Hermit's Cave

vftt.org

Help Support vftt.org:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Joined
Jan 15, 2013
Messages
151
Reaction score
19
Location
Vernon, Conn.
On Sunday the 14th Maure and I hiked to Hermit's Cave in Erving, Mass., mostly on the MM Trail. The hardest part of the hike was maybe finding the trailhead. We went to the wrong one at first, thinking that the trailhead for the MM Trail north of Rte. 2 was on Rte. 2, and then had a flat tire there, but eventually found the right one. To get to the right trailhead go on Holmes Ave. (unsigned I think but across from Bridge St.), turn left on Wells Rd. and right on Cross St.

I had hiked this section of the MM before, back in 2008, with Silent Cal and others, but not gone to Hermit's Cave. For this trip the trail was mostly snow/ice free, and we barebooted the whole way, but there were enough snow and ice patches around that we had to be careful of where we stepped. The only fall, though, was at the end on the road within sight of the car.

This section of the MM Trail starts out by going steeply up paralleling Briggs Brook Falls. Then it goes mostly flat for a while paralleling the retaining wall for Northfield Mtn. Reservoir. Then we left the MM and took the blue blazed spur trail down to Hermit's Cave. Hermit's Cave is at the bottom of a cliff which the MM goes along the top of and the spur path along the bottom of. Maure had been there years before from the other direction.

We took a long break at Hermit's Cave and then retraced our steps back up to the MM. Instead of heading straight back, though, we continued north to check out the "overlook" promised by a sign. It was, as I suspected, the overlook looking out over Miller's River I remembered from my last time there. The we turned around and hiked back to our start. It got dark during this and we finished our hike by headlamps.

The MM (and the HC spur) was very will marked, so we didn't have any trouble following it, until the very end, when we realized we hadn't seen a blaze in a while, and then popped out on a road, but not the road we wanted. We weren't sure where we were, and started walking down the road, when we decided to check the GPS on my phone to make sure we weren't walking in the wrong direction. It turned out we were about a tenth of a mile from the car.

Here are the pictures.

--

Cumulus

NE111 in my 50s: 115/115 (67/67, 46/46, 2/2)
NE111 in my 60s: 56/115 (44/67, 11/46, 1/2)
NEFF: 50/50; Cat35: 39/39; WNH4K: 40/48; NEHH 89/100
LT NB 2009; CT NB 2017

"I don't much care where [I get to] --" said Alice, "-- so long as I get somewhere," ...
"Oh, you're sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough."
- Lewis Carroll
 
Top