Chapel Brook

It is the first full day of Spring.  A great day to get out for an early season hike.  We're still doing out best to avoid people, so we'll head back out west to the Pioneer Valley.

There are a couple of Trustees properties in these towns of Ashfield and Conway.  Today, we'll visit Chapel Brook.  Since it is spring, we are thinking that there won't be too much snow to contend with (like the last time I was in Ashfield), but you never know.

There are trails on both sides of the road. We decide that the one beside the brook ought to be pretty with any melting snow.

Well, the trail down to the brook is pretty much a sheet of ice. 
Let's move on to "Plan B".

It goes uphill but we can walk alongside the trail so we don't slip so much.

It's good to have the trekking poles for stability on the trail.
We pass this very impressive rock face...

... as the trail winds to the left around it and fallen trees up the hill.

At the top, there's a lookout over the valley.  We take a short break.

The view to the west is terrific.

You can see there's still a fair amount of snow in the woods. 
And it's also quite a drop just beyond the rock ledge in the foreground.

It turns out we can actually make a loop on the trail by descending a pretty steep set of stairs and rocks.  It came out just to the right of the "impressive rock face" we passed earlier.  We didn't even notice the up-trail when we were there, but it was probably easier to come down the way we did.

All told, it wasn't that long a hike.  While we only hiked 0.83 miles, we did climb 249 feet for those great views.

On the way back to the highway, we stopped at Pekarski's sausage store in South Deerfield and picked up some great kielbasa for the upcoming Easter holiday.  Highly recommended!