Beaver Brook North (rescheduled from March 23)
Waltham, MA  [Google map]

1:10000

10:00 AM - Noon

10:00 AM - Noon

E-punching at this event.

    This is the debut event at Beaver Brook North, a new map in Belmont made by club member Jim Crawford. General parking is at the Elsie Turner ball field on Trapelo Road in Waltham. If that fills up, park across the street at the JFK Federal Records center.

    This land was formerly the grounds of the Metropolitan State Hospital. Most of the actual hospital buildings have been replaced by an Apartment complex in the north part of the map. The eastern edge of the map is Beaver Brook, which winds its way downstream to our NEOC map of Historic Beaver Brook Reservation, about a half kilometer south of this map. The southwestern and northerneastern edges of the map are Trapelo Rd and Concord Ave respectively. The flat land in the middle of the map used to be farmland with several canals built for irrigation. Now these fields are big open uncrossable swamps. There are several old ruins, and many old overgrown roads that can be discerned now by crumbling stone walls on either side. A cemetery with over 100 unmarked graves sits on an old carriage road at the base of the one large hill on the map. Hidden near the cemetery are some bike trails with dirt jumps.

   The map is about the size of our Prospect Hill map, but with the apartments and swamps, only half of the area is useable woods. Originally, the courses were designed to be run in March when the woods were fairly open, but with the warm weather of the past 2 weeks the forest has started to close. Many of the dark green areas are already impenetrable with briars. I would not recommend venturing into the dark green unless you can clearly see a way through the vegetation. The courses are on the short side, with the advanced courses having many short legs to avoid long easy trail runs.