go hike a mountain

July 21, 2007

Bash Bish Falls was listed as possibly one of the most spectacular waterfalls in Massachusetts by the ‘New England Hiking’ guide. It happened to be one of the highlights in the state forest we were hiking in the next day, and a short drive from the area we were going to be sleeping at. So, shortly after arriving to the Berkshires, we drove into the parking lot for the falls. The hiking trail was easy to find, and was not very long at .25 miles, but was a little steep. We had to hike downhill over fallen trees, streams, and a few large rocks. When we got to the point where the trail met a service road, we saw there was another wide gravel road many other people were leaving on. Without asking where it lead, we just assumed there was another parking lot somewhere further and that we could try and drive back to that one to revisit after our hike the next day.

When we approached the falls, there were a few groups of people perched on rocks. We crawled around on the rocks a bit and snapped off a few photos, but decided to wait a while for the sun to lower so there wasn’t too much light on the falls. People also began packing up and leaving as it grew darker, which allowed us to spread our equipment out a little more. Jesse decided to scramble up to the top of the falls while I wasn’t paying attention, and just as I was focusing and making adjustments for an exposure, I noticed his orange handkerchief bobbling around in the corner of my eye. You can just barely make him out in this photo:

And this one is closer, but a bit blurry:

Thankfully, he made it back safely. At this point, I was trying to set up the camera to take some photos of both of us at a nice area in front of the falls….and my battery died. I didn’t bring a spare, either, and it was too much to hike back to the car just to get one. I took this photo while trying to set the exposure and timer just before I killed the battery.

We left the falls and trekked back up the trail and into the parking lot. From the lot, we mountain-goated up some more rocks which gave us a beautiful view of what might have been the mountain we were going to climb the next morning as well as a valley and more mountains in the distance. If we had stayed another 45 minutes, we probably would have witnessed a spectacular sunset, but we decided we were more hungry than we could handle and it was about a half-hour drive back into town.

July 22, 2007

Following our hike to the Connecticut high point, we drove back by the falls to see if it was quiet enough to take a swim and to try for those photos of ourselves in front of the falls. We drove past the parking lot we used the night before….and followed a long, winding road for what seemed like too far. We passed into New York and decided to turn back and use that hiking trail we had used again. This time, the falls were overpopulated and not as appealing. We just decided to head back instead and find some other, more quiet area to explore and ended up making our way to Monument Mountain, and you can read about that story in another blog.