Return to Stone Hill

This weekend brought a stark, frigid reminder winter is not quite done with us yet. However, under gray skies and near freezing temperatures - I set out. Making my way up to the northern Berkshires, I wanted to finish up a small project at Stone Hill where last summer the brutal heat offered up a whole different envirnoment.

The bedrock of Stone Hill proper is pretty much quartzite, and on my previous visit I saw plenty of ledgy, rocky areas that bore investigation. Additionally, one local farmer reported a site know as Sunset Rock apparently upon the Hill. The broken rock along the western perimeter of the Hill yielded one very small cave among the boulders. Upon reaching a memorial stone bench, I ascended upon the summit and looked for obvious signs of a Sunset Rock where one might get a view off to the west.

Several possible sites, close to one another, presented themselves, and sans foliage, a pretty good vista could be had of the still snow covered westerly Taconic Mountain Range. To finish my exploration in the immediate region, I looked into another access trail that approached Stone Hill from the East.

Taking the scenic route home, I jogged on over western portions of the Mohawk Trail across the top of Berkshire County. My only other stop was to photograph small cave formations along the North Branch of the Hoosic River.

So once again it is time to roll out a brand new season in the outdoors. Many of the unexplored sites that need to be investigated not surprisingly lay far beyond a one day's journey from my home in the most western portion of Massachusetts. They will be dealt with on occasion and most certainly on vacations. But for this day - a return into the Connecticut River Valley. As far as western Massachusetts goes, this is the one region to first thaw out from Winter.

The goal on this day was verification of a site know to rock climbers as Sunbowl. I've had various locations tossed my way over recent years, none of which proved accurate. But finally with something more definitive in hand I set out. Coincidentally, this overlapped with my last year's goal of searching out the trails running through the old section of mountains once known as Paradise.

The walk up into the mountains and locating Sunbowl went surprisingly well. I had suspected this ledge to be one I first came cross four years earlier and I was right. Moving along, I connected with the Paradise trails, looked over a familiar craggy ledge, then traced the route of a mostly obliterated trail back to my car.

Farther north I entered the ledge system once called "Home of the Rocks" which has been explored on many previous occasions. I stopped first at the likely site of Cozy Cave, worked along past the Curve Rock (once again unsuccessfully trying to identify the site an antique photo was taken), finally setting up cameras at the Grand Porch. The overcast skies made good opportunity to finally get half decent photos of this gigantic open-faced rock formation.

I decided since I was in the immediate area of Titan's Pasture, I'd dropped in to the cave located there to see the situation on a bat located there this past year. The bat was not home so I set about exploring the talus caves formations below (and probably within) Titan's Pasture, on over to the Grand Porch. One is fairly 'worthy' at probably 40 feet of passage length. Maybe of greater importance, I recognized it as the first location I came onto some years back when I first took on the investigation of antique photos of rock formations in the area.

With this early season adventure on the wane, I traveled back out of the Valley once again, through mountain towns still showing generous amounts of snow.

Titan's Pasture and it's cave

Spring???

My, oh my! It seems that Spring has been wanting to come on in for the last week. With last weekend's arrival of the 'perfect' late winter weekend (which in reality was very spring-like) I am reminded the end of the winter sabbatical is close at hand. Only time will tell if this is for real or what some call a 'false Spring'. Per usual, the snow has left the back yards - the higher elevations still deep in Winter.

But time to start preparing once again. A few early projects in the lower elevations and the Connecticut River Valley have already been mapped out. The third week of April will hopefully culminate with a return to Rhode Island and the Narragansett Bay area.

October 2006 @ Cannon Rock

Conrad's Cave

It wasn't so long ago, in a place not too far away, that a cave once existed. Conrad's (or Conrad, as one source admonished me) Cave was one of those attractions during the Victorian Age and located in the world famous cliffs of Newport, Rhode Island. The cave's name most likely was derived from a character in the ballet "The Corsaire" (Pirate), which was first produced in 1837, and in turn, was based on the 1814 poem by Lord Byron. In the romantic story, Conrad did indeed have his cave!

