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| This hike occurred on September 15, 2013 |
Trail Heads:
Sheldon Rd, Southington, CT – Parking: On the side of Sheldon Rd, there is on-street parking for 8-10 cars. No parking is allowed on Andrews or Carey Streets so expect to park here and walk to the trail head which is about a third of a mile away.
Length/Distance: According the Connecticut Walk book, the route between the trail heads on Carey St & Southington Rd was 1.7 miles, with the distance between Carey St and the junction with the Ragged Mountain trail system marked as 0.5 miles. We hiked from Sheldon Rd to the trail crossing on Carey St, ascended to the Ragged Mountain junction, descended back to Carey St, and then hiked from Carey St to Southington Rd. According to my GPS tracking program, our route was 3.5 miles; this seemed accurate within half a mile or so.
Summary: From Carey St, we turned left towards Ragged Mountain, following the blazes up a driveway.
We saw some Schreber’s Aster (Eurybia schreberi/Aster schreberi) on the trail.
The trail parallels a large boulder/cliff side (I believe it is sometimes used for climbing).
The trail wrapped around the side of the cliff. The climb up and down required a bit of scrambling.
At the top of the cliff, the trail meets up with the Ragged Mountain trail system.
The view from the top was nice and looked back towards West & East Peaks.
We then scrambled back down to Carey St, traveled along Mill Brook (a private drive), and entered the woods at the end of the drive. Shortly after, there was a wood bridge over a creek.
From here, the hike did a bit of climbing to ascend Short Mountain though it was lighter than the ascent to Ragged Mountain. There was one or two good viewpoints (as seen at the very top of this blog post). From the top, we worked our way back down to Southington Rd.
Overall, the hike was short and a good trail to ease back into more intense hiking this fall.
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Transcending Mountains 