Ambitious Weekend

I may or may not have mentioned before that Pat and I and all 4 children are Giant Masters. I have been interested in completing the Four Season Giant Master program, meaning you have hiked every segment of every trail in all 4 seasons. I have set this as a personal goal, not for publication, simply for my own motivation and satisfaction.

So with the onset of spring on Sunday evening, I was faced with 7 sections not completed in winter and one which was nagging at me from the hike I messed up the other night. I was hoping to get the two segments of the Orange and White trails in one hike but on St. Patrick's evening I got a late start with Sadie and went up the Orange from the picnic area. I suppose the Green trail would have been more appropriate to the day but I already have the entire Green trail. When I finally reached the Red Triangle, it was getting dark so I decided to just go down and take the Yellow trail back to the car.

To reach my goal on the weekend, I decided on two hikes, both requiring some distance and ups and downs. On Saturday, I went for the Blue and White trails between the Red Circle and Red Triangle. Sadie & I started up the Red Circle from home, making sure to get to the real Red Circle and not just the access road because I also have dreams of being a 12 month Giant Master someday so I keep track of each segment in each month also. We got to the Blue trail and took a right up and over the first ridge, one of my favorite parts of the park. Hiking along the trail atop the cliffs in the sunshine is one of the joys of the Giant.

I was intent on hitting the Blue/Violet crossover, which is an annoyance because in a case like this, in order to complete the Blue segment along with the B/V crossover, it's simply a hike down and back up again, and rather steep. I'm typing this days later but I remember taking times at the various intersections. I'm pretty sure I arrived at the Blue trail from home in 15 minutes and the top of the B/V crossover in another 15 minutes. The trip down and up the B/V crossover took about 7 minutes.

From there we finished the Blue segment at the Red Square and took that to Green and then to what I call "Little Italy" where Green, White and the Red Square come together. We started up the White from there, technically missing a tiny piece between Green and the Red Square and were soon up on top of the White cliffs. We scrambled down the rocks to the Red Circle and arrived home possibly a little over 1 hour after we had left but my numbers may not be correct from memory.

On Sunday I took Sadie out in the early afternoon intent on completing everything, including redoing the Red Hexagon out to Mount Carmel Ave. We parked in the picnic area again and started up the White trail. It seemed to me like we had done this recently but we were soon on the Tower path and shortly afterwards up on the wonderful White lookout over Quinnipiac. We walked right by "the pit" where I have since learned there may be another cave and possibly a cave system.

We continued on into the woods again, crossing the Orange trail and almost losing the trail on an unmarked extension that dead-ends. We hopped down the rocks to the Red Triangle. As we walked up towards the Tower path, I really only needed to get there and go down but I decided to pick up a few extra March segments and turned left onto the Green. We completed the Green segment which dead ends up on the White lookout again and I decided to get the Blue/White crossover done. There is some confusion when following the B/W crossover because the markers are Blue and somewhere in there you find yourself on the Blue trail without knowing that you completed the B/W.

We got back to the Red Triangle and jumped on the Tower path going down. This part was easy but following the Red Hexagon along the Tower path is not easy. There is a significant shortcut which I convinced myself was the Red Hexagon, as I had the previous week in the dark. Then we rounded the next bend and I was unsure where the Red Hexagon had gone. I knew it had to be farther to the east so we took the Nature trail off the end of the next east-pointing bend in the Tower path. When we got to the Red Hexagon, I saw that we had once again missed a segment and was determined to right my previous wrong. So we hiked up to the Tower path and up to where we had taken the erroneous shortcut. We turned around and headed back all the way down the Red Hexagon to Mount Carmel Ave.

At some point here I called home and said I was almost done. But I still had one segment left to complete in the waning winter hours. So I drove around to Tuttle and we hiked in to the quarry on the Red Diamond to complete that segment which lies between the quarry and where the Red Hexagon turns uphill. There is more of a climb up to the quarry than I realized but we went all the way across the opening of the quarry and I made sure to touch the marker on the Blue trail.

A Winter Giant Master! One season completed!