But just where did Conrad have his cave at Newport remained somewhat of a mystery. An old atlas had it one block south of the famed Forty Steps. GNIS data, slightly farther to the south in an area out in front of Salve Regina University that is sometimes known as "Cave Cliff". By the early part of this decade, I was already quite familiar with sifting through historical documents, and just getting into antique images, that I decided to make a go of it. It was also around this time, Boston Grotto had a parallel interest and visited a site out in front of, and just slightly south, of the University.

History provided a couple written references (most notably: 1892) to the Cave, but mostly just a passing mention as to one of the sites on your things to see while visiting Newport. There are countless postcard views of the Cliffs and certainly there are a few showing what appear to be a recess - or recesses - within those cliffs. But which one - if any - was Conrad's? Inquiries to more modern authorities only yielded a small, near illegible blurb, about past visits to the site and how, by approximately the 1940's, the trail to the cave had become too dangerous to traverse.

Slowly, over the last couple years, a few clues began to trickle forth. In what was the earliest recorded reference to date that I've found, was the mention of Conrad's in the immediate vicinity of Ellison's Rock. The source was a set of pen and ink drawings done of the Newport area and published in 1848. It was a much easier task to locate Ellison's as the famed Forty Steps makes it's descent to this rock. Another modern day source surface through an eBay dealer selling a postcard view looking out (south) from the Forty Steps and (in the dealer's own words) looking out, and over, the former site of Conrad's Cave. However, the clincher came in the form of an antique piece of photography - a stereoview - showing a rocky cave entrance by lesser know Newport photographer F. Kindler, probably done during the 1860's. And the title? "Forty Steps and Conrad's Cave, Newport, R. I."

So in going back and looking over several old postcards, an entrance - or part thereof - can be seen in that section of the Newport Cliffs. In present time, at low tide, the approximate area does hold a slight shadowy section in the cliffs. The area is heavily riprapped and contains large gravel deposits. A remembrance to Conrad and his Cave.

A circa 1870 view of the Newport Cliffs

This article originally appeared in the Northeastern Caver

4/4/2021: If you haunt the internet long enough, you never can tell what may turn up! The following is a very nice depiction of the Newport Cliffs in the area just described.

Anatomy of a Profile II

The Stone Face - or Profile Rock - in more modern times.

Perhaps one of the more intensive investigations over the previous decade was that of the Stone Face on Pelham Brook in northwestern Massachusetts. It was originally brought to my attention by Matt B. over at the Stone Face Gazetteer during the early part of the decade with the arrival of a curious image in my e-mail of an old postcard. Subsequent trips to the Town of Rowe brought forth another postcard of Profile Rock also reported to be along Pelham Brook. The whole investigation was complicated in that both images bore little resemblance to one another.

Perhaps the easier part was hypothesize they were the same rock - despite the obvious difference - due to the matching backgrounds. Next came the Herculean task of finding the proverbial needle in a haystack - one rock along a very long mountain stream. Despite the enormous nature of this task alone, a likely suspect was located. Two trips to this rock alone, with numerous photographs taken, still left me wanting for a better prospect.

A renewed search was made towards the of 2008 after a night of heavy downpours. Pelham Brook is typically your normal sleepy mountain stream but on this day it had become raging torrent. Indeed, at some point in the past once such torrent took out the local bridge downstream also leaving me to wonder if the old location of Stone Face/Profile Rock was somehow affected. Despite the obstacles a second candidate in my search was found perched in the bank just alongside the torrents of water making their way through the ravine. A quick photograph taken, I climbed on out to research my find further while at home the following winter.

