Cohos Trail to Close

[jrichard]

Perhaps the trail could be truncated at Coleman State park? The trail south to the Whites is absolutely wonderful. It would be a real shame to lose that.

 

[askus3]

On August 21, I took a group on a hike I led up to Dixville Peak. It was a dismal day. But the trail did not add any enthusiasm to the hike. The whole section from Table Rock south to Dixville Peak was a disaster. This is the section immediately south of Dixville Notch. See the photos 54-65 to see how poorly maintained this trail is. What you don't see is the .25 inch of muck under the vegetation you walk thru. Then I had the nerve to tell the group later in the week we are going to climb Percy Peak & Rogers Ledge via the Cohos Trail. I nearly had a mutiny on my hands. Fortunately those hikes were on excellent dry days and the trail in those areas was far better maintained and definitely worth the visit.

 

[jrichard]

What you don't see is the .25 inch of muck under the vegetation you walk thru.

Like poor plowing on secondary roads, poor drainage is almost par for the course for secondary trails, at least those I've hiked on. It's an unfortunate side effect of the dismal science of economics. This is true even for the southern NH trails that I frequent - and forest roads. (And quads make this matter MUCH worse!)

If you get to see Dixville and Table Rock in the sun, you'll probably like it.

 

[askus3]

Even in the fog and mist, I was very impressed with Table Rock and of course that stretch of trail from Table Rock thru to the other side of Dixville Notch and down to The Balsams. Of course this stretch of trail long predated the Cohos Trail and will continue to be a well defined trail for many years to come.

 

[RoySwkr]

I think it would have been more successful to organize this not as an end-to-end trail at first, but move from the south to the north (or vice versa) over time.

I disagree. Many of the parts were already in place, and a trail the length of Coos County was the unifying theme.

If you look at the history of the Appalachian Trail, one guy thought of it, another guy founded the club, somebody else arranged for the missing sections to be completed. Now to keep it going requires fundraising and permitting in addition to actual field work, most done by paid staff. With the Cohos Trail, pretty much everything is run by one guy, for free. This is not just a lot of work, but requires very diverse skills.

Remember when the club lost it's insurance policy on the shelters and he personally went and boarded them up to reduce the liability of the club and landowners? I'm sure it's the same sort of thing now, if the club can't properly maintain the trail it will be officially closed rather than allowed to deteriorate unnoticed. Most of the trail was on existing hiking or snowmobile trails and these will continue to exist but will just not be marked as CT. Some of the connecting sections will no doubt vanish.

Of course the trail was a tenant-at-will with few formal right-of-way agreements, so every time landowners changed it was necessary to renegotiate. The U.S. Forest Service evicted him from the S end of Coos County as they didn't want more hikers in Wilderness, and a lot of talking was done about improved routes in Pittsburg with no apparent action. I can see why it was too much for one person, and I don't understand the dynamics well enough to know why other help wasn't available. If the AMC took over this project they have all the specialists to make it work, but it would be an entirely different sort of trail.

 

[miehoff]

Wow!

Shocking news to me. I intended to hike the trail in one shot a some point soon. I have already hiked several sections...man, what a bummer. I had a nice back and forth e mail conversation with Kim many years ago about the trail, the highlights and camping options. He's a great guy. It must be tough for him to make the decision.

 

[Waumbek]

Much of the CT was more or less a guided bushwhack, which would not appeal to the vast majority of hikers who come to the Whites expecting to find its manicured trails. That was a mixed blessing--lots fewer people and a touch of "wild," but swampy routes, road walks, and, what worried me, trails cut with no evidence of drainage measures and erosion-proofing. Kim's heart was in the right place, but he needed an army of helpers.

 

[dentonfabrics]

Has anyone here read Kim's trail guide to the Cohos? It's the first trail guide I've ever read front-to-back. Kim takes a narrative approach to the guide and it's extremely well written. You get the sense that the Cohos was his pride and joy. I feel bad that the trail is being closed and I feel bad for Kim.


bob

 

[jrichard]

Kim takes a narrative approach to the guide and it's extremely well written. You get the sense that the Cohos was his pride and joy.

His newsletters were also very entertaining, I wonder if there's an archive site?

 

[Dennis C.]

Cohos Trail to close .... Lack of funds? Why not volunteers?

I sent the following email to Kim:

"Kim, I have been reading your interesting Cohos newsletters for some time now. Instead of closing the trail system that you and others have put so much time and effort into, why not put out requests for adopter volunteers to maintain sections of it? I have been doing (and continue) volunteer trail work for over 20 years with a variety of Northeast groups. I agree that some funds are needed to buy tools, supplies, etc. but I'll bet you would find volunteers in that area if you just ask for them."

 

[Dennis C.]

Kim's reply:

Hello Dennis,

Good to hear from you.

