The hike is a loop 5 miles long that goes up the Honey Hollow Trail, climbing about 1000 feet of elevation, to the junction with the Honey Hollow Road, and then down the road and return to the cars. On the hike we always look for ferns, wildflowers, birds, and anything else the participants can identify.
This year, we had a fine spring day, temperatures in the 50s, and 7 hikers. Scott Springer, Jack Lutz, Solveig Overby, Cathy Tilley, Cathy McIsaac, and Sheri Larsen joined trip organizer Rich Larsen for the walk. The only problem was that the weatherman had not heard about spring before this day – so the ground still had a lot of snow in spots, and on the trail up the only things we could observe were the places where various plants would be at some later date. But, we had a good walk, with a few diversions around downed trees from the winter’s various windstorms.
On the way down the road, we found the first flowers – Coltsfoot (is a group Coltsfeet?). Among ferns, we had Christmas Ferns and Scouring Rush – a fern-relative – but all the Royals, Ostriches, Cinnamons, etc were still waiting to make an appearance. Birds were limited to few sparrows, crows, robins and chickadees. Other than trees, nature was pretty sparse. We had a good walk, at a fairly leisurely pace, taking 3 hours for the loop.