While home in Connecticut, my dad wanted to go on a hike with me. I happily agreed! After discussing some options, we settled on a new place that he hadn’t explored yet called Northfield Mountain. This is a man-made structure used for hydroelectric power generation and features a large reservoir at 1,100 ft.
On July 5th my dad, brother, and I woke up at 7AM and were on the road by 8:15AM. We had a two hour drive ahead of us and it was already hot. I don’t think I could have convinced them to get up much earlier but I don’t think I could have gotten up much earlier either. 7AM east coast time is 4AM west coast time! After a two hour drive we were set and ready to go. My dad had a trail map and we decided on the trail labeled “hardest”. This trail turned out to be a large swath cut into the hill and was covered in grass. The long grass in turn coated us in ticks and I think each of us eventually pulled 20 or so off ourselves. After a steady climb of ~800ft and some route finding, we reached the top and rested at the tables atop a viewing platform. The “hard” way wasn’t very hard. Unfortunately, we discovered the trails are marked more for skiing than hiking. After a nice lunch we began our descent on snowshoe trails. These trails were far more difficult, interesting, and almost devoid of ticks.
After ~6.5 miles of hiking we were finally back at the visitor center where the outside temperature read 96 degrees! After taking a brief break inside we re-filled our water bottles and headed home.
