Mighty Mount

Up and Away

Saturday afternoon involved scarfing down a quick reheated hamburger, hastily stuffing a backpack with water bottles, binoculars, some field guide books, and rounding up my two adventure-hungry associates and a miniature pinscher to lead the way.

We were off to conquer Mt. Norwottuck, and to discover the fabled "Horse Caves" of local legend.

The Trail entrance begins at "The Notch", on Rte. 116, so called because the road goes over a low pass, or 'notch' through the Holyoke Range. There's plenty of parking and a visitor center here.

The beginning of the trail to Bare Mt. and, continuing on, The Seven Sisters Trail, across the Holyoke Range, start across the street from this parking lot. There's also an old abandoned underground Air Force bunker under Bare mountain. Those are blogs for another day, though.

A lot of different trails converge and criss-cross here, including the Robert Frost trail and Metacomet-Monadnock, or "M & M" trail. It's a good idea to grab a free map from this box.




The trails are all well marked with paint and numbered intersection markers, and the trail maps tell you what colors are for what trails.

Also, the M&M trail, which goes from the Connecticut border to Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire are marked with these markers. This section of the M&M is the main trail we follow to the top of the mountain.


The trail starts easy enough, we walk along a quarry road for the first section of the hike and cross paths with an old mountain couple and their brood, making their way down the hill.

From there the trail turns into a "trail" and starts to head up at a steeper angle.

The trail climbed steadily for most of the hike and, some of us being in worse shape than others, we had to pause in a couple places until I stopped gasping for air. The foliage was still very green, but in one section there were wide swathes of these dead plants with weird burn-hole looking marks on them. Acid rain? Disease? Don't know, I thought as I looked at them, hunched over, panting, the sweat stinging my eyes and dripping off my nose.

I finally got myself together, walked through the gauntlet of mocking, smug smiles and 'old man' jokes, and moved on. Getting closer to the top, the mountain teased us with a few false peaks, only followed with small dips and then onto more false peaks.

Finally, we reached the top and were rewarded with this great view of Amherst, Hadley and beyond.

At 1106 feet, Norwottuck is among the highest peaks on the Holyoke Range.

There were a number of people arriving or departing the rocky peak. A lot of people up here on a beautiful day like today.

Close by, on the eastern side of the peak, there is a rocky ledge with a great view of Rattlesnake Knob, Long Mountain and Belchertown in the distance. Far on a hilltop you can see the stone Lookout Tower at Quabbin Resevoir.

We paused and enjoyed the hard won view, then started downhill around the rocky north side of the mountain towards the "Horse Caves".

The North Face

The rocks and ledges got progressively bigger until we reached the 'caves'.

I'm impressed every time I see them, one of those things where I think, wow, something this cool this close to home. It's not hard to imagine this was a place the Native Americans used for shelter or religious ceremony.

I don't know if it's true, but I heard a legend that Daniel Shays hid out here with his fugitives after their failed tax protest on the Springfield Armory grounds.

From here it was relatively easy hiking around the north side of the mountain and back to the parking area along the Robert Frost trail. The entire hike, stops and all, took us about three hours.