Wachusett, July 13, 2003

Alex and Rebecca were, as ever, excited and rarin' to go; here they are climbing over the gate at the trailhead. The boring old grown-ups, of course, just walked around.

The Wind Farm

We hadn't gone far up the trail before we started to hear an odd sound; it was combination of a low-pitched whir and a sort of "flop-flop-flop" sound. Soon the trees thinned out a bit and we could see the source: we had reached the wind farm, and we were hearing a combination of the whirring of the electrical generator and the sound of the blades as they spun in the wind. There are perhaps a half a dozen windmills in the farm; it was interesting to watch as they all pointed in slightly different directions to align with the wind, and sped up and slowed down as the breeze rose and fell.

We soon reached the intersection with the Harrington trail, and as we continued up the mountain the trail got progressively steeper. All day long I kept evaluating the trails from the perspective of a ski nut; I had a lot of fun skiing on the hiking trails last winter, and if we have another decent snow winter, I hope to be able to ski even more of the mountain. When we reached the intersection with the Link and Semuhenna trails, most of the way to the summit,

I took a little side trip to the right while everyone else continued up the Harrington trail. This gave me a chance to look at some of the terrain I skied last winter. It was astounding! What had been fairly open, not-very-steep, fun-to-ski stuff in the winter looked completely impassible in the summer: covered with rocks and dense vegetation. This is encouraging, because it suggests that a lot of the trails we walked on will be skiable once the snow falls.

It didn't take us long to get to the top of the mountain, where we stopped and had lunch. Generally, the top of the mountain isn't very attractive; it's covered with radio towers, parking areas and other generally ugly structures.

Nonetheless, we managed to locate a spot of green under some trees, right next to a little pond. Alex had a great time running around the pond and looking at the fish; there are a ton of koi (big goldfish) in the pond.

Sue & Rebecca have lunch

Looking at fish at the top
	The fish

After finishing lunch we stood around for a while at the top of the mountain, looking at other mountains in the distance. There's nifty poster at the summit that shows you the outline of the horizon and names the mountains; we could easily pick out Mounts Watautic and Monadnock off to the north

The rest of the afternoon was a slow, leisurely descent back to the car, meandering all over the mountain on the way. The first leg, on the Old Indian trail, started from near the top of the "Tenth Mountain" ski trail and took us into a part of the "front" of the mountain that we never get to see on skis. Most of it looked easily skiable; I can hardly wait until winter! The Old Indian trail then met up with the West Side trail, which in turn took us to the Semuhenna trail, near the top of "Ralph's Run" and the western ski lift.

The Semuhenna trail sounds like perhaps a native American name, but Dan claims that the name is just "Anne Humes" spelled backwards. Supposedly Ms. Humes was somehow connected with the early history of hiking trails on Mt. Wachusett. I'm not sure I buy this; my standard reference (Google) is silent on Anne Humes.

The "payoff" for the hike was a nice little break at Echo Lake. We stopped, pulled off our boots and cooled off our tootsies.

Mt.Wachusett in the Summer

Saturday, July 12, 2003