Monday, December 31, 2007
After lunch we headed east from Pittsfield through Dalton, keeping our fingers crossed that the parking area for Wahconah Falls would be plowed. After all, the guide book I had indicated that once you were in the parking area, the falls were basically right there... no half mile hikes in and out like we were faced with to see Balance Rock. Eventually, we found the road to the park, and then the park entrance and - success! The parking area was plowed... sort of. One loop about 2 cars wide had been plowed between the two entrances. So I pulled the car over as far to the left as I could (not that I was too worried anyone else would be showing up!) and we got out to have a look around, just as a very light snow began falling.
The obvious first question was - where was the waterfall? It definitely wasn't visible from the parking area, which was surrounded by trees. Hit the guide book (New England Waterfalls by Greg Parsons and Kate Watson - highly recommended if you're going to check out waterfalls in New England!) and read that we needed to make a short downhill hike to get to it. Seeing as we were surrounded by approximately foot deep snow, that meant breaking out the snowshoes I had the foresight to bring along (OK, I got lucky and didn't unpack them when we finished our walks on Sunday.)
Ann hasn't gotten any real experience using snowshoes in deeper snow, so it was interesting watching her figure them out, but she caught on pretty quickly... the only thing I really had to point out was that snowshoes are designed for forward/backward traction, not sideways as she tried to edge sideways down one hill. We tromped down the path and found the waterfall very quckly. Not particularly large, but still quite pretty, especially with the snow falling around us. Then we spent a while wandering around the area above the stream, and Ann amused herself by grabbing low-hanging evergreen branches and shaking the snow off onto herself. (I figured out fairly rapidly that standing under an evergreen branch was a bad idea, unless I wanted snow dumped on me.)
All in all, a nice little area to visit, and a pleasant diversion on the way south to see my parents.
JMH
