I’ve made a new female friend in western Massachusetts and her personal fascination is waterfall hunting. She has Joseph Bushee’s marvelous Waterfalls of Massachusetts - An Explorers Guide to 55 Natural Scenic Wonders, but she has the worst sense of direction of anyone I know. Many of them had eluded her until we combined her passion with my Garmin eTrex GPS and survey experience.
We’ve visited Turner’s Falls, Shelburne Falls, Sluice Brook Falls, Gunn Brook Falls, Roaring Falls, Doane Falls, Royalston Falls, Spirit Falls ... but the most visually dramatic also happens to be the most easily reachable – Chapel Falls in Ashfield.
The author has a web site as well as a book and this is all it has to say about Chapel Falls
From the Ashfield / Conway town line, follow Rt. 116 north for 2 miles to a left onto Creamery Rd. followed by an immediate left onto Williamsburg Rd. at a traffic triangle. Take Williamsburg Rd. south for 2 miles to a small parking area on the right. There is a short loop trail to some small cliffs here too.[easy access, 20’ drop]
This short blurb in no way does justice to this marvelous tumble of water and stone. It begins innocently enough, with the water flowing via a large culvert under the road, with the other side being a property managed by The Trustees of the Reservations.
The other side, visible from the road, doesn’t really betray any hint of what lies below; all that can be seen is a nice wading pool.
The first step in the cascade is a forty five degree slide about fifteen feet long.
The second step is the most dramatic, a step, drop, and sideways fan of nearly 20’. If you look in the lower left you can see my companion, busy hunting for a souvenir rock from the falls.
The third step is not so impressive and in this shot I was trying to gather the whole cascade, but I could only capture the second and third steps – I’d need a 20’ tall ladder here to take it all in and there are trees occluding the view.
If you’re going to go looking Bushee’s book is a fine guide but for a web resource Northeast Waterfalls has the best descriptions, easiest to use interface, and GPS coordinates, which the Bushee book lacks.