Sleeping Giant State Park, Hamden CT

May 26, 2012

3:00pm - 5:30pm

Blue Trail - 2.0 Miles

Castle Trail - 1.6 Miles

Difficulty: Intermediate


This blog was created as a way to keep donors up-to-date with my training for the 26 mile Xtreme Hike to benefit Cystic Fibrosis.  To make a donation to our team, please go to http://www.cff.org/LWC/hiketocurecf

With the holiday weekend and a wedding to attend to, there aren't many mountainous areas along the shoreline of Connecticut, but there is Sleeping Giant State Park across from Quinnipiac University in Hamden. As you can see from the picture above, the park got its name from the image of a giant that is laying asleep.  My hike would start off on the Violet Trail which starts off hugging the near by river until you get to remnants of an old building.

Just behind the above structure is an open field and old quarry with a straight up rock face of close to 400 feet; this is where we veered off to take the Blue Trail which traverses the edges of the cliff. It was quite taxing but the views on the way up and from the top are worth the extra effort.

After resting for a little while, we continued on our way towards the castle and took a few detours so check out the other cliff edges in the area. While it might seem like I love heights, I can honestly say that I really am not that big of a fan, but in order to keep things interesting and get some great pics, I test my limits every once in a while.

My friend on the other hand had a great time scaring his girlfriend who was not as fond as he was with the cliff edges

To try and give everyone a better image of how the cliffs were, I decided to change it up and have a bit of fun with the numerous videos we took and make a minute and a half movie trailer so hope you enjoy it (note there is background music, so if at work, be sure to keep those speakers down)

After sitting up top for a bit, we started to hear the sound of thunder and decided to get out of the open and head back down on the trail and reach the castle before we got poured on.  The next half a mile was fairly rocky as we descended down the "neck" of the giant and back onto the dirt trails. It was quite humid, but the winds started picking up and not at a moment too soon as it was in the upper 80s.

After about an hour and a half we finally made it to the castle which, as a kid, was the main reason you would hike sleeping giant.  It was nice to sit at the top for a but with the thunderstorms approaching fast, we had to cut our hike short and took the gravel path 1.6 miles back to the parking lot.

While we missed the storms, it was the smart decision to make as they sounded pretty bad.  Next up on the list is a 15 mile hike this coming weekend (rain or shine, but most likely rain) and then hopefully my final training hike will be at Mount Katahdin on the Knife's Edge.  To say I am terrified of this hike would be an understatement, but what an accomplishment it would be!!