Ragged Mountain Preserve

Ragged Mountain

We began this section on April 21, 2012 and finished May 11, 2012
We hiked all of the Red Dot, White Dot, Green Dot, Blue-Red, Blue-Yellow, and Blue trails

Trail Head: The trail head for this section is located at West Lane & Wigwam Rd, Kensington, CT. There is a lot of roadside parking located near the trail head. Even on busy days, there has always been parking available. 

Length/Distance: It varies depending on which trails you decide to take. An excellent resource for maps is located on the Berlin Land Trust's website. One hike that we did was Blue-Red to Blue to Blue-Red. That looped hike was approximately 7-8 miles and took us about 3 hours. Here is my route for a shorter hike we did.  

Summary: This area is quite beautiful. There are many different cliffs with gorgeous views of lakes and other mountains. You can see the Hart Lakes, Wassel Reservoir, Meriden and Talcott Mountains, and the UConn Health Center from different lookout points on the Blue trail. However, I would caution anyone hiking there to be wary of poison ivy. I have only just recovered from a bout of poison ivy that I got from hiking at Ragged Mountain after losing the trail (Tecnu and Calagel are great stuff). If you go straight at the trail head to wrap around the right side of the mountain on the Blue-Red, make sure to follow only clearly marked trails. There were a number of trails that seemed to go in the proper direction but were not clearly marked as being any color trail that dead-ended in the middle of a swamp. The maps of the area are helpful but don't appear to have been updated. The color markers have changed on some of the trails and there are many more cleared trails than are shown on the map. Also keep in mind that many streams intersect with the trails and overflow, causing very muddy conditions. Expect to wear boots if it's rained in the past week.   

On the trail, we did see a 5-foot-long Eastern Ratsnake (Pantherophis alleghaniensis) sunning itself on a rock. This variety of snake is quite harmless. A listing of CT snakes with helpful pictures is available here. We also encountered many ticks; this area seems to have a LOT of them, both Dog and Deer ticks.

Cockaponset Trail

Cockaponset Trail
We began and finished this hike on May 18, 2012. 

Trail Heads: 

Beaver Meadow Rd., Haddam, CT - Parking: at the trail head, there is maybe 2 parking spots. As recommended in the Connecticut Walk Books, we parked in the commuter parking lot approximately 2/10ths of a mile away. The road is very narrow so make sure you hug the shoulder.   

West Main St. at State Forest Rd., Chester, CT - Parking: directly across the street from the trail head, there are about 6 spots.  

Length/Distance: 

The CT Walk Book listed the trail as being 7.1 miles. Using a GPS tracking program (Map My Run), I would say the trail is a bare minimum of 7.5 miles, thought probably closer to 7.75 miles. This doesn't include the walk from the commuter lot to the trail head. Here's my route. If you want to hike the entirety of the trail, I would advise to do what we did: park one car at each end of the trail and make it a through-hike.       

Summary:

The hike was very nice. It has a few sections with hills but overall, it was a flat trail. The ground was firm and didn't have many rocks. There were some sections of the trail that were muddy; in addition, a few sections went through swamp land. I would advise wearing boots, although if you're careful, you could navigate the trail with sneakers or hiking shoes with minimal mud being transferred to your person. Also, there were a few places on the trail where there weren't any blue blazes and we had to try multiple trails to find the Blue Trail. 

We started in Haddam at the trail head on Beaver Meadow Rd and finished in Chester on Rt. 148/West Main St. At approximately 3 MPH, we finished the hike in roughly 3 hours, which included water breaks and searching for the trail. If you are allergic to poison ivy, keep a close watch. There was a lot of poison ivy growing on the edges of the trail. Also, maybe a quarter of the way down the trail, we found a section of forest that had a lot of Pink Lady's Slippers (Cypripedium acaule). They are native to CT and in some places are listed as endangered.

We saw chipmunks, squirrels, toads, frogs, and millipedes on our hike, as well as Mountain-Laurel (Kalmia latifolia) and wild strawberry (Fragaria virginiana) and raspberry (Rubus strigosus) plants. 

  

Welcome to this fine blog...

Hello, Everyone!

The purpose of this blog is primarily for my records. Me and one of my friends have decided that we are going to hike all of the CT Blue Trails. If we complete all those trails, we can apply to be a part of the Connecticut 400 Club which is administered by the CT Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club. So far, we have completely finished two locations and partially finished a third. I'm keeping a record for myself using OneNote but wanted to share my adventures with others in a more interactive and accessible format. Enjoy and if you have any questions, feel free to ask!