Hiking Up Talcott Mountain

We have lived in Simsbury, Connecticut for the last ten years, and we love it here. We’ve walked or hiked all over, and as wooded as the terrain is in town, the one activity we never engaged in as a family until earlier this summer was to hike up Talcott Mountain to the Heublein Tower and view the Farmington Valley down below.  We trekked up two more times since, the most recent one undertaken this weekend to savor the spectacular sights of turning autumn leaves.  The vibrant fall colors didn’t disappoint as these pictures will show.

There are a number of interesting factoids about the tower that I urge you to read here.  We learned that the top of the mountain once was home to three other towers before Heublein and that the mountain is part of the Metacomet mountain ridge system nearly 200 million years in the making.  For the keen photographer, the place also apparently offers an opportunity to lie in wait to picture migratory raptors frequenting the elevations.  On earlier occasions we witnessed hang-glider enthusiasts launching from one of the cliffs overlooking the floodplain.  All in all, a nice short hike – for the averagely fit, 40 minutes up, 20 down on the popular main trail is all it takes.  Sport a mask in these pandemic times – the crowds appeared to swell up on the trail on our last climb.