Rattlesnake Mountain is yet another steep trap rock ridge, part of the Metacomet range that includes The Hanging Hills and Mt. Higby. After reading about it on the CtMuseumquest web page, I went looking for Hospital rock. Very fortunately, someone has placed a cache near the rock, providing coordinates.
Parked on Metacomet Road, after passing many "No Parking" signs, at what seemed like a safe spot. The trail head leads to this remnant of a road:
Very eroded & steep,it climbs the full height of Rattlesnake Mountain in a few hundred yards.
GPS brought me over a few dirt roads to the cache, which was only a few yards from Hospital Rock. The Rock is much more subtle that I'd expected. Somehow I was expecting a wide-open area on a prominence, but its in a flat, wooded area. One could walk right over it without noticing. The carvings themselves are very faint. You can highlight them by brushing them with flour, and if someone hadn't done this recently, I wouldn't have noticed them at all. I brought my own flour & brush, and dusted until I ran out of flour.
And the Neatest Carving Award goes to:
Back to the trail for another cache, this one near one of those old Nike Missile sites.
The Trail goes right over it.
Lots of rusted fencing about.
And a nice view of a toney neighborhood:
Even the parts of the project that I expect to go "routinely", sometimes have problems. They must be "routine" problems.
I got a few ripples. One day, I will figure out what exactly causes this.
Jay's building manual advocates glassing all parts, then glassing in a strip on the outside. Instead, I left the top of the deck un-glassed, and masked an overhand, as on my last two builds. My choice of masking tape (filament) was slightly better than the last time, but this time I had to pull off left-over filaments.
