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Here is the south entrance to the park on Rockwell Road in Lanesborough. The stone pillars at the entrance are new, as
is the sign. (All photos Mark E. Rondeau) ———
Here is a place on Notch Road on Mount Fitch where the road had been crumbling away for years. This is the before photo, taken in the summer of 2006. The toppled over concrete cylinders at left here were the old guardrails, now newly supplanted by the reinforced wooden ones you can see at right.
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Throughout the park they have added crosswalks for hikers and signs to alert drivers to them. They have also put grooves in the roads at such places to slow drivers down.
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On the summit, Bascom Lodge will be renovated and will reopen July 4 with new management, according to this sign on the door of the lodge. Otherwise, the summit is pretty much the same as it was in 2006, and when I hiked to the top in 2007. The only other significant change at the summit is a new digital TV attenna. For an article about Williams College professor John Bascom, after whom the lodge was named, see link at the bottom of this page.
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Here's view from the new overlook, out toward New Ashford in the valley.
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From the north entrance to the park in North Adams, here is a view as you head up Notch Road. I took this one from my
car on May 29, 2009, when many of these photos were taken. Others were taken during hikes in the fall of 2008. ———
Here's a photo taken from roughly the same spot after completion of the project. They managed this by blowing away the
rock bank on the east side of the road and shifting the road east. They also built a rugged-looking reinforcement wall on
the mountainside below the wall. This is a great place to stop, because you have a dramatic view of the steep north face of
Greylock to the southwest, South Williamstown to the west and the Taconic mountain range as it stretches into Vermont to the
northwest. Both of these photos are looking northwest. When I walked up the road to this point on Easter Day 2009, I was stunned
by what a good job they had done. ———
Improving drainage was a major part of the work, such as this culvert under Rockwell Road I photographed last fall near Rounds Rock.
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At the place on Rockwell Road where it curves sharply near the intersection with the dirt road to the campground, I noticed this new small wall up near the western trailhead of the CCC Dynamite Trail on the other side of the road. It turned out to be a newly constructed overlook complete with a picnic table in it. A fine addition!
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From the south of the newly improved Jones' Nose parking lot off Rockwell Road is a sign for the new trail added while the access roads were closed, the Woodason Spring Trail, which you can hike from here south 4 miles to the Visitors Center in Lanesborough. (You have to hook onto another trail about a mile from the center). For an account of this trail, see my page Two Great Hikes under Greylock Project on this site.
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