Hiking/Snowshoeing - Taconic Crest Trail

Today, I led another Schenectady ADK hike to a section of the Taconic Crest Trail. Several of us are pursuing a patch from the Taconic Hiking Club for completion of all trail sections in calendar winter.

Today's section was about 5.5 miles from Tower Mountain Road north to Potter Mountain Road, off NY/MA43 near Hancock, MA. Today's hike was entirely in Massachusetts, though other sections of the trail meander back and forth across the state line as they follow the ridge top.

The snow on the ridge was 8-12" deep, and soft, mushy, and wet. It was like breaking trail in mashed potatoes, and provided a fairly strenuous outing. On the positive side, temps were near 50F with a light wind and lots of sun, so it was a beautiful spring-like day to be out. We found a nice dry picnic table overlooking Berry Pond in the Pittsfield State Forest, and stopped there for lunch before continuing north. There is a lot of up and down on this ridge, and the ups were especially tough given the snow conditions and the unbroken trail. It took us about 5 hours to cover the 5.5 miles, and we'd all had enough when we reached the pre-positioned car on Potter Mountain Road.

Unfortunately, I had packed my camera with dead batteries, so no pics for this outing. Stupid.