Wildcat Hill, Ashland

From Curt Hoffman:

Since business has been a bit slow on the rockpiles blog the past few weeks, I thought I’d share a few images from sites in the Ashland Town Forest – where I know you’ve  [PWAX] wandered.  I discovered these sites (with the exception of the split wedged boulder) in previous trips, but we took advantage of the nice(r) weather today to get some photos.

The first site is off the orange trail.  It is a large (ca 10’ high) standing boulder, which appears to me to have been deliberately shaped so as to create a curved area on the left side.  A viewer standing on what I think may have been the foresight stone and looking uphill at it would see summer solstice sunset, reasonably accurately (40 degrees west of magnetic north).  There is a small possible stone pile at the base of the boulder.

 

The second site is beside the red trail.  I first noticed a simple rock-on-rock pile, and then I took a closer look at the stone row behind it.  The row is not straight, but is rather sinuous, has an azimuth of about 30 degrees east of magnetic north, and at a certain point it takes a bend, heads magnetic north, and ends in a swamp.

 

The third site is on the margin of Wildcat Hill, off the blue trail.  It is a large rock outcrop which has been split in several places.  But the most prominent split has several rocks wedged between the split portions.

The last site is on the yellow trail, at a point where it turns onto a cart path.  It is a small stone pile, and may be of recent origin.  But there is a short stone row on the opposite side of the path which goes nowhere.  There is also a split filled boulder nearby, but we couldn’t relocate that today

Below is a bit of USGS map showing the locations of these sites, as well as some of the ones you’ve recorded.   The boulder is 1146; the sinuous stone row is 1029; the split boulder is 1160, and the stone pile is 1013.