Continuing our exploration of the Wapack Trail, we tackled the very bottom this weekend, Mt. Watatic. I’m going to rank this one #2 out of the site (Ted’s Trail to North Pack gets #1 status). It’s very short, not too steep, and gives you a really nice pay-off very quickly. And look: it starts with a giant gateway.
This is Yen’s sister you see behind me. She joined us for today’s hike.
Much of the trail was paralleled by this stone wall. You can see that Yen is still very much enamored of stone walls.
It was a beautiful day. Sunny, a little windy (especially at the top), and just the right temperature for a light jacket over a t-shirt. We won’t have many more (weekend) days like this, I’m afraid. Saturday morning we went for a run and the trail was completely covered in woolly worms. One of them was completely black. What we should make of that (other than that it’s an all-black variety), I couldn’t say. But we were out enjoying it while it lasts.
The whole Wapack Trail (and its spurs) are extremely well marked. Any of these would be good starter mountains – for those of you who are sitting at home reading and thinking, “Hey, I want to try that.”
We decided to pretend to be the Japanese tourists we’re always making fun.
Watatic has a double peak. Here we’ve arrived at the first and are looking out toward the second. You definitely want to make the extra few steps out to the second. It’s where the real view is.
The backstory on Watatic (and this marker) is that the mountain was identified as a good location for a communications tower a little more than 10 years ago. A local group got together and successfully blocked it by having the mountain designated as a wildlife sanctuary. This very nice marker commemorates that battle.
Yes, we’re all wearing sunscreen.
I’m not seeing it here, but somewhere in all these views is the Boston skyline.
Now we’re headed back down. You can either go back the way you came (except don’t, because it’s rather steep), continue on via an old road, or take another spur up to nearby Nutting Hill. Guess which one we did.
That bottle Yen’s holding isn’t his water bottle – he never drinks water out of plastic bottles. No, this is part of his collection of bottles that he always gathers when we hike, run, bike. He’s usually very subtle about it too. I’ll open the trunk and see six or seven bottles lying inside that he collected when I wasn’t paying attention.
Here we are leaving Nutting Hill, which turned out to be a nice walk with no view at all.
This is a little friend we picked up, Evy. I guess that’s how you’d spell it? I have no idea. Anyway, this sweet little girl was running off ahead of her “mom” and mostly hiking with Yen. Her tiny legs didn’t stop her from running up and down across boulders all the way down. She’s a Westie/Lasa mix, in case you’re curious.
Here we are walking with Evy’s “mom.” She lives nearby and was just out for a little stroll, having made applesauce all morning. Nice Fall day for her.
Hornet’s nest!
At the bottom of the trail we ran into a huge herd of Boy Scouts (I think the collective noun is really “troop,” as with baboons), who were learning about hiking necessities (“Water!” they all shouted in unison), and getting ready to set out. I made a friend.
And then we stopped off at Trap Falls, which was nowhere near as full as the last time we’d seen it.
Photo bomb!
