Mention that you plan to climb Bear Mountain, and someone might ask, “Which one?”

That’s because there are 144 summits with that name in 34 states, including two in Connecticut.

When friends and I set out on a sunny morning last week to scale the taller of the Nutmeg State’s Bear Mountains, located in the northwestern town of Salisbury (the other peak is in Danbury), we realized a lot of other hikers had the same idea. The trailhead parking lot was jammed, and a long line of cars extended down the side of the road.

“Looks like we’ll have a lot of company,” I said, setting out on the Undermountain Trail with Maggie Jones, Phil Plouffe, Andy Lynn and Chris Woodside. Coincidentally, Andy had climbed one of New York’s 11 Bear Mountains only a few days earlier. I wonder if anyone has ever climbed all 144 in the United States – hmm.

Reaching a height of 2,316 feet, Connecticut’s ursine summit barely registers as a bump compared to 8,805-foot Bear Mountain in California, 8,459-foot Bear Peak in Colorado, or 5,320-foot Bear Mountain in Wyoming, but it is the tallest mountain that lies wholly within our elevation-challenged state. However, it is not the highest point in Connecticut – I’ll get to that in a minute.

From its trailhead at 276-acre Mount Riga State Park off Route 41, the path rises gradually but steadily for a little more than a mile, when it intersects with the south end of the Paradise Lane trail. Rather than turn here, we decided to continue straight on the Undermountain Trail, tag the summit, and then descend via the north end of Paradise Lane. Then we would retrace our steps back to our car, covering about 6.7 miles.

In retrospect, we should have hiked this loop in the opposite direction – it would have been a lot more fun and easier scrambling up Paradise Lane’s jumbled rocks than slipping and sliding on the way down.

No matter – it was a glorious autumn day for a hike, with copper and crimson hues of maples, oaks, birch and sassafras set off by verdant pines, hemlocks and mountain laurel. Maggie also pointed out a witch hazel’s delicate yellow flowers – the only native bush that flowers this time of year.

Another tree, with a furrowed bark and golden crown of leaves that glowed against an azure sky, had her stumped.

“What is that?” she wondered, marching over for a closer inspection.

After taking a photo and checking reference books later, she learned it was a balsam poplar, America’s northernmost hardwood. Balsam poplars grow in Alaska, Newfoundland, Labrador and, evidently, in northwestern Connecticut.

About a mile north of the Paradise Lane cutoff, the Undermountain Trail joins a section of America’s most celebrated footpath, the Appalachian Trail, which leads to Bear Mountain’s summit.

I’ve climbed Bear Mountain a couple times over the years, as has Maggie, but Chris had us both beat – she and her husband, Nat, first crossed the summit 35 years ago while on a months-long, 2,190-mile hike of the Appalachian Trail from Georgia to Maine.

All in all, that epic journey was a wonderful, life-changing experience, but Chris recalls that on challenging days she found herself thinking, “I’m never going hiking again!”

Happily, Chris and Nat today remain avid hikers, continuing to explore new territory as well as familiar haunts.

Our group arrived at the Bear Mountain summit to find it packed with humans and canines, most of whom were perched atop a massive stone tower built in 1885 by a mason named Owen Travis. A carved plaque at its base declares that the monument “marks the highest ground in Connecticut.”

The U.S. Geological Survey disproved this claim in 1940, when it determined that Connecticut’s highest point, 2,380 feet, is actually about a mile and a half away at the Massachusetts border, on the southwest shoulder of Mount Frissell.

High point or not, Bear Mountain offers exceptional views of the Berkshires in Massachusetts to the north and New York’s Catskills to the west.

After descending the summit’s steep, rocky north slope, we veered onto Paradise Lane and hiked over gentler terrain past a clearing with a resplendent view of Bear’s sprawling mountainside. We also crossed the edge of Sages Ravine.

Detouring here to explore this magnificent gorge and its tumbling waterfalls would have added extra miles and hours to a long day. As Phil put it: “Nearly five hours of hiking and five hours of driving.”

We’ll have to visit Sages another time.

Bear Mountain is 107 miles from New London, but the hike is worth the drive.

The best access is on the Undermountain Trail on Route 41, 3.2 miles north of Route 44 in the center of Salisbury.