managed a slow run back to the car, where I changed into dry clothes (on advantage of being out in the middle of nowhere - I was able to completely change instead of just changing my shirt, socks, and shoes), checked my Berkshire County map for the best route back to the main road (it turned out the be the road I'd just run up), and hit the road for the drive home.
the two loops I ran today...
So overall, a good LSD run (long slow distance) in a park I've been hoping to revisit for several years now. Ran a bit further than I intended, but that's OK. The ORV trails were also probably good practice for the 20 mile trail race at Savoy in mid-August - I've heard the terrain and footing are similar. I'm glad I ran there rather than riding my ATB, since many of the multi-use trails were in suffiiciently poor shape that I would have had a tough time riding on them. With luck I can find some time to go back and explore the west end of the park a bit... if not this summer, then maybe next year...
JMH
