go hike a mountain

The second high point we chose was in Connecticut and we did some better planning before leaving. We took off after I left work on Saturday and it took us approximately 3 hours to drive to western Mass. The high point of Connecticut is actually right on the border between Connecticut and Massachusetts and an interesting fact about this high point is that it is not actually a peak. The peak of the mountain sits in Massachusetts. The highest peak in Connecticut is Bear Mountain, which is a little ways south of where we hiked, but the highest point is on the slope of Mt. Frissell, which lies mostly in Massachusetts.

July 21, 2007

So, we left New Bedford in the early afternoon with a wad of cash totaling $410. This money is an accumulation of money collected from can redemption and from throwing all our change and singles into a bucket for almost 2 months. We stopped for gas, some cheese pretzel Combos and bagels for the drive. Our route west was via the 90W Masspike which we jumped onto after taking 146N from Providence. We got off the Masspike at exit 2, not far from New York’s border and passed through the cities of Lee, Stockbridge, Great Barrington, and S Egremont on our way to Mt. Washington State Forest. We reached the park headquarters at about 6:30pm and barely caught the park ranger to ask about overnight parking. She told us the AMC (Appalachian Mountain Club) parking lot to the south was okay for overnight parking and was very close to the trailhead we were looking for. We got out to pick up a free trail map of the park and it seems we had just missed Homer Simpson.

We had to drive back out of the park and into town to grab some dinner and ice for our cooler, but detoured to check out Bash Bish Falls. You can read about that part of our trip here. As it seemed, Great Barrington had some neat little shops and restaurants that looked like they’d be open late, so we headed back after the falls. The most happening place was a pizza joint called Baba Louie’s, where we were seated quickly, had great service and ate some very delicious food. We split an organic pear and balsamic vinegar salad and then had some organic, wood-fired, sourdough-crusted BBQ chicken and gouda pizza, which cost us $30, but was definitely worth it. We stopped at a gas station on the way back to the forest for some milk, ice, and ice cream.

The roads beyond the park headquarters are mostly unpaved and seem like long private driveways, but we made our way slowly through the dark (because deer were everywhere) and found the AMC parking lot. Jesse had this brilliant idea that we setup our sleeping area in the back of the car (we are not yet fully equipped for sleeping in the woods) without opening the car doors so no bugs would get in. It was roughly 10:30 when we fell asleep.

July 22, 2007

We had set the alarm for 6:30 and actually got up and started moving around at this time. We both ate cereal, brushed our teeth, packed our bags, and separately headed into the woods to dig 6″ holes for making toilet.

Because we didn’t see any signs for our trailhead when driving in, we weren’t sure how far it would be from the lot, so we hopped in the car and drove about a mile south - turned around - drove about 50ft in the other direction from the lot - and realized the trail began right there. There was no official sign, but a little bit of research told me to follow red blazes, which we found along the road here. We started hiking at about 8 am. After walking about 100ft down the path, I realized I didn’t have the trail map, so we had to make our way back to the parking lot for it. We started again at 8:07 am and got to the same spot when Jesse realized we had left Treeson behind! So I waited on the path while Jesse walked back to grab him. We finally left this point at about 8:15 am and steadily made our way up.

The first .25 miles was a very gradual ascent and we had no problems. All of a sudden we hit a section of the trail with some serious bouldering areas. In fact, climbing to the summit of Round Mountain was pretty much all bouldering. The summit had some bald areas with nice scenic views and there were piles of rocks along the trails.

From the top of this mountain, there was an approximate 200ft descent to a col which lead to another 300ft climb to the summit of Mt. Frissell. More bouldering. We reached the summit of Mt. Frissell about an hour after we began. We found the register down a little path and signed.

With a little more walking, we found the part of the moutain that is considered the high point in Connecticut, but decided to try and find the tri-state marker before stopping for photos. The hike to this marker was described as a ’short’ distance from the high point. We descended about 80ft and walked another .25 miles. We found the marker in a nice wooded area with criss-crossing paths around it. The interesting part about the marker is that although NY and MASS area actually chiseled out, CONN is not marked. It seemed as though someone took the time to take a stone and rub CONN on the blank face. We spent a good amount of time videotaping and photographing this area, as well as goofing off.

After our break, we climbed back up the path to the high point and were going to stop for a few minutes to photograph ourselves and Treeson here - but a pair of hikers were just making their way up to the high point. We chatted for about a half an hour about cameras, hiking and high points - this was their 5th state highpiont and they had already done some extensive hiking in the Adirondacks and the White Mountains. Their names are Ken and Kyle Wehner (and I hope that if they read this and I mispelled their names, they will email us a gohikeamountain@gmail.com with a correction). They left to hike Bear Mountain (again, the high summit entirely in Connecticut). We finished with our photographs and made our way back to the trail head.

Here Jesse is looking back at Mt. Frissell from the summit of Round Mountain.

We arrived at the parking lot at about 11:45, giving us about 3.5 hours to hike the approximate 3 miles round-trip, including the long break we took with our new friends. From here we left for our second trip to Bash Bish Falls and then went on to Monument Mountain. You can read about Monument Mountain here.

We put a total of 400 miles on the car and spent about $160, but this included a much-needed cooler and some camelbak cleaning tablets.