West Peak in a New Light

I love hiking on cool, foggy days. It's not gloomy, it's moody. No one is on the trails, and if you have a camera that can take pictures in low light, it's great for photography.  Here's the proof:

Walkbook Rock - same camera, same photographer, different light. 

That's the view on the Connecticut Walkbook West cover. The left photo was taken on April 27 in bright sun, and the right photo was taken on May 3 in the fog. I'm using a Panasonic G-2, which is what they call a "micro four thirds" camera. Almost a DSLR but not quite. The sensor is a lot bigger than a point-and-shoot, allowing me to take pictures in low light, but the camera is lighter than a clunky DSLR.

Here's another comparison of sun vs fog lighting.  The dampness brings out color. Rock is darker when it's wet, and plants are covered with tiny water droplets.

Columbine in the fog

Columbine in the sun a week earlier.

White Trail, Hubbard Park. An easy trail.

So let's enjoy the cool damp weather before summer strikes and take a walk through the park.   Instead of focusing on the "gloom" of the overcast day, look at how vivid the new green growth of spring is. I'm starting down below West Peak at Hubbard Park and hiking up the Metacomet because there's a section of trail I haven't hiked yet. 

Climbing up the talus slope of West Peak

The down side to wet weather is the wet, slippery rock, and trap rock can be especially slick. Walking sticks came in handy.

Rising into the low clouds that surround West Peak

This part of the trail might be a hassle to go up in normal weather, but because I was going into the moody fog, it was really neat.

The trail goes up through a notch created by a fracture or fault zone that left behind slabs of trap rock. Slick! 

Metacomet Trail

West Peak - No view today.

Radio Towers on West Peak

After snapping a few shots of foggy West Peak, I descended back to the easier trails of Hubbard Park, which were starting to dry out even as West Peak was up in a misty fog.

Flowering Dogwood

Flowering Dogwood

Box Turtle

We discovered a box turtle really close to I-691. I hope he manages OK. The species as a whole is threatened because it reproduces very, very slowly. A box turtle can live up to 100 years.  Let's hope this one lives a long life at Hubbard. 

Lost & Found: The Metacomet Trail

Last month I lost the trail after coming out onto a dirt road east of Route 71 in Berlin that's labeled "Victoria Drive" on Google Maps. I eventually found it a quarter mile away after some bushwhacking down a talus slope.   I journeyed back for a visit recently and here's the scoop: Apparently a half-mile section of trail was reroute as shown, without visible blazes at any of the junctions, and sporadic blazes along the old route (just enough to confuse you):

My hunch is that a new subdivision road is being built over the old route, so the trail was rerouted. I bet they were going to build houses before the market crashed.

At this time if you are hiking northbound on the NET (but actually head south on this particular section), you come out onto Victoria Drive (dirt) and the blazes completely end. There is nothing to indicate whether you should go left or right.  If you are lucky and decide to turn right, you come to an intersection with another dirt road on the left and no trail markings: 

2nd dirt road on left. The old Metacomet went this way. New houses soon?

So now you have to choose. At this time, I recommend Option #1: If you explore this second road, you'll find a few obsolete blue blazes on the tree line to the right, but these come to an end about half way along.  That's where I started bushwhacking and stumbled upon the new trail down below. No need for that!

Keep going down this second road, you will eventually reach the end. Walk around the right side of the big pile of logs and go into the woods and look around until you find the old blue blazes. This is by far the easier and more enjoyable route.  However, it is clearly subject to change. 

Go around the right side of this mess and hunt for the trail

Option #2:  When you come out onto Victoria Drive (dirt), take a right and keep on it, ignoring the second dirt road on the left. Keep going about a quarter mile on Victoria, and at a slight curve where you can start to see Route 71, look very very carefully on the left for the new trail.  It's almost impossible to see: 

Trail exit from Victoria Drive.  See it? Neither do I. 

The new trail is a rather sad state of affairs compared to what I bet the old one used to be, because the old route was up on the smooth ridge top while the new one meanders below along the uneven talus slopes, a  more arduous and tedious journey.   There is no trail tread, just blazes and plenty of loose traprock. 

If you are doing this in reverse, heading east from Route 71, the old section can be found if you look closely. You climb up the hill from Rt 71, cross the stream, and will come to a talus slope where the trail is solidly benched into the slope. The blazes are nice sharp rectangles. Immediately after the long talus bench ends, the new trail descends slightly to the left and the blazes get very sloppy, while the old trail goes up the hill at a diagonal, but the first blaze was blacked out. Head up this hill as if you were off to see the Wizard and you very quickly come to the end of the dirt road. 

There.  Now you can hike the Metacomet between Victoria and Rt 71. 

West Peak, Meriden

Horsetails 

Time to hike the last section of Meriden's Hanging Hills: West Peak, elevation 1024, the highest trap rock ridge in Connecticut, and home of the legend of the Black Dog.  According to tradition, if you see him, "Once is for joy, twice is for danger, three times for death."

