Posted By auntie on August 19, 2014

4.69 miles, durham, ct

this hike was great fun. it consists of a loop, part of which is the blue-blazed mattabesett trail, and a few side trails, including a red-and-blue-blazed trail named the lone pine trail. it starts from a parking area on route 77 in durham, and goes straight up the bluff. fortunately for me there was also a one-mile-long orange-and-blue blazed side trail that takes a gentler trip up the bluff. any way you get there, it’s worth the trip.

i was apprehensive about trying the mattabesett again after my two previous experiences, but i shouldn’t have been. this was more like my mount higby hike.  there were some awesome views.

scary sign

if the connecticut forest and park association meant to frighten me with this sign… they, er, succeeded. although i saw the same sign on mount higby, and i have to say that was a lot scarier to actually hike than this trail was.

bluff head panorama, click to embiggen

the view from the overlook atop the bluff was simply amazing. you can’t really tell from the panorama, but it was a full 180-degrees. gorgeous.

myer huber pond

this is myer huber pond, and later on, i would be on the far shore, on the george etzel-meyer huber trail. and no, i don’t know why meyer and myer are spelled differently between the pond and the trail. but it is. or they are. whatever.

millipede

there were several of these guys on the trail. this one was being attended to by a bunch of ants, so i presumed it was dead. but they were huge and very scary looking… at least 4-inches long. mr. google tells me they’re millipedes, and totally harmless, but i didn’t know that at the time. oh, and this is also typical of the trail surface in many places. it wasn’t bad to walk on unless it was steeply downhill. then it acted like ball bearings. not kidding. my feet went out from under me several times, once resulting in a nasty wrench to my knee.

view of the bluff from the far side of the pond

and here is myer-huber pond from ground level, on the blue-and-yellow blazed etzel-meyer trail.

um…?

the aforementioned etzel-meyer trail is fairly new. it wasn’t even on one of the maps of this trail system that i had downloaded. it travels for a short distance along route 77, which is a very busy road, and then takes a left back into the woods… here. really? i hesitated for quite a bit, but finally, not seeing any alternative, i took the left and went around this forbidding gate. sure enough, the blazes continued past here. weird.

i can highly recommend this hike. it’s well blazed, except for a short distance along the lone pine trail that goes through a suburban neighborhood, but even through there i was able to figure out where to go eventually by process of elimination. i have added it to the hikefinder. the map i have attached to that entry was originally downloaded from the ct forest and park association website, with my route and mileages added.

Categories: CFPA Trails, Connecticut, Walks and Hikes
Tags: 5–7 miles, CT, Durham CT