The winter passed and another visit to my hypothetical boulder in the Spring of '09 for another - more extensive - set of photographs still yielded nothing definitive. Finally in the waning days of 2009 a breakthrough! Careful, intensive examination, of the more recent photographs revealed several matching points of reference on both postcards. So although this was quite the chore - it has finally paid off.

Epilogue

With the arrival of snow and cold in the Berkshires of western Massachusetts, the end of another season comes to a close - at least as far as this explorer is concerned. The yearly hiatus is a chance to rest from the travels of the past year and to plan for those of the coming. Does not mean I won't be poking my nose out the door on occasion but that will be the exception rather than the rule. For those interested in continuing to see new information, I would direct you to the basic, long running (almost twelve years now), version of my website Jim's Page. An ever changing selection of images rotates through this site as opposed to the blog where a few static pictures remain on display.

And speaking of this blog, it is fairly new at less than a year old, but started as an experiment - an experiment I intend to keep on with. Earlier this year I archived past adventures into it and hope to continue on with that. Another possibility is to use it as a forum for writings other than just documenting trips. This - to some degree - could replace the assortment of web pages that once were connected with Jim's Page up until earlier this decade.

Author exiting Ladder Cave
Photo by T. Hoffman mid 1990's

The Grand Tour

An unusually wet Coon Hollow Cave entrance

One other trip I wanted to get in before the inevitable end to this year's outdoor season was a tour of a large section of karst within the central Berkshires. It is one of the more amazing pieces of geology in Massachusetts, from the speleological perspective, with a least a dozen solution formed marble caves located in a 'corridor' just over two miles long.

Taking my usual back road approach, I traveled down through the northern portions of this 'cave corridor', turning into the less inhabited woodlands, to finally come out overlooking the side of a valley. Several mountain streams drain down the sides of this valley setting up a classic cave karst scenario where waters flowing off the less soluble schists, onto marbles, eventually makes it's way underground. Not far from these 'contact zones' is often a likely site that caves might want to form. It this particular area three caves - Coon Hollow, Dolo, and Coffin Caves - are diversionary routes from the surface streams. Sometimes the surface stream beds (or sections thereof) run and sometimes can carry running water.

My first destinations were Coon Hollow and Dolo Caves where one might say they are geologically connected if not physically. They are both underground channels for the same surface stream. On this day, waters were high and normally dry sections of streambed were carrying water - right on into the cave entrances. Moving on to another section of forest, a second stream draining into the karst lands was also running water in sections not normally found and right by the entrance to Coffin Cave. Descent into the caves under these conditions would be ill advised. Somewhere within the earth the hydrological flows of the two cave systems, Coon Hollow/Dolo and Coffin, do meet and exit through a major spring - my next stop.

Waters from this spring travel a ways down through a beautiful section of wilderness and on into a geologically separate section of karst. Paralleling close to the main stream is one running underground where a small section can be accessed through Blanket Cave. Eventually a couple hundred feet farther along - much further than one can travel through the cave, the underground waters issue forth and travel somewhat alongside the main brook. Eventually a second stream coming from a slightly uphill resurgence joins the Blanket Cave stream. And even farther along the hillside a third resurgence can be located.

Some of all this 'resurged water' comes from an upland plateau of sorts - another less obvious example of karst topography. Waters coming off the shoulder of the valley highlands do eventually make their way underground upon the plateau, in the insurgence once know as Temper Hole. Beyond Temper the plateau exhibits characteristics of underground features with sunken ravines and sinkholes.Most of these features end in the area where Bill Blankey's Cave is found (whomever Bill Blankey is/was - is lost to time) preceded by newly discovered Skeleton Cave found higher on the ravine's wall.

With all caves visited and accounted for, it was only left to make my way back up and out the valley of karsts. Returning to my car I find an eager group of orange clad men pouring out of their SUV in preparation for the next day's beginning of shotgun deer hunting season. Retracing my route home by way of the woods road, I passed more streams diving into the ground providing warm memories of past excursions into the nether regions of this expansive karst.