Tom Rankin
Well-known member
The access to this tower used to be private but has recently been acquired by the state. I guess you could access it from others directions, but it would have been a bushwhack, and maybe that is why it was never on the ADK List.
We found the dirt road off of Rt. 26, and started walking the almost flat grade at 11:50 AM. (The first part of the day was packing up what we left at the BBQ the previous night. Then we had a great breakfast in Keene, meeting Randy and AJTIV by chance). After about a mile, we turned left at a very obvious junction, where orange flagging continued all the way to the summit. There are a lot of brushy lots along the way, do no confuse them for roads. There is one more intersection where you go right, but again, it is clearly marked. The road and the trail are both very muddy and in need of some proper trail maintenance. There is virtually no rock work on this trail. There are a few old wooden bridges that span small streams, and while crossable, these need some work as well. We also managed to find a lot of Blackberries, a few raspberries, and even 1 blue berry patch along the way. There were moose droppings at one point, but no live animals.
The day was warm and very humid, and the last section of the climb goes up over 1000' in less than a mile, so we took our time and arrived on top around 1:50. The views were mostly concealed by fog, but we could see a small pond to the SE and a dirt road along side it. Hmmmmm?
The tower itself is in decent shape. The roof is still (barely) on and the metal itself looks to be solid. One of the footings is eroding away. The stairs are chained to the structure at the bottom and would be pretty dicey to climb, so we opted not to.
The walk down was much faster, taking a little over an hour.
We finished the day with a trip to LPPB, and had some good IPA!
We found the dirt road off of Rt. 26, and started walking the almost flat grade at 11:50 AM. (The first part of the day was packing up what we left at the BBQ the previous night. Then we had a great breakfast in Keene, meeting Randy and AJTIV by chance). After about a mile, we turned left at a very obvious junction, where orange flagging continued all the way to the summit. There are a lot of brushy lots along the way, do no confuse them for roads. There is one more intersection where you go right, but again, it is clearly marked. The road and the trail are both very muddy and in need of some proper trail maintenance. There is virtually no rock work on this trail. There are a few old wooden bridges that span small streams, and while crossable, these need some work as well. We also managed to find a lot of Blackberries, a few raspberries, and even 1 blue berry patch along the way. There were moose droppings at one point, but no live animals.
The day was warm and very humid, and the last section of the climb goes up over 1000' in less than a mile, so we took our time and arrived on top around 1:50. The views were mostly concealed by fog, but we could see a small pond to the SE and a dirt road along side it. Hmmmmm?
The tower itself is in decent shape. The roof is still (barely) on and the metal itself looks to be solid. One of the footings is eroding away. The stairs are chained to the structure at the bottom and would be pretty dicey to climb, so we opted not to.
The walk down was much faster, taking a little over an hour.
We finished the day with a trip to LPPB, and had some good IPA!
