I convinced Fred to accompany me on another night hike on Nov 29. My plan this time was to start at the end of Hillfield Road, hike to the Weetock via the “bear trail”, follow the Weetock west until we got to the old beaver dam where we would cross to the section of the trail on the other side of the beaver pond. From there, we would hike to the cut-over road at the culvert, jump to where the trail goes south again along the east side of the beaver pond, then retrace our steps on the trail we came in on, until we got to the cut-through (not part of the Weetock) that would take us up a field road, mostly east, back to where we parked.
Well, we arrived at the culvert around 22:00 (10pm) and I decided I didn’t want to be on the trail past midnight, because I needed to be home by then. So, we aborted the second part of the trail hike and returned on the road. The road hike was just over a mile and took about 15 minutes. I’m pretty sure the trail hike would have been around 2.5 miles and would have taken well over an hour; based on how long it took us to get to the culvert (about 3 miles).
I can never seem to average more than 2 miles per hour on the trail. I’m not sure if the GPS doesn’t report the full distance with all the twists and turns, or if the terrain is just such that we don’t move very fast. I can easily average 3.5 mph on the road (???).
Anyway, I didn’t take any photos, but I did record the track on my GPS, so the featured image on this entry is just a Google Earth capture with our actual track. Note that we started on one trail section and we crossed over to another section by leaving the trail and walking on the beaver dam (a very old dam that is more like a berm with large trees growing in it; it definitely doesn’t hold water anymore).
