go hike a mountain

When we were first driving toward Great Barrington and the George Washington State Park, we passed a ’scenic view’ sign that looked like it led to the top of a mountain. I found the hike for Monument Mountain listed in my ‘New England Hiking’ guide, and it was given a good rating. This mountain was supposed to be a nice way to end the trip before the long drive back home. When we pulled up, there were two schoolbuses stopped in the parking lot, dumping about 50 13-year-old girls into the picnic area. As they were being organized and we were putting on our shoes, we noticed they were going for the shorter, more strenuous hike, so we thought we would try and avoid them by taking the other path up the mountain. It turns out this path was supposed to be twice the length, but we figured we would just take the short, steep path back down. We ran into a lost man and pug who had taken the long path down the mountain by accident. He didn’t trust that we knew the way back to the parking lot because I could hear him asking more people just behind us.

Along this hike, we saw the Devil’s Pulpit, Squaw’s Peak (the highest point of this mountain) and a giant boulder with an inscription. Here Jesse is (rather dangerously) clutching a tree while trying to videotape the area below a cliff:

The Devil’s Pulpit can be seen at the bottom right of this photo:

Some of us at the top:

This is a photograph of part of the trail:

Inscription Rock:

a little cave we found:

and another of the trail:

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This hike ended up being around 2 miles in length and took us about 1.5 hours to complete. The views really were pretty amazing, and it made for a nice end to our trip.