Cape Horn State Forest

[NeoAkela]

Has anyone explored this area? Any access, such as from Lost Nation Road?

 

[Barbarossa]

There is a gate where the state forest extends to Lost Nation Road. You can road walk most of the way to the ridge. Depending on how much you want to scramble, the southern end of the ridge is easier access. It's worth the time to follow the whole ridge. I was up there the first day of spring this year. It seemed to have its own micro-climate.

 

[NeoAkela]

Thanks for the information! Hopefully it is OK to park off to the side of the gate? I'm looking forward to exploring there soon.

Is there any parking access on the southern end as well where it touches the road?

 

[Barbarossa]

Is there any parking access on the southern end as well where it touches the road?

Yes, that is where the gate is. Back in March I found a spot where the snow bank was narrow and that worked out OK

 

[RoySwkr]

We parked at a gate on the E side and followed a woods road in, there is also a sub-peak to climb on that side. There is a cliff just below the summit which we went N around and it was quite aways to find a route we liked up. There was a herd path along the summit ridge which as mentioned might be fun to walk the length of.

 

[sardog1]

Some pretty good stuff in the Ecological Inventory of Cape Horn State Forest :

"If New Hampshire has a geologic claim to fame, it is probably ring dikes. These are conspicuous bodies of both intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks with a circular outline in map view. The most complete ring dike, and the source of the classic study of this type of intrusion, is the Ossipee ring dike. Other ring dikes include Mt. Pawtuckaway, the Belknaps, and Mt. Tripyramid. The main portion of the White Mountains consists of several large, composite ring dikes, mostly cored by Conway Granite, and surrounded by concentric circular to crescent shaped dikes of igneous rocks of a range of textures and compositions. Immediately to the north, the Pliny Ring Dike Complex is a similar, if somewhat smaller version of the White Mountain complex. Cape Horn is underlain by a crescentic dike that is the westernmost portion of the Pliny Complex. This complex is Jurassic in age, dated at 182 million years old (Randall and Foland 1986). All of these ring dikes are part of the White Mountain Magma Series, a sequence
of plutonic and volcanic rocks that were derived directly from a mantle hot-spot at about the time of the initial opening of the Atlantic Ocean basin.

"Cape Horn is considered to be the best topographically expressed structure of its type in North America (Chapman 1948)."

 

[peakbagger]

I had a chance to join a group yesterday hiking Cape Horn in Northumberland NH. Definitely worth the trip. Its bushwhack but the woods conditions surrounding it, open hardwoods with a filled in canopy, makes navigation easy and barely a bushwhack. We approached it from Lost Nation road via a gated logging road that is the state's access to the property. The road runs past a power line and eventually fades away into older logging paths. We then started walk through the woods slightly slabbing the side of the mountain at one point cutting up to the base of one of the many talus fields on the east face. We eventually came out near the southern end of the ridge and then climbed to the ridge line. The trees had not yet budded out so we had occasional obscured views to the south. I was expecting the typical northern NH spruce fir along the ridge line but was surprisingly delighted that much of the ridge is a mature red pine. That makes for easy going and there are many games trails that follow the path of least resistance. There is plenty of deer sign along the route. Both sides of the ridge have steep drop offs and on occasion there are nice views to the east and west. Given the easy hiking I definitely recommend zig zagging the southern part of the ridge as there are quite a few nice viewpoints to both sides. As we progressed north, the east side starts to be the place to be as the steep drop off turns into cliffs with talus fields below. The cliffs tend to jut out over the surroundings making for great viewpoints (predominately of the Pilot range). The red pines grow right up to the cliff edge. As we progressed we saw and then heard a peregrine falcon and expect we were being warned that the falcon has a nesting site in the cliffs. The mountain has curved enough at this point that there are nice views south the whites with the Franconia Ridge, Garfield, the Twins and Crawford Notch summits visible. The view is then blocked by the pilot range but Mt Adams does pop up. In order not to disturb the falcon we got going and eventually left her territory. The going continued to be good and eventually we came out to prominent viewpoint with a very recent timber harvest immediately below the cliff. There also a very prominent property boundary running from the NE up to the summit (which had the obligatory register bottle). We then headed north along the edge of the cliff until we found a way to the logging road. From them on it was a sunny walk down the logging road along the obvious ridge line that wraps SE. Up high it was bare gravel, but as we dropped down it started to green up. Looking at what is growing in across the road, I expect like many north country logging roads, what was pleasant walking today may be gnarly in the future. We eventually came out on the power line right of way and just a quick walk down the right of way connected us up to the road we came in.