I have held many a work day on the Cohos Trail and have tried to plug in
volunteers to take care of various sections of the trail, but it is a long
system and people just were not getting the job done well enough. The trail
needs a paid crew out there for five or six weeks a year...every year. We
just don't have the resources and I'm not at liberty so much any longer to
take off and maintain the most remote sections of the trail myself.

So in order to safeguard the public, we closed the trail down. However, it
many not stay closed for more than a year. There is an effort to reorganize
things, put the trail in the hands of new blood (I've done it for 10 years
without taking a salary), and come back out stronger than ever. That's
possible.

Kim

 

[RoySwkr]

This may not be the last such trail to go away either. The Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway only gets less than a dozen volunteers on trail work days, and is short of members even though dues are something like $5. It was built by the AMC Trail Crew, then managed by the NH Chapter, then some of the Trailwrights types, now has its own group with discouraging leadership turnover.

 

[carole]

Hopefully it is a wake up call that trail work is an important part of hiking.

May I repeat myself?

 

[dms]

Monadnock-Sunapee greenway

Roy, you are correct on this, I used send my membership dues and a donation for trail work, then about 4 years or so ago, I never got any further dues requests or mailings from them.

 

[Stan]

Maybe some of these smaller trails and organizations could collaborate on the basis that if they were combined they could form a trail from one end of the state to the other, like the Long Trail. Need to fill more gaps but a larger entity with fundraising capacity and more volunteer reach might be more effective.

File this under my business philosophy: We're not losing money fast enough, let's expand.

 

[dms]

Wapack Trail

For a successful template for a "small" trail organization, you can't do better than the Wapack Trail. They do it right. Great little trail and good communication with the members.

 

[David Metsky]

A lot of us do trailwork already and there are lots of existing trails in the Whites that could use adopters. I think the constituency for the Cohos trail is much smaller then for other trails. It's going to require a pretty large investment of time and effort and has a much smaller user base to draw upon. Even a large push of people, motivated by the sudden loss of the trail, won't establish a long term support team and things may lapse again shortly.

I like the idea of the Cohos trail, but it needs to be recognized for what it is right now; a fringe end-to-end trail. It doesn't have a lot of people who are interested in hiking it and it's not likely to have a lot of people even if the trail were in tip top shape. People just aren't as interested in traveling that far to hike on trails to vistas they perceive as less interesting. Many of the most popular sections already have established trails that have little to do with the connecting sections.

Maybe that will change over time, but for now it's going to be a hard sell. I'd be more likely to spend time maintaining a somewhat negelcted White Mountains trail then put in water bars on a section of snowmobile trail in Pittsburg.

However, if people here are motivated to put their time and efforts on the trail, I'll cheer loudly. I'd love it if the Cohos trail is reborn stronger and more solidly grounded.

-dave-

 

[chinooktrail]

Wait a SECOND!! I just purchased the book on the Coos trail TODAY at Pinkham, thinking it would be a wonderful warm up to doing the Long Trail. I spoke to the girl who sold it to me, and she never mentioned that it was now officially closed! That really really bites! Why didn't they put stickers on the cover stating that?!

First Phillips Brook, now this! This is really frustrating to those of us who live in the Valley, and need to escape to remote places to get away from the masses! Yet the vast majority of us do not make enough $$ to go very far, or spend any $$ while gone.

This was going to be the perfect 2 week vacation for me this May! Oh, my timing really stinks!

 

[David Metsky]

Wait a SECOND!! I just purchased the book on the Coos trail TODAY at Pinkham, thinking it would be a wonderful warm up to doing the Long Trail. I spoke to the girl who sold it to me, and she never mentioned that it was now officially closed! That really really bites! Why didn't they put stickers on the cover stating that?!

They just closed the trail last week. I doubt the word has gotten around much yet, especially since it's not the AMC's trail.

-dave-

 

[RoySwkr]

Wait a SECOND!! I just purchased the book on the Coos trail TODAY at Pinkham, thinking it would be a wonderful warm up to doing the Long Trail. I spoke to the girl who sold it to me, and she never mentioned that it was now officially closed!...

This was going to be the perfect 2 week vacation for me this May! Oh, my timing really stinks!

Hi Valley Girl,

Probably the clerk has no idea of this. When a book is recalled, the publisher usually sends notices to retailers asking them to return unsold copies for credit but obviously the system fell down here.

I would not let the trail closing discourage a May hike. The decision was made after last summer's trail work and probably nothing would have been done before May anyway. Some trail signs may be removed (and perhaps replaced with larger Trail Closed signs) but I haven't heard of any landowner that will forbid passage and anyone needing signs to find the trail probably didn't belong on the Cohos Trail anyway. The voracious bugs and high brooks will probably be more of a problem.

I personally am disappointed that the mountain route through Pittsburg was never built, and I will try to get in a couple sections near Milan before they grow in too bad.