I meet up with Teeker and Devilindog on Edgewood Drive and we head south towards the radio towers of West Peak three miles up the trail.  While I generally try to hike northbound, sometimes I head the opposite direction if most of the letterboxing clues I'm following are written for someone hiking southbound.

Looking East along the gas pipeline.  

Climbing up the backside of a trap rock ridge is a lot easier that going up the steep west side where the cliffs are, so it's a pretty gentle hike so long as you don't take a detour down the gas pipeline and then have to climb back up. But that's how you learn important things, such as: Being stuck in the mud can cause a Charlie Horse.

Eventually you reach that dependable spectacular view out across the Connecticut Valley, getting greener by the day as the season progresses. Holy cow, but it was blustery up there.  A week ago I hiked in shorts and was overheated a good part of the day. But a week later I'm bundled up in multiple layers. That's April for you. 

My boxing partners had to return to their real lives after a bit, and I continued on, eventually finding the spot on the cover of the Connecticut Walk Book. For fun I tried to get the same angle as the book cover. What a difference in pictures, though. While CFPA undoubtedly had a better photographer with a better camera, and the season is further along, look at the difference in lighting between the two pictures. The harsh sunlight and shadow patterns make taking pictures in the woods on a sunny day almost a lost cause, at least for someone with my lack of skill. 

The tops of the trap rock ridges are sometimes really grassy and open.  I don't know if that is due entirely to the geology and shallow soil, or if the deer population is partly responsible. Deer will tend to eat everything but the grass, and if other plants grow slowly up on the ridges, they wouldn't last long if there was heavy deer browse.   

Palmate Violet

Violets are a very, very common flower, and there are many species of violets. But how often do you see a violet with leaves shaped like these?  The Palmate Violet is the only species with leaves so deeply divided.

And wham, suddenly there's an enormous tower over my head. I had no idea I was that close because the trees block out the view.  There's a controversy right now about whether cell phone towers should be allowed in State Parks. I was surprised to learn they weren't, since towers are a fact of life when you're hiking a ridge trail in a tiny state with three million people.

Here's an interesting tidbit about the towers from Wikipedia: "Edwin Howard Armstrong, who invented FM radio and who was a network radio pioneer, used West Peak for the location of one of the first FM radio broadcasts in 1939. His original 70' tall radio mast is still there. Currently West Peak is home to six FM broadcast stations, including WPKT, WWYZ, WZMX, WDRC-FM, WKSS and WHCN."

Wood Betany

Near the summit are these showy little flowers, some yellow and some red. 

West Peak, elevation 1024

At the radio towers there is a park road and parking area, although the road was closed and few people were there.  A wide path leads from the parking area to the summit, which of course is amazing.

The Black Dog was nowhere to be found. One of the tales involves a Connecticut geologist who supposedly plunged to his death up there after seeing the dog for the third time, and to this day, if you look at the official State of Connecticut Bedrock Geology map, you will see the silhouette of a black dog shown on West Peak (see here and then click on the appropriate grid).

ATVs visit Castle Craig

After exploring the mountain for a bit, I headed back over to East Rock and the castle using a combination of the park road and blue trail.  And got the pleasure of hearing ATVs once again. No kidding, there they are at Castle Craig. Well, at least they weren't tearing up the hiking trail. 

Striped Maple flowers

And then it was a three mile road walk down Park Road back to the car on Edgewood Drive, which took over an hour. The road doesn't open until May 1, so there were no cars.  Not a bad walk, if you haven't already been walking all day.

Metacomet Trail to Castle Craig

Marsh Marigold

Wild Geranium

Welcome to the Metacomet Trail section of the NET!  To recap, we started this journey in Guilford on the newly created Menunkatuck Trail, took a left onto the old Mattabesett Trail at Broomstick Ledges, and have been on the Mattabesett every since. But the Mattabesett Trail ended at the north end of Lamentation Mountain.  Some day I'll go back and get that NET spur formed by the other half of the Mattabesett that curves back to Middletown and the Connecticut River, but for now I'm sticking with the mainline NET.

After a long road walk, which I chose to skip, the New England Trail heads into the woods at Orchard Drive in Berlin, reborn as the historic Metacomet Trail, which will take us all the way to the Massachusetts border. This is perfect name for the trail because it follows the top of the Metacomet Ridge the entire way.

Striped Maple - a more northern species

Metacomet was the name of an important Native American who was known by the colonists in the 1600's as "King Philip."   He lead a resistance in 1675 called "King Philip's War", a conflict so dramatic and devastating to both sides that I can't figure out why there aren't any major motion pictures about it. Half of all Puritan towns were attacked, a tenth of all fighting age Puritan men were killed, and there were real fears that the colonists might be driven off the continent. It was of course a lot worse for the natives, however, who were mostly killed, shipped off as slaves, or became refuges and fled west.

