US-5636 Mt. Greylock State Reserve

For some reason I thought it would be an easy thing to drive out to the summit of Mt. Greylock in Adams, three hours to my west in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, do a quick POTA + SOTA activation, and then hit one or two other parks in the area as part of my overall goal of completing the Silver Activator award. I just needed five parks, and it looked as though western Massachusetts had a bunch of them close together, so how hard could it be?

I booked a hotel in Northampton for Thursday night (The Ellery, highly recommended) and hopped in the car at 7am Thursday morning, all packed up and ready to conquer. The weather was forecast to be record-breakingly spectacular, with 80ºF predicted for both days and mild nights in the 60s. Humidity was slated to be low and I knew there would be some really lovely views.

Before you judge my planning, it's important to know that there's a road that goes all the way to the tip-top of Mt. Greylock, the highest point in Massachusetts at 3,489 feet. There's a lodge up there where you can book a room or have a meal while you sit out on the summit on a picnic table and admire the monument. In other words, my plan was to drive to the summit, do a quick activation, then drive back down and head for another park.

I arrived at the Mt. Greylock State Reserve Visitor Center around 10:30AM, and the park ranger at the desk greeted me warmly. "How far from here up to the summit?" I asked as I signed my name and callsign to the guest book.

"Well, if you'd been here yesterday I'd tell you about 20 minutes," she began, "but we close the road on October 30th, and it doesn't re-open until next spring."

It was October 31st.

"You can drive about four miles up from here and park at the Jones Nose trailhead lot, and hike in if you like. Most hikers make the summit in around four hours. It's about four miles from the lot."

Suddenly my drive-by POTA activation was looking a lot like a significant climb. I'm fine with that, I do a lot of hiking, including the occasional summit, and I had all the gear and provisions I'd want for what was shaping up to be a 7-hour day on the mountain. I filled an extra water bottle at the Visitor Center filling station, hopped in the car, and headed for the trailhead.

The trails here are very well marked and maintained. If all you want is to do an activation from the park and don't care about summiting, about a quarter of a mile up Jones Nose you'll run into a really nice vista with a couple of picnic tabes that are absolutely perfect for POTA. Take note that on the day that I passed by there was a strong odor of bear. I didn't see any, but my guess is that they are attracted to food that folks leave on the ground near the tables. I've never heard of a problem with bears at Mt. Greylock, but just be aware of your surroundings when you are in the woods.

From Jones Nose it is just under 4 miles to the summit. Once you move past the picnic tables it's a steady climb through the woods, and at times it gets a little steep. I'm in my mid-60s and in fair shape, and I do a considerable amount of hiking, and I found the trail to be challenging but do-able. My pack was touch bulky as I'd brought along extra layers, knowing that there'd be a significant temperature difference between the top and bottom of the mountain, and I was happy to have those layers later in the day on my descent.

After about a mile on Jones Nose, you'll join up with the Appalachian Trail and follow it north to the summit. The AT is well-known, well-loved, and at least in this area well-maintained. Blazes are distinct and frequent, though there are very few intersecting trails here. Years of improvements to the trail have resulted in places like this, about 2 miles deep in the woods, where someone took the time to craft an artistic solution to a wet spot:

And here's another example of the kind of love this trail receives, a set of stairs made of nearby stones, again deep in the woods:

Speaking of steps and stones, the mountain is primarily schist, a dense metamorphic rock. The peak itself was mainly developed from a series of thrust events over geological time in which older rock was pushed up above younger rock as the entire structure moved about 25 miles in a westward direction before the Pleistocene. The schists are rich in muscovite and that gives the stone a deep greenish cast. What's also here in abundance is chalcocite, an important copper ore. On stones like those in the photo of the steps, you can see shiny copper where a century of walkers have polished the rock. You'll see a fair amount of milky quartz on this side of the mountain, too.

The AT in this stretch is a mix of relatively level paths through pine forest along ridge lines, interspersed with climbs, but none of them strenuous. It is easily walkable but you will still you stop and catch your breath once in a while. I was carrying a hiking pole on this trip but most of the time it was lashed to the pack, it wasn't that useful on the steep bits.

