Sunday, January 6, 2008

Hiking - Taconic Crest Trail

The Taconic Crest Trail runs 35 miles along the top of the Taconic ridge from US20 near Pittsfield, MA, to NY346 near Pownal, VT. The trail is maintained by the Taconic Hiking Club, which offers a patch for hiking of all trail sections in the winter. Several friends and I are interested in pursuing this patch, so we did our first section today. We tackled the southernmost section, from the Lebanon Springs access road to US20, a distance of about 4.4 miles, all of it on snowshoes. The weather was alternately sunny and cloudy, calm winds, and temperatures well into the 40s. The snow was sloppy and wet, and trailbreaking was harder than it would have been in softer snow. It took us from 10:30am until 4:00 pm to cover those 4.4 miles, including a lunch stop. We'll be covering more sections as the winter progresses, and I'll post more about those trips here. There were really no photo ops today, but other sections do have some views that are photo-worthy.

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