Skyline Trail, Blue Hill, April 9, 2005

[amstony]

What a spectacular day for hiking! This hike covered the Skyline Trail in the Blue Hills Reservation, just south of Boston. After meeting up and car spotting at the Trailside Museum in Milton we drove over to Quincy, MA and left cars at the Shea Rink. At 9:40 AM we headed up the blue blazed Skyline Trail towards Rattlesnake Hill. After only a short way we could already feel the heat of the day and dumped fleece and other items into our packs.

Upon arriving at the summit of Rattlesnake Hill, we could see we would have a spectacular day, not a cloud in the sky and no haze, visibilty almost to the horizon. After a brief stop, and finding no rattlesnales... , we moved on the trail and headed towards Wampatuck Hill. Upon reaching that summit, we could see a great view of Boston! Not a cloud in the sky either.

After a brief stop it was off to the next summit, Nahonton Hill. On the way we passed the fenced in Blue Hills Reservoir, and also had to make a rather fast crossing of Chickatawbut Road........avoiding the speeding cars! We kept going and didn't stop at the summit. We then passed another fenced in area which we were told by a resident "expert" along for the hike, used to be an old Cold War missle base for Nike Zeus air defense missles! The place has bunkers and dining rooms and all! It is now used as a form of classromm and education center. We also started to see more hikers coming from the opposite direction by now.

We kept trucking along and at noon reached the best spot on the hike, (at least I think ) Bucks Hill. From here their was an utterly spectacular vista of boston and beyond, and we were almost sure we could see Mt. Monadnock (some thought it might be Pack or North Pack). Heres where I had a chance to use my new Meade 8 x 32 lightweight binoculars. We also watched an LNG tanker maneuvering through the harbor! So after a nice lunch and conversation, including meeting 2 ultra marathoners I know training for a 50 mile race by running the Skyline Trail several times , we moved out.

By now we were looking forward to Big Blue Hill. As we went along (and stretched out the 15 person group), we somehoe took a subsidiary trail off of Wolcott Hill down to the Green trail, but a short detour got us to the Skyline Trail again. Then it was up to the summit of Big Blue, which was totally overrun with kids, hikers, families, dogs.......after a lengthy break, in which we met another AMC group doing a similiar, but shorter hike. We headed towards down the Skyline Trail to the Trailside Museum parking lot.

At 3:05 we reached the parking lot. I then checked out the museum and went to see the river otters that were in their habitat.

The weather was superb, one of the best I had for hiking in a long time. Approximately 4 hours 30 minutes on the trail, 9 miles, and I am told about 2500 feet of elevation gain.