Lamentation Mountain

After successfully summitting the venerable Higby Mountain yesterday, my goal today was to conquer Lamentation Mountain, in my quest for "7 hills in 7 days".  Although the actual summit of Lamentation Mountain (720') is in Meriden, part of the mountain is in the northwestern corner of Middletown. 

I decided to climb Lamentation from South to North, so after dropping my bicycle off in Berlin on Lamentation Drive, I drove back to Giuffrida Park in Meriden. Chauncey Peak (688')  rises steeply from Country Club Road.  The west side of  Chauncey has spectacular views of Meriden and beyond. The east side of Chauncey is literally 6 feet under, a victim of Chauncey's misfortune of being made of good road-building rocks.  North of Chauncey Peak is a man-made canal, which had water flowing through it down into Crescent Lake.  After these beautiful views and the amazing canal, the rest of the hike was quite disappointing.  Lamentation Mountain is a very gentle mountain that is thoroughly criss-crossed by trails and small roads.  Unlike Higby, Lamentation has large patches of monoculture pine trees, and an abundance of poison ivy.  The 1940s and 1950s automobiles abandoned in the forest provided a beauty of sorts.  Some might say that these rusting jalopies are less ugly than the ones recently glorified on Main Street. 

The summit is indiscernible along the very gentle slope.  Worst of all, the trail has changed in the past year, a victim of selfish landowners unwilling to allow hikers on their remote land.  The ambiguous and contradictory trail markings left me temporarily lost, and I found myself crossing big, bold "no trespassing" signs to make my way north.  How I wish we had the British tradition that requires all landholders to allow walkers to traverse their land.  

Eventually I found Stantack Road, which is nothing more than a fire road through the forest. I followed the road along the ridge through a corner of Middletown and into Berlin, where my bicycle was waiting.  The bicycle ride back south was more spectacular than the hike, as I went first along the beautiful hilltop north end of Atkins street, and then explored Boardman and Bell Lanes on my way back to Giuffrida Park. 

On Boardman Lane, I examined the beautiful cemetery and the land that the Army has chosen to build a training center.  The training center would consist of the equivalent of two buildings and two parking lots the size of Walmart.  But that is a topic for another post.