Join us for a hike?

Now that most of the snow has melted we're happy to be able to get back to the mountain & enjoy all the hiking trails there. Tanner is happier than anyone as this lets him get off leash & run to his hearts content. This morning Tanner & I headed out at 8am hoping to get there before anyone else (so I wouldn't have to worry about him jumping on anyone) Care to join us for a walk in the woods of New England?

So as you can see there was still some snow on the ground but even the trails that did have snow were packed down & passable. What you cant see from this photo (or maybe you can...) is that it was really chilly at 8am....about 30 degrees...brrr. There's Tanner up ahead on the path looking back to see if I'm keeping up.

As we got deeper into the woods we started to see more & more tree damage from the ice storm in December

Looks like they have been busy at work though making the trails usable.

Can you imagine what a loud noise this monster of a tree made when it was uprooted & came crashing down?

You can't tell in the last picture quite how big it was...but in this picture with Tanner you can see that the base of it was at least 3 feet wide. Makes me sad to see such a beautiful majestic old tree laying here dying.

This was a trail I hadn't done before...but it was really pretty with nice views on the right looking south (toward my house) That white dot up ahead to the right is Tanner leaving me in the dust again.

Tanner appears to be enjoying the views too.

Such a handsome boy !!!

As we headed down a different trail we came upon this pretty mountainside stream...

There was still some ice so I'm sure this water was very chilly...I was not testing it to find out...

That didn't stop the water dog from playing around in it for a few minutes though...

The last stretch of our hike took us through a large pine grove full of huge 50-60 foot trees. This was the area that seemed to have the worst storm damage. I scurried quickly under a lot of trees that were leaning precariously against other trees. It looked as if it would take just a good wind to dislodge them from the small branches holding them up...and today, as luck would have it, was a windy day. Tanner loved this part of the hike the best though. You wouldn't believe how fast he raced back & forth through here hurtling over downed trees.

If you follow this monster way up past where it bends off to the right you can barely see that it is just small branches on the tree to the right of it that is holding it up. I did NOT go under this one !

The floor of the forest was carpeted with debris.... But storm damage & all this really is a beautiful place to spend the morning exploring.

So that's it...you can now say you have hiked the lower trails on the south side of Mt Wachusett. Thanks for coming along...