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Downtown Temple,NH

Friday, April 25, 2008

Seven Sisters Trail Race

Seven Sisters in next for me on the race calender. This will be the first time running this event. I've talked to a couple of friends and read a bunch of race reports on the web and they all seem to be in agreement on this race: probably the hardest trail race in New England. Now that's the kind of description that gets me excited about a race!
Seven Sisters is an out and back 12 mile race along the ridge line of the Mt. Holyoke range in Amherst, MA. Starting at the Notch Visitor Center it follows the Seven Sisters Trail (part of the longer Metacomet-Monadnock Trail) over Bare Mt, Hitchcock Mt and eventually Holyoke Mt before turning around and repeating the trail back to the finish. I'm still not clear what the reference to Seven Sisters actual is but I believe it has something to do with the seven peaks (hills, mountains, etc) you go up and down along the ridge.
The race states on their website: "Extremely hilly with 3,700 feet of climb consisting of many steep hills with hazardous footing in places due to the many sharp basalt rocks the comprise the elevated ridge of Mt. Holyoke".
Looking forward to this one on May 4th.