Back at the Visitor Center I had realized that this day was not about ham radio, it was about hiking the mountain on a spectacular fall day. I of course had the radio gear with me, all 13 pounds of it, and I eventually did an activation from the top, but it wasn't the in-and-out I thought it was going to be and instead I switched gears and just really enjoyed the hike.

There's just breathtaking beauty at every turn here. At one point I came down a little hillock, turned the corner, and saw this:

Other spots were long vistas with nearly unlimited visibility. I was on the trail for a little over seven hours up and down and only ran into a handful of people, so it's just you and your thoughts up here for a long time. Most of the hikers I said hello to were in their 20s and 30s, and I remembered when I was that age and I'd run into some old gray-haired dude humping a pack down the trail, I'd think, "Man, I hope I'm in that good a shape when I'm his age!"

Now I am that old gray dude humping a pack. It was a bit sobering.

There's a fleeting glimpse of the War Memorial atop the hill from about a mile away. It looks like you are getting close, but HA! there's still a ways to go. Eventually you'll run into the maintenance building for the radio tower nearby, and finally you'll make the last turn and see this. You've made it!

This is where the road takes you when it is not closed. The monument was also closed, as was nearby Bascom Lodge. I was actually a bit happy about that, as it meant there were fewer people around, no cars at all, and just generally really quiet and serene. Here's the lodge:

The Appalachian Trail crosses the summit at the monument and continues on its way to Maine, something I did not intend to do today.

The view from the top is, of course, amazing, and this was a very clear day. There are a lot of markers and binoculars and the sort educational displays that you'd expect, so you can get a sense of what you are looking at, get some history of the site, and read about Robert Frost's and Thoreau's love of the mountain.

I picked a spot down a bit from the summit in the treeline where I could hang my EFHW wire. I typically start an activation with some FT8, which lets me get on the air quickly while I get the rest of the site assembled. I use SDR-Control to run my IC-705 and set it to autolog, so I can start a CQ POTA running on FT8 and then go off and finish setting up. Today, though, the iPad Mini I'd brought along just wasn't happy about something and was having trouble connecting to the IC-705 WiFi access point. In retrospect it might have been interference from the radios on the tower at the summit.

I'd made a single FT8 contact in 15 minutes and by then had set up my CW key and finished the activation quickly on CW for a total of 16 QSOs. In retrospect I think I should have set up closer to the monument – there are picnic tables just off to the side – and not worried so much about hunkering down in the woods. I've now run into people a few times, and it's always been pleasant, so I guess I don't need to hide! Because I'd gone down into the woods, I was beyond the 75m limit for a SOTA activation.

My choice of antenna made this activation tougher. I brought the EFHW, which is quite long, and I was in an area with dense woods which made it difficult to find a clear path for the wire. I managed it, but it wasn't ideal. I'd left the hamstick dipole in the car four miles away, but that was the right choice, even though I can lash them to my pack, the rods are long and would've been a problem on the trail, especially on the steep parts.

Coming back down is of course easier than going up, but as any hiker knows it's the downhills that hurt you. At this time of year – end of October – much of the trail is covered in dry leaves and they can be quite slick. It's not bad on the ridges but coming down in elevation gets tricky.

The walk down is often a time of reflection for me. I spent a lot of time thinking about how special these places are, enormous swaths of our country set aside for the benefit and pleasure of ordinary people. I hike a lot in New England, but in the past several months I've been to 20 NEW places that I'd never explored, some that I'd never even heard of, because of POTA. Think about all of the people that POTA is inspiring to go out and explore the world around them – what a gift.

The last creature I saw on this fabulous day was Mr. Porcupine heading home after a long day of hunting grubs.

As I packed up the car the sun was setting below the ridge. I still had an hour's drive over to Northampton but the thought of a cold beer and good food at the Northampton Brewery lifted my spirits. A good thing, too, as it was Hallowe'en!