On that cheery note, let's start our trek. It's a beautiful day for mid-April, with temperatures in the 70's and the trees leafing out like it's mid-May.  I leave my car at Hubbard Park and get dropped off at the intersection of Orchard and Kensington Roads.

Almost immediately there are problems with the trail.  For the next three miles, I will spend an extra hour or two while I backtrack, scratch my head, flounder about, ponder the gps and trail map, bushwhack, skirt blowdowns, and so forth.  (The hike got a lot better, so bear with me!)  And then my phone died because it "butt called" my husband, who answered the call but heard nothing but my footsteps as I tromped through forest, oblivious to the fact that my phone had made a call of its own. Which is why cell phones are great, but you can't depend on them.

Arrowwood Viburnum

I put in a trail report to CFPA, but if you're headed that way and want to follow the trail, here's a cheat sheet:

1. Gas line crossing - turn right onto pipeline, then look for trail opening on the left after maybe 100 yards. (Tree clearing took out some blazes I guess).

2. Summitwood Drive - blazes end suddenly in front of houses but a trail tread continues. Keep following that trail parallel to Summitwood Drive in front of the houses and eventually you'll see the blazes again.

Turn left here...don't follow the blue plastic markers straight ahead. 

3. Blue plastic markers AND blue painted blazes mark the trail for a bit starting at the end of Summitwood Drive.  The blue plastic does NOT mark the Metacomet --I thought it did -- it marks some feeder trail.  Someone didn't have enough sense to reserve the color blue for the Metacomet Trail. The blue plastic markers will keep going straight along an old roadbed while the blue painted blazes will take a very easy to miss hard left off the road bed (photo).  I know this because I followed the markers for a good quarter mile before I realized I was trending downhill when I should be on the ridge.

Decoy blue blazes along the edge here 

4. Big dirt road (labeled "Victoria Drive" on Google maps), with lots of recent clearing/earthwork that presumably messed up the trail.  Turn right onto the road. [See my updated May 4 post for this section] Go past a dirt road/long clearing on the left (photo). The trail goes into the woods on the left just after that intersection....somewhere (I never did find the trail entrance).  It parallels the road in the picture off to the right (west).  There are incorrect "decoy" blue blazes painted on some of the edge trees along that road in the photo which completely messed me up, but that's a long story that included a six-foot black rat snake.

I'll say here that the CFPA maps are beautiful, but at times like these I wish there was more detail. The utility corridors and minor roads are not shown, for example. If they were, I'd have a better idea which way to look when I get to a crossing and the blazes disappear.

Columbine

Parts of the trail were wonderful and well marked, though. Columbine is one of my favorite wildflowers, and I found it bloom in a couple of dry, rock summits. The native Columbine is red and yellow. Any other color is the European Columbine -- not native.

Dry, dry, dry.  What a bizarro weather year! It's mid-April! 

View from Cathole Mountain

Just before descending to Route 71, I took a detour and bushwhacked up to Cathole Mountain, with a view of South Mountain and refreshing breeze. 

Elmere Reservoir Dam

After crossing Rt 71, the trail is easy to follow. Looks like it gets a lot of foot traffic, but hiking on a weekday I only passed one or two people.  The Metacomet heads over the top of the Elmere Reservoir dam, skirts over the back side of South Mountain, then comes out onto the paved park road at Hubbard Park and crosses the Merimere Reservoir dam. 

Merimere Reservoir Spillway

The Merimere spillway was bone dry. Not even a trickle was coming out of that reservoir.  I did not do that graffiti in the photo above. But it is a favorite saying of letterboxers. 

Merimere Reservoir

The trail follows the west side of Merimere Reservoir, gradually climbing up East Peak to a series of spectacular rocky overlooks of Mine Island directly below and the rest of the world beyond. We've now left Berlin and have entered Meriden. And not a sole up there besides myself! 

Mine Island, South Mountain, and Meriden

Finally!  I've been seeing this castle in the distance for weeks now. By the way, my dog can read. 

I love how the native trap rock was used to build the castle. It feels like it belongs. Here you can see South Mountain in the middle distance and the twin peaks of Mount Higby (remember Higby?) in the distance. 

View from the castle top

View from the castle top

Yeah!  Look at that empty parking lot.  No crowds.  The park road is closed to vehicles until May 1. And it's a weekday, so there were only a few people at the castle, but no one on the Metacomet Trail. 

Continuing on past the Castle, the view is no less spectacular. There's the Sleeping Giant, New Haven, and Long Island in the distance. 

Pale Corydalis

After more ridgetop views, the Metacomet descends half way down the mountain on loose stone and meets up with the Hubbard Park trail system.  I took the white trail east because I hadn't gone that way before. The white trail has a popular spurs that goes up to the Castle, which I took.  Although it's heavily used, it's actually rather difficult due to all the loose stone. Nothing like the Tower Road at Sleeping Giant.

Half way back down the hill, along the white trail, is the "Halfway House" overlooking the City of Meriden...

...with a view back at Castle Craig.