Date: 2016-05-28
From: West Cornwall Road

To: Salisbury, CT
Miles today: 16.6
Weather: clear sky

Beastly hot is the only way to describe it, the heat wave seems endless and each day the humidity seems to grow. Good news for us, we get to hike together for several days while we¢re staying at Bearded Woods. Today, Hudson shuttled us to West Cornwall Road (where we finished yesterday) and we hiked NoBo into Salisbury, CT. Everyone at Bearded Woods knew it was going to be hot, so Hudson & Big Lu accommodated us and put out breakfast early. Speaking of breakfast, it was awesome. Two egg & cheese casseroles, very fluffy - essentially souffles, one with ham and the second with turkey. What a way to start our hike. Our start was a moderate uphill, including a squeeze through a cracked boulder reminiscent of the NY Lemon Squeezer. From that point the hike was a nice trail, up, down, around and through woods and generally along Sharon Mountain. There was a view across the valley from a hang glider point, and we were treated to the engine noise from a race track for quite a while. After passing by Belter¢s Bump, we dropped down quickly to the valley level for a long, mostly level walk into Falls Village. We skirted along the Housatonic River much of the way into town, including a very pretty park on the river. We encountered a hiker who was jogging toward us, asking if we had met a hiking group of 20 or so (we hadn¢t) and it turned out he had gone in the wrong direction from Falls Village. So he headed back (running) the other direction. Not long after that we left the park, went past a power station and crossed the Housatonic again on a brand new bridge. This was noteworthy to us since last year when we did this section, the old bridge was just being removed and we had to do a 3-mile road walk on some narrow roads to bypass the out-of-service bridge. So this year we got to use the brand new, Iron Bridge. The trail continued upstream along the river a short distance to a very pretty falls.At this point, I was struggling with the heat and humidity. There were some flat rocks near the falls and I had to sit a spell, drank a couple of bottles of water and had a protein bar. I was sweating profusely and Princess thought I should call Bearded Woods for a shuttle back. After sitting a while, I decided to press on even though we still had about 5 miles to go and a mountain to cross. So we started a long climb up Prospect Mountain. Not too far up the trail, we stopped at a small spring and Princess filtered several bottles of water. I think I drank almost 2 bottles. It was cold and refreshing and I felt considerably better. From there, it was still well over a mile to the top of Prospect. As we were partway up the climb, we met a large group of day hikers headed toward us and in the middle of the group was the man we met on the other side of Falls Village going the wrong way. Apparently he had caught up with his hiking club group and was hiking back into Falls Village with them. I was running out of gas as we reached the top. Once over the top, we had a couple of smaller bumps to cross, but it was mostly a slow downhill with a couple of bumps to cross. One interesting feature we passed was a tall rock known as the Giant¢s Thumb (photo included). The last item worth noting was a sharp downhill to US 44. The trail was a steep downhill carved into a steep mountainside with a lot of rock steps and even a wood ladder. Once we hiked downtown into Salisbury, Hudson picked us up and wicked us back to Bearded Woods. It looks like another hot day tomorrow, so I¢m laying off the beer tonight and hydrating as much as possible with added electrolytes. The trail tomorrow is much tougher, so we¢re carrying more water. Big Lu¢s dinner creation was barbecue chicken on the grill, with baked beans, corn on the cob, potato salad and corned bread. Plus strawberry shortcake for dessert. So good.