Hiking

Compared to the White Mountains [1], the Mahoosuc Range outside of Berlin [2] is a ghost-town—and that’s just how hikers like it. You may not see a soul on a spring hike through the range along the Appalachian Trail. And unlike the rest of the range across the border in Maine [3], this section of the Mahoosucs is full of moderate stretches with flowered glades and paper birch stands below the tree line. You can enter the range from the Success Trail, a former logging road off of Route 16 a few miles north of Berlin.

New Hampshire’s [4] largest state forest isn’t the White Mountains, it’s the Nash Stream Forest, a vast wilderness of wetlands and wooded peaks that makes up the bulk of the Great North Woods [5]. Cutting through the center of the forest, the Cohos Trail (www.cohostrail.org [6]) offers 162 miles of virtually unbroken wilderness from the White Mountains to the Canadian border. The heart of the trail are hikes over South Percy, a gum drop of a mountain with some dramatic cliffs, and North Percy, a steep climb to a vast treeless summit with spectacular vistas over the forest.

Farther north, Dixville’s namesake Notch is a tight and narrow cut through the mountains with cliffs on either side. You can look straight down onto it from a height of 1,000 feet at Table Rock in Dixville Notch State Park (Rte. 26, Dixville, 603/538-6707, www.nhstateparks.com/dixville.html [7]). The half-mile climb up on all fours starts on Route 26 across from the entrance to the Balsams.