Tariffville Gorge

On my first visit in 2017, there was only a hand drawn trail map done by local students and next to no information about how to get there.  How far this property has come since then.

From Cowles Park there is a 1.1 mile yellow blazed loop which connects to the 1.3 mile orange South End loop.  Trails were fairly flat easy walking through varied forest with greater changes past the utility corridor.

All the highlights of the area are away from these two main loops.  In 2017 getting down to the Farmington River required a bit of guessing at random trails heading downhill from the main loop.  Once along the river well-established paths hug the river bank.

A proliferation of mountain bike trails now criss-cross the property and while some work has been done identifying bikes vs hiking trails, I ended up on a couple mountain bike switch backs which just aren’t fun to hike in my opinion.

The Metacomet climbs from along the river up a steep climb (though not directly uphill) to the overlook before hooking north into the Hatchet Hill Wilderness Area.

Heading north: 0.2 mile road walk to Peak Mountain

Heading south: 0.6 mile road walk coming from Bartlett’s Tower