Dave’s Photo Blog

I have some time off from work and no kids right now, so I decided to take a little trip out to western Massachusetts with a friend of mine. We are visiting a good friend, K,  in Worthington. This morning, it was all quiet after a night of hellish wind and with a very light snow falling, we decided to go check out the Chesterfield Gorge. Thankfully, there is a fence along the path to the gorge, because it is a long way down and we were walking on snow and ice. K had Yaktrax, but I was roughing it.

So I brought the camera and even though it was a cloudy day out and conditions were a bit hard for photos, I managed to take a few that show how beautiful this stretch of water is. The river is the east branch of the Westfield river. On our way in yesterday, we saw a lot of folks kayaking the Westfield well downstream from this area. But we had the gorge to ourselves today.

The gorge is not that long but very pretty and very rugged, especially now with the winter conditions. There is a trail to the east side of the gorge and you can walk the length of it looking down. The drop from the top of the trail to the water is a good 50 feet, so even with a protective fence, I was being extra careful.

This place is pretty enough that I may visit again on my way back to Boston and bring the tripod. The conditions for photographing were a little rough today and these photos would have been better with a more deliberate approach (not to mention smaller apertures and lower ISO settings). If that happens, I’ll update the post, but let’s not plan on it. I may be fickle in the morning.