Jericho Trail, Waterbury CT

We had a lot of rain yesterday but it was clear and the trees were changing so it looked like a good day to hike. There are a series of blue blazed trails in Waterbury and the Jericho is the longest at 3.4 miles. It runs mostly north south and is quite sporting with a number of steep climbs. It also has some nice ravines and caves. The only view on the trail is pretty closed in when the leaves are on the trees.

We parked near the southern terminus on Echo Lake road. The trail climbs steeply to the ridge and then runs along some cliffs with partial views south.

It then stays relatively level for a while crossing several wet areas which were over run by newts. On the way back it was frogs.

Shortly thereafter we began a descent into a rocky ravine. It was quite steep both going down and coming back up. On the way back up we traversed midway along a cliff face.

We continued to climb until we reached the high point, 810', where we stopped to cook up some noodles for lunch. There are views here in the winter, but not much to be seen now.

From there we dropped down into another ravine. There was a shelter cave near the top. Many of the rocks showed a lot of quartz with mica inclusions.

We then dropped down to Jericho brook and followed it west for a while. The trail crosses it at a point that is probably easy normally, but with all of the rain it was a bit tricky. The trail then follows woods roads through an area that burned in the 80s. Eventually we passed another large shelter cave and reached the end of the trail at a junction with the Mattatuck trail. It was obvious there was a nice view just a bit up that trail so we headed up. Nice open rock face with views north and east.

We returned the way we had come with only a slight detour when we missed the turn off of one of the woods road (you can see it on the track). This lead to a short bushwack and a tricky crossing of Jericho Brook. Otherwise the trip back was uneventful. The hike was about 6.8 miles and took us 4:20 including half and hour for lunch. It dumped rain on the drive home so we got quite lucky.