In the depression, the trail winds between hills of twisted lava and consolidated agglomerate. When the trees are leafed out and the surrounding hills concealed, it is easy to imagine oneself on the slope of a Pacific volcano. The trail divides at the lowest point in the depression, and the less used fork goes north to the Bay Road at the northern base of the Range. The other fork ascends Mount Hitchcock, and at a slight elevation above the low flat it crosses from the agglomerate to the Holyoke basalt sheet.
The best lookout on the Range between the Mount Holyoke Hotel and Bare Mountain is on top of Mount Hitchcock. A side trail leads out to a promontory, from which one may peer along the face of the Range, look down upon the “Tinker” and “Little Tinker,” and gaze over the lowland which the Connecticut has excavated in the New England upland through the long course of geologic time.
The east slope of Mount Hitchcock descends steeply, and many a hasty hiker has made the trip in less time than he intended. The path drops to a flat which measures about 1,000 feet across, and in which the sandstone lying below the lava sheet is sporadically exposed. Here the thick basaltic lava has been worn away; and erosion ceases both east and west at conspicuous fracture surfaces which locally become fault planes.
Beyond this low notch the trail leads irregularly upward and eventually comes out on Bare Mountain. The top is bare indeed; even scrub oak is absent from the summit. The long south slope of the Range is clearly visible, and to the west is the Mount Holyoke Hotel where the hike started. The Mount Tom Range, with the Connecticut River at its foot, is just to the left. Due south are the towers of Mount Holyoke College and the cities of Holyoke and Springfield. If the day is clear, the tall buildings of Hartford appear in the far distance. Six hundred feet directly below, the highway goes through the Notch, and across the road is the trap quarry in Notch Mountain, which supplies the crushed stone for the local highways. The face of Notch Mountain lies north of the main line of the Range because the basalt sheet has been displaced northward between fault planes that bound the eminences on either side. The notches utilized by the highway and by the power line are due to facile erosion of the crushed rock along the fault planes. Farther to the east, Mount Norwottock rises to the greatest height in the Range, and the view from its summit is at least the equal of that from Bare Mountain. The Hadley lowland stretches northward between the Pelham Hills on the east and the Berkshire Hills on the west, and protruding above its relatively flat surface are Mount Warner, Mount Sugarloaf and Mount Toby. The Deerfield gorge trenches the western upland just west of Sugarloaf, and on the skyline is Glastenbury far off in Vermont.
Fig. 24. Diagrams showing the stages in development of topography in the vicinity of the Notch.
a. The New England peneplain stage at the Notch.
b. The incoherent rocks are removed from the lava flow.
