The 7 Sisters – a group of seven sequential summits along a ridge in South Hadley – has been familiar ground since I was a kid, with many days hiking various sections over the past 20 years. In particular, I’ve been up the trails leading to Bare Mountain and Mount Skinner on either side of the ridge more times than I can count, at least a couple dozen outings up each.
This summer I’m hoping to day hike the Presidential Traverse for my 30th birthday, something that’s been a goal on the back burner for years now. I’m at a place in my life where I need something to aim for and look forward to.
The Presi Traverse is long and challenging, with 20 miles serving 9000 feet of elevation. I’m a relatively fit person, but will certainly still need to prep for an outing like that! When I mapped out the 7 Sisters, I found that the hike (out and back) is almost exactly half of both the distance and elevation, making it a good trail to give me a benchmark now and later test my readiness by doing the hike twice back-to-back.
With no snow on the ground yet, it didn’t take too much convincing to get Jamison and Chris out on the trail with me in the subfreezing temps of January’s first weekend. In good company, we started up Bare Mountain and covered distance quickly while chatting and joking and laughing.
We eventually made it to the Skinner side of the trail and were greeted by gusts strong enough to blow us over. We grabbed a quick photo for the mems and sheltered under the summit house to replenish some calories.
Breaks like this are always a balancing act of resting your body and replenishing stores of energy while not letting muscles get too cool and calling it quits for the day, and the frigid temps and lack of sunshine made this even more challenging. We didn’t wait for too long before heading back in the direction of the car.
About midway back, the effort of the day started to catch up with our legs. We weren’t in bad shape (or at least, not yet), but we likely all could’ve used some more calories and water and bigger muscles. A very easy consensus was reached to head down the hill to Atkin’s for lunch after our hike. Unfortunately we made the plans with an hour still to go and I really wanted to be at most five minutes away from cider donuts and coffee.
We kept moving, with tired legs not slowing down pace or conversation. We had almost bailed on our plans for the day after waking up to high temps of 20F, but honestly we all kept plenty warm and had a nice time out on the trail. We made plans to hike and adventure more together as warmer weather slowly greets New England in the coming weeks and months. As pleasant and fun as our day was, we were all happy to make it to the end of our hike and on to lunch. Here’s to more spontaneous adventures and pushing boundaries alongside good friends.
