Today was the scheduled hike day for a guest visiting from California. She wanted something pretty, a hike around water, and only for a few hours. On the mission was Redline Guide Mike Cherim and the objective chosen was a circumnavigation of Mountain Pond in Chatham. For those who aren’t aware, Mike is the volunteer adopter/maintainer for this trail (and you can help). For him, this wasn’t just a hike but also a way to refresh the trail’s blowdown inventory in his mind — it’d been a couple months since he was there last, after all.
On trail once again, he made two discoveries: First, living up to the trail’s reputation, there were a number of new blowdowns plunked down across the trail. This started in the parking lot and really is so typical. This was the bad news. The good news was that, miraculously, somehow, all the new blowdowns could be hand-cleared or were easy step-overs or step-unders.
This was a private tour so there are no guest photos, but Mike did take these photos of his pet blowdowns.
Oh, there was some scenery to enjoy, too.
