It wasn’t looking too fly for another trek to New Hampshire so decided this weekend to stay local and explore another treasure out in Western MA less than 1 hour from me.
The destination was Leominster and plan was to take on the Monoosnoc Ridge Trail.
It is technically a 9 mile point to point trail but given that I came by myself, decided to do a portion of it out and back starting from West St
The thing you will immediately see as you start the trail is a culvert covered with graffiti going underneath Route 2:
It only starts getting real after you pass the water tower. It will be no more plowed roads and terrain consists of stretches of slick glazed ice sheets so you’ll have to strap on to the microspikes this point onwards.
The immediate vista and perhaps best view of the entire trail comes up pretty quickly. They call it “K Mart Lookout” this refers to a shopping center filled with chain restaurants from the overlook. We all know Kmart went into Chapter 11 and now its former location is an abandoned building 👻
After this its just going along the ridge and at some point I go over N Monoosnoc Hill standing at 979'. There is also S Monoosnoc Hill at 1156' in the vicinity but did not cross it as part of my trail.
At some point the trail winds through rolling trail sandwiched between old stone walls and foundations. It was remnants of a farming community known as Notown.
Here is a clip of a hiker giving a good overview of it. At some point I start seeing power lines overhead and at that point I am close to Elm St.
Though the trail continues onwards around a golf course, along a pond and ultimately at an orchard farm, I decided to turn around as a mileage of 7.6 miles was going to be enough for me today.
Maybe I’ll return again in the Fall and do the entire trail, at least I’ll be rewarded with some apple picking. As for the rest of day decided to explore some post industrial city’s downtown but I’ll leave that for another posting so stay tuned for that!!
