Kittredge Hill
Mileage: 3.7Elevation gain: 880'
Trails used: road walk, Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway.
Sunday's weather looked to be better than Saturdays so I wanted to get some extra miles in, and not go up north to hike since it was NASCAR race weekend. Plus, the Highland games were going on in Lincoln so it would be a traffic nightmare. So I headed west towards the Pillsbury State Park area and its plethora of smaller peaks to find something interesting to hike. I decided on Kittredge Hill since it was trailed and would be a nice warm-up hike if I planned on doing a second one.
Kittredge Hill is in Sullivan County, New Hampshire and is along the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway which is a 50 mile hiking trail that runs from Mount Monadnock in Jaffrey, New Hampshire to Mount Sunapee in Newbury, New Hampshire. The trail system is nice; blazing and signage to direct you and the trails are well maintained.
Walking down Washington-Bradford Road (Halfmoon Pond Road) which is a class V road. I didn't want to drive Cindy down the road just in case (you could drive down to the trail if you take it easy, I found out) so I parked at a pull-out right before the road sign.
This is where the Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway crosses the road and heads down this active logging road. Its blazed in white and you can see the arrow pointing the way.
The trail branches off from the logging road and heads up towards the Ridge Link Trail.
There is only one water crossing and it has a bridge so it was no problem.
The trail was pretty steady for the whole length of the almost 1.5 mile one way to the summit.
A junction of the Bear Pond Trail and Ridge Trail. Make sure to turn here to head to the summit of Kittredge Hill.
Easy woods walking on a slightly humid day.
A rock step section heading up to the summit area of Kittredge Hill.
The summit area of Kittredge Hill (elevation 2116' ), which is about 50-75 feet off of the trail.
I turned around and headed back down. You come across this recent logging slash cut on the way up/down. The only blemish on this hike today
Silver Mountain
Mileage: 1.4
Elevation gain: 490'
Trails used: Silver Mountain Trail, bushwhack.
A quick hour jaunt and I wanted to do another hike as the first one netted about 3.7 miles so off I went after a quick look at the gazetteer. I settled on Silver Mountain which is part of the Ashuelot River Headwaters Forest , after I looked at Bean Mountain and decided it was a bit too long on a so-so day.
Silver Mountain is located in Lempster, New Hampshire. You can reach the trail head off of South Road, which is a pretty rough road off of Mountain Road. Directions are listed on the link above. Funny thing is I had no clue this mountain had a trail; I started this as a bushwhack to just below the summit where I found the yellow blazes (duh!). Oh well, it was still fun to do.
I started this hike off as a bushwhack, which was pretty steep to start. Most of the woods along the road are posted No Trespassing.
Open woods for the whole hike and you come across ledge areas on the way up.
Approaching the summit area of Silver Mountain (elevation 2160'), that has a good sized cairn with an American flag flying proudly in the nice breeze.
Misty rain moved in, eliminating any views I would get for this hike.
I noticed this yellow X and thought it might be for the summit of Silver Mountain, but then I noticed more blazes so I followed them, which turned out to be a trail.
Like I said, zero views. Bummer.
The Silver Mountain trail was easy to follow and yellow blazed. It even crosses a snowmobile trail on the way up/down.
The gate for the start of the Silver Mountain Trail, which was about .25 miles away from where I parked Cindy. Boy was I ashamed.
A nice quick two hikes back to back but the humid was bringing in some showers so it was time to call it a day and head home to watch some football. Both hikes were enjoyable; trails easy to follow and well maintained. Silver Mountain would be nice on a good day so definitely putting this one on the "will return to" list.
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