Mt. Sugarloaf North & South (5 Miles)

Lets take a hike along the post-glacial "Lake Hitchcock" in South Deerfield where legend has it that a mystical creature named Hobomock battled a giant beaver. We will hike along the Pocumtuck trail.
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• Distance: 5.5 miles
• Elevation: North Sugarloaf (791 ft) & South Sugarloaf (652 ft)
• Duration: 3 hours
• Trail: Pocumtuck Ridge trail
• Parking: South Sugarloaf Parking
• GoogleMaps: https://maps.app.goo.gl/j9Bw2ErPhN7ziKub6
• General hiking exerience would be beneficial

History & folklore:
Perhaps as many as 5,000 in 1600, the Pocumtuc population declined rapidly from epidemic and wars with the Iroquois and English. For the most part, the Pocumtuc were destroyed during the King Philip's War (1675-76)

However, the legend continues.
"The great beaver preyed upon the fish of the long river. And when other food became scarce, he took to eating men out of the river villages.” The Pocumtuck Range, the giant Pleistocene beaver and the super-human Eastern Algonquian earth-shaper or transformer figure Hobomock.

The Native American legend
The giant beaver: A giant beaver once wreaked havoc in the immense post-glacial Lake Hitchcock, the ancient body of water that once occupied the Connecticut River Valley. The creature grew so destructive that it began preying on the people of the river villages. (oh, no! What shall we do??)

The intervention of Hobomock: The people appealed to the great spirit Hobomock, an "earth-shaper" figure who acts as a transformer or cultural hero in many Northeastern Algonquian stories.
The battle: With a club made from an oak tree, Hobomock fought and killed the giant beaver, sinking its petrified body into the earth. The name of the mountain in the Native American language, Wequamps, means "at the point of" or "extremity," referring to the beaver's head.