There was supposed to be parking for three cars along the southwest corner of Hyannis Pond WMA in Barnstable, Massachusetts. What I found instead were several large pieces of construction equipment, torn up earth, and what was once the sign for the WMA at the entrance tossed into the weeds. An adult-care facility across the street provided some parking, so I pulled the car in, grabbed my pack, and headed over to see what all the fuss was about.

Apart from the chaos at the entrance, the WMA was in very good shape. It’s a big one at just under 350 acres, situated mid-Cape in Hyannis. The park is a really good example of a typical Cape Cod pitch-pine barrens and is relatively flat and very sandy. The pines provide shelter for black huckleberry and related species, in some places so thick that you aren’t going to get through without a lot of effort.

You’ll find several ponds in the WMA, the largest being Israel Pond on the west side. These ponds are not stocked seasonally by MasWildlife with trout but you’ll still find panfish and the occasional perch in the water. If you are looking for trout, nearby Hablin Pond and Hathaway Pond are stocked.

Dirt bikers might be the primary users of the WMA. There’s an extensive network of trails running throughout the park, and most of the primary paths are really more like dirt roads, wide and branching. The bike trails have fun names like The Wall, the 7.5-mile Bushman, and The Back Nine. Some of the trails are set up as large loops for timed races, some are built more for trials with obstacles and technical challenges, and some just loop through the woods.

Take extra care, by the way, on the pine-covered hillside trails. The path can be steep, and they are thick with pine needles which are extremely slippery. Going up or down can be treacherous…more than once I found myself sliding down a hill on my butt.

These are not sanctioned trails by any means. Motorized vehicles of any kind are prohibited by MassWildlife, and the town of Barnstable has a ban on motorized vehicles crossing public land. Just a year or so ago the local police ramped up efforts to stop the bikers, handing out fines and warnings to bikers. That said, the trails have been in use by the motocross community since at least the 1970s when some of the first tracks were laid out, and it’s a losing battle to try to keep them out of the park.

I have mixed feelings about the motorcycles and dirtbikes. I understand that the purpose of a WMA is conservation, and that the bikes are noisy, polluting, invasive, and destructive in some cases. On the other hand, as a hiker I know that a significant number of trail I walk were built and are in active use by bikers. In some parks that’s all you get for trails of any kind. I appreciate those trails and the ongoing use that keeps them cleared. At the end of the day I think there’s room for everyone. I don’t especially enjoy being out on a quiet walk that’s interrupted by a loud bike or group of them, but in seconds they are gone and it is peaceful again, and I always smile and wave.

Finding a spot to operate from wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. The huckleberries are really thick in most areas, as they are across a lot of mid-Cape, and they are tough to wade through. They are even tougher to sit on, too, being a few feet high, so you need a clearing. I pushed through a small stand of them to get to a spot near a bike path which offered a clear patch of ground.

I’d brought the KX2 and a Gabil GR7350T vertical and set up shop for about 40 minutes, working a little over a dozen stations on 20m, 30m, and 40m. I recently built a set of 36-foot radials for the Gabil to use on 40m, and they do seem to have improved performance a bit. The radials are attached with a quick-connect adapter and the entire antenna goes up in just a few minutes.

Since it is prominent in the photo I’ll mention the Begali Traveler. It is hands-down the best iambic paddle I’ve used in 50 years of operating CW. I’ve always been a Bencher guy, and there’s a BY-2 at the home shack plugged into my IC-705, but now when I get back from a POTA operation I drop the Begali on the desk and push the Bencher aside. It’s a really, really good key and all of the hype you’ve heard about Begali is true, at least for this model. The downside is that it is heavy and a little bulky, which for me is overridden by the key’s performance. I’ll do a proper review soon. I will say that after a dozen activations with the Traveler I still wince a bit when I plop it down on a pile of dirt out in the woods.

Let’s get back to where we began, with bulldozers in what used to be the parking area of the WMA. It turns out that my fears were misplaced, because what I’d run into was work being done to extend US-8395 Cape Cod State Rail Trail to the west by several miles. This is actually really good news! The Cape Cod Rail Trail is a beautiful path that runs for about 27 miles from Yarmouth in the west to Wellfleet to the east. It takes you through typical Cape scenery along coastal plains and ponds, through pitch pine forest, in and out of several quaint New England towns, and connects to other useful trails such as s the Old Colony Line that runs another 8 miles down to Chatham. I’ve biked the trail for decades and it is a true gem of the east coast. It’s also a 2-fer with US-2451 Nickerson State Park (there’s trail parking in Nickerson).

Work is being done to extend the trail in both directions, from Sandwich to Provincetown. To the east it has run into NIMBY roadblocks in Wellfleet, but work is progressing to the west. Hyannis Pond WMA will be the new western terminus in the current phase, adding 4 miles to the trail west of Yarmouth. Additional work is moving along in various phases along the western branch and I expect that I’ll be able to bike from Sandwich to Chatham within the next few years. The Provincetown piece…I’m not holding my breath.

Something that POTA has opened my eyes to is the large amount of conservation work being done at the state level. Projects like the Cape Cod Rail Trail extension, and a greenway planned to run from Connecticut into Vermont give me hope that other people care about these spaces, too, and we are getting things done to protect them.

I leave you with a piece of artwork near Israel Pond. I happen to love graffiti like this…see my review of US-8424 Quincy Quarries…but I know that others are really put out by it. I just like seeing a splash of color out in the woods and thinking about the people who painted the rock. It’s our version of paleolithic cave paintings, right?