Fred and I went for a night hike on the south section of the Weetock on February 19. We got started around 18:50 and we finished around 22:00. We went in at the southern terminus of the trail off of Hillfield Rd. We cut off a loop of the trail and more or less made a beeline for the hollow tree. We hung out there for a while. It was just a nice night to be in the woods. There was a decent amount of moonlight and it was around 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit (7-10C).
From the hollow tree, I convinced Fred that we should go off trail on a compass heading. I planned on reconnecting with the trail near the hidden valley, but I picked the wrong compass heading. We went south-east, which turned out to be the only direction we could have gone to avoid hitting the trail or crossing any familiar landmarks until we were almost to Hunters Creek.
It was interesting. I got to explore an area that I’ve been wanting to explore, although exploring at night isn’t as revealing as doing it in daylight. I’ll probably have to return to that section of the forest in the daytime.
We reconnected with the Weetock, continued down to Hunters Creek and looped back on the trail. We short circuited the trail, again, so we could hike a different section of the trail that would bring us to the connector that would, in turn, bring us out on Hillfield Rd, about 1/4 mile south of where we parked. Based on the GPS track and some estimating, it looks like we hiked 4.5 miles. That isn’t much for 3 hours, but we did make a few stops and we definitely weren’t pushing.
(The photo is an old one I took, looking over Great Lake at night)
