Taconic Crest Trail thru-hike, MA/VT/NY, 7/1 - 7/3/19

Link to the full album of photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/3aWzZky1q13RWbxV6

After eyeing this trail for years (and making one set of plans to thru-hike it with a friend that fell through last minute about 6 or 7 years ago), I finally found myself with 3 consecutive days off, a decent weather forecast, and a willingness to give thru-hiking the Taconic Crest Trail in one go a shot. This is a little known trail that traverses 37 miles of the Taconic Mountain Range, starting in Massachusetts and passing northwards through portions of that same state as well as New York and a tiny little bit of Vermont all the way to the far end of the trail.

This was a trip that took some careful planning, primarily due to the lack of established (and to some extent, legal) camping options along the trail. My itinerary ended up being as follows:

• Day 1: Start at the southern terminus (Route 20), and hike north to the Berry Pond campground, where I camped for night #1.
• Day 2: Hike from Berry Pond north to the junction with the Mattison Hollow Trail, on which I detoured about a mile or so off the TCT into Berlin State Forest to find a primitive campsite near Kronk Brook.
• Day 3: Climb back up to the TCT and continue northward all the way to the northern terminus at Route 346.

This itinerary split my trip into roughly a 7 mile day followed by two approximately 15 mile days. It was still a somewhat ambitious itinerary (there is approximately 8,000 feet of elevation gain along the full length of the TCT), but I nevertheless found it to be doable without too much difficulty with early starts each day and a steady pace with minimal lengthy breaks along the way.

The first night's campsite, Berry Pond, is actually a car camping campground in MA's Pittsfield State Forest. It's billed as a "primitive campground" for those seeking a little bit more primitive of an experience than the typical campground atmosphere, and indeed, there is no water and the toilets are all essentially pit privies. There is also a fee to camp there and reservations are often necessary through ReserveAmerica. While it does leave a bit to be desired for those use to backcountry camping, Berry Pond is nevertheless the only legal camping option along the southern-most portion of the trail.

Further north, primtive camping is allowed on most of the stretches of the trail in NY in accordance with the DEC's "150 foot rule," as much of the TCT is on state forest land in NY. However, the reality is that the TCT is primarily a ridge line trail- and water sources, much less established campsites, are just about nonexistent. I selected Mattison Hollow as my destination for night #2 based on a prior recon trip into Berlin State Forest to verify that there was good terrain in the area to facilitate a primitive campsite. Camping in Mattison Hollow did necessitate dropping pretty far down off the ridge (and a significant climb back up to the ridge the next morning), but it was a worthwhile price to pay to be able to camp near a reliable water source.

Overall, this is an "OK" trail. It's a trail that I want to really like (and be able to recommend), but it has a few issues that prevent me from doing so. The aforementioned lack of feasible camping options is one such issue- MA's Department of Environmental Protection would be wise to designate 1 or 2 backcountry tenting areas along portions of the trail on state land in MA, even if it means construction side trails off the ridge to access reliable water sources. Similar backcountry tenting areas exist on other state lands in MA, so it's not like this would be anything out of the norm for how MADEP manages state lands. Similarly, the DEC would be wise to locate reliable water sources and designate a few tent sites along the NY portions of the trail that lie on DEC lands.

The second issue of note is ATV use of much of the trail. The majority of the northern two-thirds of the trail coincides with a fairly well-established ATV trail. The ATVs aren't allowed on the NY portions of the trail (as per DEC state land regulations)- but enforcement of this has been an uphill battle, to say the least (largely due to the numerous access points and the open nature of the forest with makes it difficult to physically bar ATV access). And while for the most part, the trail isn't that bad as far as ATV impacts go, there are nevertheless some stretches where the hiking is fairly unpleasant due to muddy ruts.

Some sort of solution here is necessary- even it it's accepting that the ATV use is going to continue to occur, and re-routing the TCT onto a separate route that parallels the established trail. Along the southern portion of the TCT in MA's Pittsfield State Forest, the trail parallels an actual legal ATV trail, the Taconic Skyline Trail, with few issues.

The third issue is that the scenery on the trail is kind of... lack luster. With all of the elevation gain along the trail, there is a lot of pointless-ups-and-downs (PUDs). Overlooks are few and far between. Much of the trail passes through pleasant open, fern-filled glades- and while this makes for nice hiking, it's the sort of trail where 1 mile looks more or less exactly the same as the other 36.

And so on. Pleasant enough hiking, for sure- but at the same time, this trail isn't exactly in a remote Wilderness Area, and the ridgeline of the Taconic Mountains is both prominent and in places somewhat narrow. Cutting open a few additional viewsheds at carefully selected spots along the way could improve the scenery of the trail substantially.

That being said, there are a few points of interest along the way- Berry Pond is the highest natural body of water in Massachusetts, and there's an overlook nearby where I was able to take in a spectacular sunset.

Twin Ponds was also a nice and scenic body of water along the southern stretch of the trail.

There were also decent views from Berlin Mountain, White Rocks, and Bald Mountain.

Probably the coolest spot (both literally and figuratively) along the trail was the Snow Hole- a natural depression in the ground located a few miles north of Petersburg Pass (where the TCT crosses Route 2). I'd always heard that snow lasts unusually long in the Snow Hole. I was still shocked, however, when I arrived to find no small amount of snow still remaining- in July, no less!

I think it's accurate to say that this is a trail with a lot of potential to be something much better that what it currently is. If the campsite situation, the ATVs, and the lack of scenery to make the endless ups and downs more worthwhile can all be addressed, I think that this trail would see more attention and use (especially given the trail's proximity to the Capital District). As it is, I think it's still worth hiking- but it's not something you're realistically ever going to see most hikers consider until they've largely exhausted most of the other opportunities in close by places (such as the Adirondack, Catskill, and Green Mountains)- and justifiably so.

My pipe dream: It'd be awesome to see the TCT extended both northward to meet up with the Appalachian Trail somewhere near Bennington, and southward to meet up with the South Taconic Trail. As the South Taconic Trails is already connected to the AT (by way of Mt. Frissell), this would form a roughly 200 mile backpacking loop traversing the Taconic and Berkshire Mountains across portions of CT, MA, VT, and NY. Unfortunately, lack of public lands to the north and south of the current extent of the TCT make it pretty unlikely that this will ever happen. Oh well, a hiker can dream. :)