Roy, I found out why I initially never found your trip report for your hike up Readsboro - because you called it the Fairington Cemetery East Peak and never used the word "Readsboro" once in your description of the hike.
As for Houghton, I wandered up there on July 29. I ended up following my original game plan of heading in from the northeast. Because the road I wanted to use wasn't named in the atlas, I had to guess that it was Williams Road in Readsboro, and fortunately I was correct. It's the last road on the left before Routes 8 and 100 split at Heartwellville. Once it passes by the houses it becomes Recreational Road #73 and goes into the woods for a few miles. It's a dirt road with some roughish sections, but nothing really threatening, and I was able to drive my small car all the way to where it becomes a jeep road and a driveway leads off to the left to a private camp.
According to Delorme, it would be a short way further ahead until I reached a logging road on the left that would lead me all the way to the east side of Houghton. However, in walking along the jeep road, I never did find this. The one thing that looked like it could be it merely turned into a backway entrance to the private camp. I ended up following the old road until it brought me about as close as it was going to get to Houghton, then turned off onto an old skidder road. I followed this for about a quarter mile, but then it started to head away from my destination and was petering out, so I started my bushwhack there. I was in a deciduous woods, but because of the understory of low trees/bushes, it wasn't quite smooth sailing (to this day, my standard of truly open woods is the high point of the Hoosac Range).
After 10-15 minutes of navigating around and pushing stuff out of my way, I stumbled upon an old logging road. This may have been the one I was initially looking for. Having subsequently looked at an older atlas, I observed that my target logging road grows indistinct just before reaching the jeep road. Regardless, the old road I found was headed in the same direction I was, so I began following it. It passed through some wet areas, but otherwise it wasn't too bad initially. However, once it started climbing up to the col between Houghton and the lower mountain to the east, it became horribly, horribly overgrown with raspberry bushes and other prickly things and tall bushes that were the better part of my height. I quickly regretted wearing shorts, and the going became gruellingly slow. After about 100 meters of this with no abatement in sight, I cut a beeline for the nearest woods. Once there, I had to cross a few equally horribly overgrown skidder paths before I was finally free from the malicious weeds.
By this point I was climbing up something, so I kept going. Once at the top, I hoped I was near the canister, but then the GPS told me I still had 0.7 to go. Due to all the leaves, I couldn't see where a higher point could be, so luckily I had the GPS to roughly point the way (since it constantly disagrees with itself in what direction the destination is). I dropped into a col, then kind of passed by another subsidiary peak before finally ascending the main summit cone. I was most of the way to the true summit, when I stumbled upon an ATV trail, which was coming in from the south/west. I wish I'd known that was there! It led me to within 400 feet of the canister, and from there it wasn't too difficult to make my way to the register and the buggy summit. Due to all the flies, I didn't stay long, so soon enough I was headed off the summit cone again.
Based on my experience on the way up, I knew I didn't want to return to that old logging road, and unfortunately the ATV trail wasn't heading in a useful direction. I ultimately set a course directly for where I started my bushwhack, following the main ridge north. I didn't do a very good job of staying on top of it (at the time I was simply trying to take the shortest path), and instead slabbed along its western side. Again, my progress was slowed by understory of vegetation, which did a decent job of obscuring blowdowns. I crossed the occasional skidder path, but thankfully none of these were as overgrown as what was lurking on the eastern side of the mountain. Just overall, it proved to a straightforward walk back to where I started the bushwhack, and once there, I was quickly back at the car.
Overall, the bushwhack to Houghton was tougher than I thought it would be, and if I could do it again, I'd try to use the ATV trail I found. Then again, I have no idea where it comes out or what private property it crosses.
