Posted By auntie on August 17, 2014

3.5 miles, groton, ct

i quite randomly woke up at 6 am (you gotta understand, i am SOOO not a morning person), so i went for an early morning hike on this city of groton property. i found the trail map to be very confusing, and the blazing fitful, at best. there is a trail on the southern end of the property that’s labeled “dangerous ridge,” so i kind of skipped that specific section, but i got to try out the “rope assists” on the ledge trail and they were pretty tame compared to some of the climbing i did on the mattabesett trail without ropes. there were also some overlooks that would be better without leaves on the trees, and i missed the entire eastern section of trails, so i do plan to come back in the fall when the views will be better.

the trail

the terrain was kind of all over the place… partly meadows, partly deciduous woods, partly dense mountain laurel thickets, and partly rock ledges.

sign on buddington pond

i visited the stone spillway that separates buddington pond from the groton reservoir. there were signs like above everywhere, even in the water.

ledge trail

this is approximately the spot where the yellow trail split into two. the left hand trail was the one labeled “dangerous ridge.” i chose to skip that and took the yellow-dotted spur trail instead.

rope assist

when i saw the spots on the trail map that were marked “rope assist,” i envisioned steep rock climbs and going hand over hand. i figured if it was too hard i could always backtrack. but this was pretty tame. i’m not saying i didn’t take advantage of the rope, but i could have done the trail without it. this kind of makes me wonder if the “dangerous ledge” was really all that “dangerous.” next trip i think i’ll find out.

overlook

this overlook would be much more awesome if you could actually see anything. okay, if you look really hard, you can kind of see route 95 between the two foreground trees. still not impressive, though.

i have added this hike to the hikefinder. the map on that entry is one i found online. there were way too many trails that i missed to try and make my own map. but i did add my track to the map.

Categories: Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 2–5 miles, CT, Groton CT