the Way of the Turtle

17.6 Mile Run at Beartown State Forest
Sunday, June 29, 2008

When I was first introduced to the concept of trail running, way back in 1997, there were three places I ran - the Appalachian Trail between South Egremont and Sheffield (pretty easy running), Mount Washington State Forest (hills! hills! hills!), and Beartown State Forest (hills... and MUD!) So Beartown will always hold a special place in my heart, and over the past few years I've tried to get there at least once each summer for a run.

Traffic over the western Massachusetts today was a killer... more morons per mile than I've encountered in a time. Sigh. Happily I made it to Lee without mishap, and made my way up the rough road into Beartown. I always have mixed feelings about my initial drive through the park... on the one hand, I love being there, especially since there's a stream that runs alongside the road with numerous small waterfalls. But the minus to driving through Beartown is that the roads, like many in the MA state forests, are poorly maintained, so taking my Civic along them is an exercise in picking a route that's least likely to rip out the bottom of my car or destroy my suspension. Today I ended up doing a bit of extra driving, because I left my trail maps at home and none of the kiosks I passed had any... so I ended up driving all the way to the other side of the park where I could pick up several maps at Benedict Pond, then headed back to the CCC camp roughly halfway through the forest to park and gear up for some wild and wooly miles of running/hiking.

Started out by heading down the road to the closer trailhead for the Beebe Trail, the start of a loop on several miles of multi-use (or more appropriately multi-abuse) trail. While these trails are designed for pretty much all trail users, nowadays the primary users in the spring, summer, and fall seem to be ATVs, and as I've ranted previously, they've made a real mess out of these trails. Hills are often reduced to eroded slopes of loose rock, and low-lying areas are gouged-out mud-pits. In the worst spots the trails have been widened to as much as 10 or 12 feet in an attempt to go past the mud and water, or side trails have been cut to get around areas that are too difficult to ride. These first trails that I ran today weren't as bad as some that I've seen (and some that I would see later today!) but the damage is still outrageous and I repeat my previous rants - ban recreational ATVs from public trails! (And for those who wonder if I can be equally critical of what I've sometimes heard referred to as "oxygen-fed sport", I also support banning mountain bikes from areas where the riders cause this type of trail damage... in some ways I think that's even more egregious, because mountain bikers have a choice - they can dismount and walk/carry their bikes through sensitive areas.)

OK, enough editorializing.

more to come...