You're not supposed to be here
The thrill of hikes that make you feel like you're trespassing
If you’ve been hiking anytime since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, then you know trails in New England are crowded. To hike the Franconia Ridge on a weekend, you’ll need to arrive at the Mount Lafayette parking area before sunrise or budget extra time for catching the trailhead shuttle bus from another parking lot further along I-93. Personally, I see this hassle as part of an overall good thing—more people are embracing the joy of hiking!—but something does get lost amid the hiking boom: that sensation of being out on a ramble somewhere leafy or rocky, and realizing that you’re out of your element and on your own. This can feel spooky but with the right planning and precautions, it can be a thrilling and even gratifying hiking experience.
Of course, you can still experience this by driving deep into the boondocks of New England and picking up a forgotten hike like the Peabody Brook Trail to Giant Falls: an old passage that’s been overtaken by grass, brambles, and ticks, which are active well into fall. (Remember, you’ve got roughly 24 hours to spot the little buggers and pluck them off before Lyme becomes a major concern.) But lately, inspired by some recent Boston Globe stories about the history of jerk-ass homeowners buying up beaches and other outdoor venues that should be accessible to the public, I’ve been embracing a different kind of hiking experience that offers that sensation of being someplace you shouldn’t. Like Isla Sorna, the Costa Rican island where they stuck all the superfluous dinosaurs in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The one you weren’t supposed to visit.
I’m talking about hikes that make you feel like you’re trespassing.
Ever gone for a borderline bushwhack only to end up at the periphery of some McMansion’s palatial backyard? Or in the middle of an urban industrial zone or construction site with heavy equipment that makes the pavement vibrate? This is the kind of hike I’ve been seeking out lately. A hike that takes you to the very edge of breaking-and-entering, while ultimately sparing you from the legal ramifications of truly trespassing. Over the last few years—especially while researching and writing Moon New England Hiking—I’ve stumbled across some of these hikes by accident, when seeking more traditionally bucolic stuff like loon ponds and Krummholz-y ridge paths. (We’ll get to some of those hikes later, toward the end of the newsletter.)
But two weeks ago, actively searching for a trespass experience in the backcountry, I found something bizarre in Florida...Massachusetts.
You start by driving the Mohawk Trail (Route 2), the scenic byway that slowly climbs from the Pioneer Valley into Berkshires, near the northern border of Mass. But midway along the route, after passing a sign that says “Welcome to Florida” you pull a hard turn onto Whitcomb Hill Road and make a steep descent into a verdant and very quiet valley through which the Deerfield River flows. Your initial destination is an unsigned gravel lot beside a set of active railroad tracks. Beyond here, 10-20 minutes by foot into the surrounding forest, you’ll find Twin Cascades: a gushing double bill of plunge waterfalls, 60 and 80 feet tall, respectively.
These waterfalls could compete with the more heavily-visited Bash Bish Falls, the tallest cascade in Massachusetts. But Bash Bish Falls isn’t exactly in an easy-to-reach place either. It’s practically in New York, tucked away in the southwestern limits of the Commonwealth. So why are the Twin Cascades of Florida, Mass. so overlooked?
My guess? Three words: the Hoosac Tunnel.
To reach the rugged, unmaintained trail to the falls, you have to walk along the railroad tracks, right up to the gaping black maw of an ancient train tunnel that burrows through the mountains. This is the Hoosac Tunnel. It burrows through mountains, running from the Twin Cascades parking area in Florida to nearby North Adams. Freight trains still use it (as of 2020, eight of them rumbled through the tunnel each day.) And the tunnel has something of a macabre history. Since construction on the tunnel began in 1851, nearly 200 construction workers have been killed by nitroglycerin explosions and flooding within the tunnel. As recently as February of 2020, a portion of the Hoosac Tunnel’s western section collapsed. Freight trains detoured through Vermont until the tunnel was fully repaired and reopened two months later.
All of which is to say that the Hoosac Tunnel is a fearsome place, with a dark history written in stone and blood. In fact, the word “Hoosac” is Algonquian for “place of stones” and as I walked along the tracks toward the tunnel, searching the surrounding woods for something resembling a waterfall trail, I couldn’t help but feel that I was approaching a portal to hell: to the bowels of the world. It wasn’t just the size and incredible blackness of the tunnel entrance—it was the acrid stench that wafted from the tunnel, like nothing that had ever tickled my nostrils before. The odor seemed both earthly and industrial. It made me hasten my pace.
The other eerie thing about approaching the Hoosac Tunnel entrance is the occasional breath of dank air that you’ll feel wafting out of the tunnel. Is this air being moved by an oncoming train whose lights will soon materialize from the blackness, like the eyes of a giant beast you’ve somehow awoken with the crunch of your hiking boots on the gravel around the train tracks? The margins around the track are wide enough that you don’t have to walk right next to the railroad ties, but after feeling this sudden current of air, I began to get anxious. I was barely 10 feet away from the tunnel entrance at this point. Was this really the trailhead for Twin Cascades?