The overall loop was 6 hours, I was the slow poke but the group kept a fast pace, I expect I would have spent a bit more time going a slower pace and possibly exploring a bit more. One thing I did forget is that the north country tick population tends to follow the river valleys and Cape Horn is quite close to the Connecticut. Accordingly there were wood ticks. I found several crawling on me (I have the spray to coat my gear but haven't done it yet). Part of the reason for a fast hike was an abundance of black flies. One of the group elected to use a heat net, the rest of us were fine as long as we were moving but it did limit the length of some of our stops.

Definitely an out of the way trip for those who want to get away from the crowds on busy weekend and very pleasantly atypical for the north country.

 

[NHClimber]

I had a chance to join a group yesterday hiking Cape Horn in Northumberland NH. Definitely worth the trip. Its bushwhack but the woods conditions surrounding it, open hardwoods with a filled in canopy, makes navigation easy and barely a bushwhack. We approached it from Lost Nation road via a gated logging road that is the state's access to the property. The road runs past a power line and eventually fades away into older logging paths. We then started walk through the woods slightly slabbing the side of the mountain at one point cutting up to the base of one of the many talus fields on the east face. We eventually came out near the southern end of the ridge and then climbed to the ridge line. The trees had not yet budded out so we had occasional obscured views to the south. I was expecting the typical northern NH spruce fir along the ridge line but was surprisingly delighted that much of the ridge is a mature red pine. That makes for easy going and there are many games trails that follow the path of least resistance. There is plenty of deer sign along the route. Both sides of the ridge have steep drop offs and on occasion there are nice views to the east and west. Given the easy hiking I definitely recommend zig zagging the southern part of the ridge as there are quite a few nice viewpoints to both sides. As we progressed north, the east side starts to be the place to be as the steep drop off turns into cliffs with talus fields below. The cliffs tend to jut out over the surroundings making for great viewpoints (predominately of the Pilot range). The red pines grow right up to the cliff edge. As we progressed we saw and then heard a peregrine falcon and expect we were being warned that the falcon has a nesting site in the cliffs. The mountain has curved enough at this point that there are nice views south the whites with the Franconia Ridge, Garfield, the Twins and Crawford Notch summits visible. The view is then blocked by the pilot range but Mt Adams does pop up. In order not to disturb the falcon we got going and eventually left her territory. The going continued to be good and eventually we came out to prominent viewpoint with a very recent timber harvest immediately below the cliff. There also a very prominent property boundary running from the NE up to the summit (which had the obligatory register bottle). We then headed north along the edge of the cliff until we found a way to the logging road. From them on it was a sunny walk down the logging road along the obvious ridge line that wraps SE. Up high it was bare gravel, but as we dropped down it started to green up. Looking at what is growing in across the road, I expect like many north country logging roads, what was pleasant walking today may be gnarly in the future. We eventually came out on the power line right of way and just a quick walk down the right of way connected us up to the road we came in.

The overall loop was 6 hours, I was the slow poke but the group kept a fast pace, I expect I would have spent a bit more time going a slower pace and possibly exploring a bit more. One thing I did forget is that the north country tick population tends to follow the river valleys and Cape Horn is quite close to the Connecticut. Accordingly there were wood ticks. I found several crawling on me (I have the spray to coat my gear but haven't done it yet). Part of the reason for a fast hike was an abundance of black flies. One of the group elected to use a heat net, the rest of us were fine as long as we were moving but it did limit the length of some of our stops.

Definitely an out of the way trip for those who want to get away from the crowds on busy weekend and very pleasantly atypical for the north country.

You mean Thompson Rd off of Lost Nation (Google Maps)? Thanks for the info. Trying to determine where to park.

 

[peakbagger]

We parked on Lost Nation road. The trip leader gave us (Lat Lon: 44.5618, -71.4965) off Lost Nation Road. The USGS map shows it as a 4WD road with a spot elevation of 1395 at the junction with Lost Nation road. The road is on street view, if you enter the lat long and look around you can see the gate. Plenty of parking on the side of the road. Its 1.9 miles north of the intersection with Page Hill road. I would be hardpressed to see how you could find a better approach. This route was selected as its entirely on state of NH land with no need to go on private property.

 

[NHClimber]

Cool. I see the gate. Thanks!