Keeping Their Balance on Ragged Mountain

All week, I had been looking forward to using a grip hoist, a combination of cable and crank that can move stones weighing up to two tons. There were several of them, too, fastened to old backpacks that had been stripped down to their aluminum frames. Unfortunately, they’d never make it onto our shoulders, or to the trails we had planned to work on last Saturday morning.
Gary St. Amand has led trail maintenance parties like this for years here in Connecticut’s premiere rock climbing area, and while the heavy rain of last weekend cancelled this National Trails Day event, he and several other members of the Ragged Mountain Foundation took me on a tour of the group’s fifty-six-acre preserve in Southington.
A founding member and former Director of this nonprofit land trust, St. Amand has been a true pioneer in Connecticut conservation. The RMF was the first rock climbing group in the country to gain ownership of a climbing area. Since then, the RMF’s effort has gained momentum, even as they juggle hands-on activities like trail work and clean-up with sensitive community issues like parking and access.
With its large membership of responsible hikers and climbers, the RMF is an asset to this area. Today’s group in particular brought its collective experience and credentials to this Trails Day effort. John Rek, for example, is also a member of the New Haven Hiking Club and the Connecticut Climbers and Mountaineers and regularly maintains the stretch of the Metacomet Trail between Route 364 and the Berlin Turnpike. St. Amand himself, aside from leading the day’s work, is one of many health professionals in the RMF. Chuck Boyd, board member of the RMF and co-chair of its Property Management Committee, brings to these cliffs the experience of having summited Mount Everest in 2004.
Despite such credentials, there are those visitors to Ragged Mountain who mar the image of responsible rock climbers. Neighbors I spoke with last week were concerned with a variety of issues that surround Ragged Mountain, including street congestion, climbers changing clothes in plain view of their homes, litter and displaced wildlife.
Meanwhile, the ongoing disagreement regarding a possible parking area nearby was also evident. One neighbor welcomed it, while another worried that it would attract an unwanted element to the area, citing instances of teen drug and alcohol use on the property. Last September, a number of Andrews Street residents successfully petitioned the Southington Town Council to abandon a plan for public parking. A call to the Southington Town Manager’s Office last week concluded that there are no current plans for designating a lot.
The RMF understands the neighbors’ concerns and hopes to work towards sharing the area in a cooperative manner.
"Ragged stands as a classic example of the need to balance recreational use and the concerns of neighbors," said St. Amand. "I feel for the neighbors and would not want people parking in front of my house leaving litter and making noise."
He does, however, believe that the RMF can help alleviate these concerns.
"On the other hand, I’ve always felt that, when properly managed, an area like Ragged Mountain can be an asset to a community, and not a liability," St. Amand said.
My firsthand look at the RMF’s work began on Sheldon Street, the mainstage for many of these concerns. After just fifteen minutes through the woods, I soon understood the attraction; these cliffs beg to be climbed.
With approximately 200 climbing routes on the face of Ragged Mountain, the trail below is surprisingly spotless, while on each side of the promontory are beautiful traprock staircases the RMF has constructed. Basalt water bars diverted the day’s downpours as the steps zig-zag to the 761-foot summit.
Such an environment doesn’t happen by accident. And, unfortunately, not without hardship, either. Early in the RMF’s existence, after investing thousands of dollars and hours of physical work, chainlink gabions installed by volunteers were purposely destroyed. St. Amand says that this vandalism only strengthened the group’s dedication to its mission of "public access to Connecticut’s high and wild places." Now the group only uses the traprock of Ragged Mountain itself for trail work, each individual step a monument to the perseverance of the RMF.
People have been coming to Ragged Mountain to climb for over sixty years, and as the sport only grows in popularity, they will continue to come here, which is why the RMF’s presence is important for all stakeholders.
Other than Sheldon Street, the closest public parking to Ragged Mountain is at Timberlin Park. To see how realistic Timberlin is as an access point, I parked here last Tuesday and picked up the Metacomet Trail just a short distance from the circle. While the hike up the 520-foot Short Mountain is not necessarily a difficult one in itself, it does expend time and energy that I imagine climbers would rather be using on the rock face.
A half hour from Timberlin, already twice the time from Sheldon Street, the descent is a quick but rough one and a load of climbing gear on your back wouldn’t make it any easier. Forty minutes into my hike, I reached Carey Street and the four No Parking signs installed where climbers’ cars once lined the road.
I continued uphill on the Metacomet. If Short Mountain doesn’t faze your legs, the incline to Small Cliff might. The blue trail has you scrambling up boulders to its merge with the Ragged Mountain Preserve Trail, the blue and red-blazed path to the right that creates a six-mile loop with the Metacomet. At this junction, I took a left down the Metacomet only to head back up to the summit of Ragged Mountain.
This time, however, it took nearly an hour to get here. I understood the parking conflict whole a lot better now and I hadn’t even been to Ragged Mountain on a sunny day yet. On a nice weekend afternoon, you can find between twenty-five and thirty climbers from all over the region at Ragged Mountain.
Despite the drizzle, Jake Feintzeig made the hour-long trip from Fairfield because he says it’s the best spot in the state. As the Dartmouth College student belayed his friend somewhere down below on the route known as Broadway, he told me about his summer internship with the Park Service in Washington State. Before heading out west in a few days, he decided to spend some time at Ragged Mountain.
That says a lot about this place and the people who love it. Take a walk around here, though, and you can see it written in stone.