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Continuing on, we drove past Mountain Road, where we had turned off last time, and continued on to Angola Road. We turned off there and drove west, then south on Mine Hill Road, which was extremely steep. I can't imagine how the people who live on that road get to and from their homes when there is snow on the ground. We found a three-car parking area that luckily only had one car in it, and found the trailhead across the street:
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The Mine Hill trail is marked with diamond-shaped yellow blazes, and is steep at first.
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After gaining some elevation, we had a peak through the trees at the surrounding area:
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The Mine Hill trail ended after 0.2 miles, and we turned right (southwest) onto Sackett trail, blazed with a yellow circle. (I don't know why they didn't switch colors instead of or in addition to shape.) We had another nice view from this trail:
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After 0.4 miles, the Sackett trail dead-ended at the Stillman trail, again blazed yellow, this time in a square shape. We turned right, continuing to the south. The leaves were changing color:
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We found a downed tree and each had to try climbing it.
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After 0.7 miles, the Stillman trail dead-ended at a nice overlook:
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We backtracked 0.4 miles to an intersection with the Short Cut trail, blazed with a yellow triangle, and turned right (east) on that. After 0.2 miles, the trail reached Hall Road, and we turned right (south) onto that. After about 0.15 miles, we reached a gate, and continued past it onto the blue-blazed Compartment trail (which was also teal-blazed, as part of the Highlands trail). We found an sign from almost 40 years earlier, when the forest had still been owned by Harvard University:
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Continuing about 0.2 miles from the gate, we encountered a stream. This ran off Sutherland Pond, which is the only (or one of the only) bodies of water in the forest open for swimming. I believe that most of the bodies of water are manmade and used for reservoirs, but that Sutherland Pond is natural. Downhill, the stream runs into Mineral Spring Brook.
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Right after the spring, the blue-blazed trail ended at the white-blazed Scenic trail that made a very sharp turn at this point, so that we had a choice of either going south or southwest on the trail. The teal-blazed Highlands trail continued on the portion of the Scenic trail that led to the southwest. I actually missed this turnoff and continued northwest on what was probably a ditch formed by runoff (or perhaps it was an unmaintained trail). This was blocked by a couple of fallen logs, which should have been a clue to me that it wasn't a trail, or at least not an active trail. Trying to show off for YBS and Bombastic, I thought I would hop over one log and then the other. Instead, I tripped over the first one and fell, partially breaking my fall with my arms but still hitting my chin on the second log. I felt stupid and was glad that they didn't capture that on film. I had about 1/4” cut on my chin and an abrasion about the size of a dime. Luckily I had a couple of cotton handkerchiefs with me, which helped to stop the bleeding. We continued on in this unmaintained trail for about 0.2 miles, ducking another obstacle, with me even commenting that it wasn't maintained well, until I realized that I hadn't seen blazes in a while. I then led the group back past the obstacles and killer logs, and found the white and teal blazes of the real trail. I reminded YBS and Bombastic not to just blindly follow me, but to keep looking for blazes themselves.
