I feel bad for Sutton State Forest. Don’t get me wrong, it is a beautiful site, and it’s big, too, coming in at around 1,500 acres. There are several lovely trails and quite a lot to see, really, in terms of both its geology and its history. The problem that Sutton has is that its front door is the spectacular US-8423 Purgatory Chasm, one of the most interesting spots in the state.
There are other ways to get into the forest, of course, with both small road cutouts and larger more official parking areas ringing the property, but honestly, if you are driving all the way to Sutton, Massachusetts, you would be poorer for the experience if you don’t get there through Purgatory. There are two large parking areas, both near the entrance to the Chasm. A Visitor’s Center is in the lower lot, and it also hosts a playground, gardens, a pavilion, and a large number of picnic tables. An accessible viewing area, with a ramp, of the Chasm is nearby. Parking in 2025 is $5, payable at an electronic kiosk.
Inside the Visitor’s Center you’ll find information about the Chasm and the surrounding area. The long version of how the Chasm came to be is related in its own separate review, but the short version is this: About 12,000 years ago, as the ice of the Wisconsin glaciation of the Laurentide Ice Sheet melted back, it formed vast lakes of water, held in place by dams of ice and debris. At some point the dam holding a large volume of water to the north of Sutton broke, and the deluge tore down toward what was a granite mountain, crashing into it and breaking it apart along a narrow seam. The violence threw house-sized boulders into the air, and the result is, as you’d imagine, really dramatic.
It’s a short walk along a well-marked trail through the Chasm itself. This section is where you’ll run into quite a few casual walkers, especially families with kids, and also a lot of dogs. On nice days you’ll see rock climbers walking through to one of the several popular spots out in the forest, especially in the area called Little Purgatory. Climbing is specifically prohibited in the Chasm itself. I should note that the trails that run along the top of the cliffs around the Chasm can be very slippery, and just recently someone fell to their death.
My plan for this activation was to walk directly through Purgatory Chasm and then along Purgatory Brook to Little Purgatory. It’s a short jaunt, about half a mile to the bend in the trail at Little Purgatory, which is a much smaller set of falls and tortured rock. There’s a seven-foot eroded glacial pothole at the bottom of the falls, and this area is popular with climbers.
From here I turned uphill to find a high spot, though the tallest spot in the park is only 500 feet or so, which meant it was going to be up to skill. There’s a quick scramble up a small bank, but at the top the trail is clear and climbs gently. I waded through the black huckleberry when I saw a likely spot, a large rock up on a rise.
I’ve been carrying a 17′ whip for most activations these days unless I’m sure that I’ll have room for a long wire. The whip fits in just about anywhere, and I’ve upgraded the radials to four 32′ lengths of BNTECHGO 26AWG silicone-coated wire. It has the consistency of cooked spaghetti, is crazy light, and you can cross-wind it on your fingers for tangle-free deployment every time. I love the stuff.
What really sold me on the vertical, though, was adding a Palomar inline choke. I was having some pretty severe issues with the KX2 and the vertical, and the choke cured all of them. I realized what was happening on one activation when I was trying to get the KX2 to find a steady match and picked up the coax. The SWR instantly went to 1:1 and I realized it was common-mode current that was ruining my day. I held the coax for the rest of that activation and ordered chokes when I got back home.
The activation started slow, but after about ten minutes I’d run a small pileup and locked it in. My friends Bob WC1N and Ken NS1C were on an island in Boston Harbor doing one of their famous dual-CW operations, where they pass the key back and forth, and I was really happy that we were able to connect. One of my favorite things about POTA is running into friends from all over the world on activations. It’s like a little support group for us crazy folk who drag radios into the woods.
Walking back out of the park, I noticed something really interesting about the forest. For the most part the trees were birch, and most of them were what I’d call medium-sized, maybe 20 to 30 feet tall.. Occasionally there’d be a really large hardwood, maple or oak, standing dead or on the ground, and then all around, almost like ground cover, striped maple saplings.
In the photo the saplings that are two to three feet tall are striped maple. What is happening here is a succession of species, and it tells the story of this particular area. The large, dead trees dotted around are ‘pasture’ trees. About 150 years ago this portion of land was cleared for pasture, and you can imagine the typical pasture scene, with open grazing and the occasional large tree providing shade.
When the pastures were abandoned, the birch were among the first to establish themselves. They grow quickly and have enough of a canopy that they keep the forest around them relatively competitor-free. You can see, though, that it isn’t a complete canopy, and the striped maples grow very slowly, waiting for their chance at some sunlight. It’ll come soon, because the birch only live 70 years or so, and the maples will leap up into the sunlight when a birch falls. There are some fairly mature maples already in this zone that have taken advantage of breaks in the canopy. The maples and oaks will eventually take over, but that’ll be another 60 years or so. They have thick canopies and will radically change the nature of the forest floor.
You can stand here and see so much history unfolding, if you know what to look for!
One more fun bit of nature, this time just at the edge of the Chasm, technically outside the forest but interesting nonetheless. To get there, on your way back from Sutton Forest — it’s a trail that leads right to the Chasm — hang a right when you come to the first wooden footbridge. This takes you up and to the east of the Chasm, so you can look down into it. A similar trail runs on the west side, but I think the east is more interesting. This is a geologist’s playground, but I’ll just pass along one fun thing to look at.
About halfway along the edge of the Chasm are a few features marked on the map as Fat Man’s Misery and Devil’s Corncrib. There are rifts in the rock that form parallel walls, and it’s fun to try and walk in the narrow gap. Note that the west end of Fat Man’s Misery ends in a 50-foot drop, so maybe don’t run through that one…
Notice how these blocks have separated? This fracture follows a natural plane of weakness in the rock, known as a joint. Unlike a sliding fault (where blocks shift past each other laterally) or a dip-slip fault (where one block moves up or down relative to the other), this feature shows no offset — the tops line up, and the orientation is preserved. Here, the rock was pulled apart along the joint, creating an open crack. Geologists call this a joint, or in cases where joints form under tectonic stress and open into measurable separations, an extensional joint or joint set. It’s not technically a fault, since there’s no evidence of displacement, but it’s the same kind of planar fracture that faults exploit.
Sutton is full of delights like this. Not far from the chasm I ran across a large boulder that was a conglomerate of purple quartz pebbles and shiny mica, six feet in diameter. It was a chunk of riverbed — the quartz had been polished by flowing water — but frozen in time for millions of years. The shiny mica formed when the sands that the quartz pebbles were nestled in was turned to stone by immense pressure and heat over long periods of time.
Above are some views from the walk back down the path from Sutton to the parking area. POTA puts us in some amazing places that have incredible stories to tell. I hope that on your next activation you take some time to look around you and think about what you are seeing, and ask questions!
