Monday, May 19, 2008

Rock piles in DAR State Forest

Norman Muller writes:

Just before arriving in Northampton, MA, for the NEARA meeting last month, I took a short detour to Goshen to check on a cairn site that a mountain bike rider mentioned on your blog a year or so ago. He said it was in the DAR State Forest, alongside the New England Mountain Bike Trail, and not far from the parking lot.

With a topo map I printed out, and a map of the park, I found the trail and hiked a half mile or so to a flat plateau where I encountered the first of a half dozen or so low stone cairns.In the vicinity was a very large glacial erratic,
and a stone wall nearby that at the west end terminated at a boulder (image 78). I didn't follow the wall to see what it was like at the other end, so I have no idea how long it was, or whether there were any twists or turns to it. The section I saw was fairly straight. Several of the cairns were round with the boulders comprising them carefully placed (images 73 and 80).

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