Some Middlesex Fells info

The park is over 2500 acres, and contains water supply resources for both
Winchester and the MWRA.  Access around the three Winchester ones is unclear;
on paper their surrounding land is "restricted" but in practice is not.
Basically as long as people behave and keep their dogs and themselves out of
the water, the town doesn't appear to care about them walking inside the
"grey area".  Legitimate and well-utilized trails do pass through it.

Several town boundaries intersect within the Fells, and there a few of the
old "boundary stones" which are fun to find.  Much of the infrastructure in
the Fells [and other parks] was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation
Corps, the government effort to put lots of unemployed young men to work during
the Depression.

Doug Heath does a historical hike of the Virginia Wood area once or twice
a year, and describes the rich history of the Haywardville industry town
and mills and factories that used to exist there in the mid 1800s.  Join one
of these if you can; they fill up quickly.  Kyle McGrath also does a tour
of the old "90MM" air-defense site in the southwestern Lawrence Woods area.

The full Skyline loop (white blazes) is somewhere shy of 8 miles.  The
Reservoir trail loop (orange) is about 6 miles.  The Cross Fells trail (blue)
runs all the way from the west edge to the east.  Rock Circuit trail (also
white, in the eastern section) is somewhat less than 4 miles, but goes over
all the BIG rocks!  The white-blazed trails are generally the most rugged
and strenuous.

The Bear Hill tower remains closed due to safety concerns; nobody seems to
know if there are plans to restore it.




About Hobbit

I've been a barefooter most of my adult (?) life, but started taking it
seriously into the woods in 2016 or so.  That notably improved my feet even
more!  Pre-Covid, there was an "Eastern Mass. barefoot hikers" Meetup group
with around 800 members, most of which simply lurked and didn't come out for
any hikes, but there were a few good outings.  The group shut down during the
pandemic; I tried to keep it going as a google-group email list, but we lost
most of the membership since they never migrated.

In subfreezing weather I use my "magic socks" as what amounts to foot mittens.
My mom knitted them out of heavy *nylon* yarn years ago, so they're very tough,
and provide just enough insulation to avoid frostbite even on the coldest days.
The only surface they're less effective on is ice-melter slush, which can
remain liquid at subfreezing temps and is often flat-out corrosive, and the
socks are not at all waterproof.  Otherwise, the grip on snow and ice is
surprisingly good!

My GPS app of choice is OSMand, meaning "Open Streetmap for Android".  Open
Streetmap itself, openstreetmap.org, is an open-source mapping effort to
basically compete with Google Maps and contain more useful detail.  The app
can be found at osmand.net or f-droid.com; it and the state-by-state map data
files are all free to download.  They also appear to have an Apple-device
version now.  Like any complex app it takes a bit of getting used to, and
there are quite a few essential settings.

If you're interested in possibly becoming a hike leader yourself, talk to me!
I'm trying working with the Friends to try and put together a park-specific
leader handbook of some sort.  You can view some route examples in my ongoing
page of previous hikes at outbarefoot.org.

My "home park" is Harold Parker, up in Andover / North Andover, where I'm
out with its own Friends group every Wednesday morning.  Their website is
friendsofharoldparker.org, and there's a link near the bottom entitled
"Wednesday walks" to join its mailing list.  Starting location varies around
the park, which gets posted on the web page every Monday and optinally
announced with an email.

_H*   250224, 250520

[This text is also http://outbarefoot.org/stories/infosheet.html]