Finally, I saw it. A thin ribbon of packed dirt to the right of the Hoosac Tunnel entrance, leading uphill through some shrub, past a stony stream that spilled into a culvert. An escape route from the white knuckle experience of approaching the tunnel. Onward to the Twin Cascades! I don’t know if I’ve ever ascended a bushy and beat-up trail with such elation. The fact that there was no sign made the discovery of the trail all the more fulfilling. But just a few feet into the cover of the deciduous forest, another barrier revealed itself. I found myself standing before a five foot-tall stone wall, with no option but to flop over it and hope that the trail continued on the other side. I just turned 33 and while I’d like to think that my weekly fitness regimen is fairly robust, I was relieved to be scaling the wall in solitude. Having an audience would have been humiliating. Having an audience with smartphones and TikTok habits could have gravely compromised my brand as a semi-capable outdoorsman.
Luckily, the drop on the other side of the stone wall was only two feet, and from there, it’s a quick quarter mile hike up to the main waterfalls (left unpictured so you can see them for yourself.) But—to paraphrase a line from Michael Mann’s L.A. crime masterpiece, Heat—on this hike, the action is the juice. And the action of hiking to Twin Cascades is passing through two places that feel decidedly unwelcoming to hikers. The Hoosac Tracks and tunnel entrance, and that weird stone wall. Even the shelf-like trail up the falls is eroded enough in paces that you have to step gingerly at times. The visual glory of the cascades is augmented by the fact that to reach them, you’ve traversed an environment in which hikers may feel like the endangered species.
Twin Cascades is a rather intense example of a trespass-flavored hike, but thankfully, New England offers several variations of this outdoor experience. Depending on your location and your comfort level with beguiling environs, you might also consider the following hikes:
The Provincetown Dunes (Provincetown, Massachusetts) The ancient “dune shacks” near Provincetown are part of Cape Cod lore, but not many people actually take the effort to reach them by foot. Doing this requires a calve-sculpting journey into the land of sand, and along the way to the shacks (which have housed poets and artists) you’ll pass through little pockets of forest that have somehow taken root amid the dunes. It’s one of the most alien environments one could find in New England and the shacks themselves have an otherworldly aura to them.
Devil’s Den mountain (Alton, New Hampshire) When a mountaintop resembles a pyre that human sacrifices would be conducted upon, you know you’re getting into uncanny valley territory. But that’s not the creepiest thing about Devil’s Den mountain. Along the slopes of this modest peak in Southern NH, there’s a slit cave accessible by boulder scrambling and it’s long rumored to contain a demonic presence, capable of pulping inquisitive hikers. (Visitors have reported hissing sounds echoing from within.) Hiking here feels like visiting Satan’s garden.
Grand Falls (Eustis, Maine) Inland Maine is the timber capital of New England and the woods up here contain labyrinths of old logging roads that could easily take out the undercarriage of a Prius. One of the most stunning and massive waterfalls in the state—Grand Falls—is accessible by braving one of these dirt roads for nearly 14 miles, through a landscape of dense boreal forest and streams. The good news, however, is that you don’t need a truck to bypass Lower Enchanted Road to the falls trailhead. This past week, I managed to bypass the thing with my Honda Fit and other than dodging a few large rocks, I found the road intimidating but smooth.
THE RUNDOWN
Twin Cascades (click this link for trailhead/parking coordinates)
Distance: 0.3-ish miles
Elevation gain: 100-200 feet
Parking pass required? No
Earlier, I mentioned a Boston Globe story about jerk-ass homeowners blocking people from using beaches. This reported piece by Billy Baker is an illuminating dive into Massachusetts’ unbelievably regressive beach laws. Mass is one of the only states in the nation where people can own an entire beach (the other state in which you can do this is Maine.) Most states limit beach ownership to the high tide line, but not Massachusetts. This, in addition to beach parking fees and resident-only parking restrictions, can make it really difficult to spend a day at the beach: a grim reality that undermines the notion of Massachusetts as a liberal state.
But we’re living in a new era with heightened awareness of outdoor gatekeeping and the imperative to fight it. To that effect, Massachusetts State Senator Julian Cyr and State Representative Dylan Fernandes (both from Cape Cod and the Islands) have proposed a bill that would open up the intertidal zones of privately owned beaches for public recreation. Politicians of eras past have tried to do this, such as Billy Bulger, but things are different now. More people are venturing outdoors and starting to grasp how structural wealth inequality can determine where most of us peons are allowed to recreate outdoors.And that’s what gives me hope for the passage of this bill.
People need and want more recreation spaces. At a certain point, that desire could overcome fealty to private ownership.