Thirty Two Hours on the Mohawk-Appalachian Loop

I tried to keep my pack streamlined with only the essentials, but I needed something to pass the long night I’d be spending alone on the Mohawk Trail. Besides, how much could a paperback copy of Treasure Island weigh?
The resident mice at the Pine Knoll lean-to sat in the rafters, as if reading over my shoulders, while my headlamp burned into the pages of the greatest adventure story of all time. I had just started the book and was at the part where Dr. Livesey and the squire are trying to make sense out of Flint’s cryptic map: ". . .The bar silver is in the north cache; you can find it by the trend of the east hummock, ten fathoms south of the black crag with the face on it."
It reminded me of the nine year-old copy of the Connecticut Walk Book I had been using all day to get here. The directions were clear enough, but the lashes on my shins and the deer tick I found embedded between my fingers made it even clearer just how quickly nature can swallow up a trail when it’s hardly ever used.
The Mohawk is a twenty four-mile blue-blazed trail that was once part of the Appalachian’s original route through Connecticut. Today, the Mohawk connects with the current Appalachian near Cornwall Bridge in the south and at Falls Village in the north, together creating the thirty seven-mile loop I had set out to complete with just one night of camping.
"This is a different world," said the man at the gas station at Cornwall Bridge when I asked if my truck would be safe at the trail head overnight. I don’t know what he was comparing "this" to, but I knew he was right. A hiker in the northwest corner of Connecticut is waved to by motorists as if he were a familiar neighbor, whereas the same backpacker might be seen as a homicidal drifter anywhere else in the state. So I set off into this different world, believing that if I got hurt- if I failed to close this giant loop for any reason at all- I would somehow find a way back home.
My truck was twenty miles away now, and while the hard floor of the lean-to felt good on my sore back, I knew that the next day’s seventeen mile-hike would be my biggest challenge, but not because the terrain would be any harder.
In fact, I found the Mohawk’s terrain to be much more challenging than that of the loop’s thirteen southbound miles on the Appalachian. The Mohawk Trail alone brings you up and over seven Berkshire peaks that are over one thousand feet in elevation, two of which are over sixteen hundred feet.
For the most part, I maintained a two-mile an hour pace and made a point of resting at the top of each hour, even if I didn’t need it. These five-minute breaks were just enough for recovery, but not so long to cool down and stiffen up.
That is, until I chanced across one of the most elusive animals in the state, stalling my trip for nearly twenty minutes.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about my desire to see a black bear in the wild, but kept to myself my even stronger wishes to see a bobcat, figuring such a sighting was a little less likely. Six hours into the hike, though, I spotted an animal about twice the size of my own house cat, stalking something in a grassy field near Route 43 in Cornwall. I straddled an old stone wall that was lined with "No Trespassing" signs and snapped a few photos of the predator, about fifty yards away. When I heard a car approaching, I hopped off the wall which frightened the cat to the edge of the woods where it sat waiting for me to leave.
When I got home, I e-mailed my grainy photos (see post below) to the Department of Environmental Protection. I quickly received a response from Paul Rego, a wildlife biologist with the State who confirmed that it was indeed a bobcat. Rego, who specializes in furbearing animals, said that most of the bobcat sightings reported to the DEP come from Connecticut’s northwest corner.
What had proven to be even more elusive on the Mohawk, however, were hikers themselves. In twenty four miles, I only came across one young couple on a short day hike, the husband carrying their infant on his back.
Early on my second day, though, after struggling up and over the 1,230-foot Barrack Mountain, I connected with the Appalachian Trail and I was no longer alone. Heading south now, I continuously ran into northbound through hikers, who, crossing into New England here in mid-August, will happily find themselves in Maine at the beginning of the fall foliage.
The heavy traffic of the Appalachian is also what made its terrain a sight for sore legs. While the Mohawk Trail is often overgrown, rocky, and at times ambiguously marked, the Appalachian’s path is distinct, sometimes even smooth, and seemed like it would be a nice homestretch back to my truck.
I was still in the Berkshires, though; my last five miles were punishing. But late in the afternoon I finally crested Breadloaf Mountain, the 1,050-foot peak where the Appalachian reconnected me with the Mohawk, which I followed for one more mile to close the loop at my truck, safe and sound, right where I left it thirty two hours earlier.
The Mohawk-Appalachian Loop, however, doesn’t need to be rushed. There are enough campsites and water sources to map out a two or three-night trip. You wouldn’t want to rush it either, because while I certainly made some great finds along the way, I’m sure that if you take your time, there’s a much larger cache of treasure waiting for you in our northwest woods.