WeRmudfun
New member
It is a very rare occasion when I can get a Saturday off and the weather is as great as it was last weekend. We took the opportunity to bag another fire tower peak. This time it was Currier Mountain, #88 for us on the NH Fire Tower List of the 93 towers that are standing, once stood or were proposed.
We originally attempted this back in August by following the abandoned Mill Brook Trail. It was the last day of our vacation that week and we had already knocked out 9 peaks. We were tired but went anyway. We went about 2 miles (very hard to follow) and then it started raining, so we figured it was Mother Nature's way of telling us to take a break. We turned around and waited for another day, Saturday was the day.
This time we were hiking with friends and decided to take the logging roads and snowmobile trails, then possibly run into the old Mill Brook Trail. Back in August we had checked out FR93 (Mill Brook Road) as a starting point too. The gate was locked then, so we were very happy to find it open on Saturday and we all drove down to FR93B. That saved us a couple of miles.
Looking at Google maps we could practically draw a line from the gate to the base of the mountain using roads/snowmobile trails. We followed the roads/snowmobile trails through the old log clearings. When we got to the last rather large clearing, we took a path at the end of it and continued towards Currier Mountain. We crossed the Mill Brook trail twice, but never did find any trace of it, so we went with the theory that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. We started a bushwhack when we were 0.22 miles from the summit and we went straight to the top.
On the summit, we hit the obvious high point then started our search for the artifacts on the summit. We found a lot of wire up there. In one spot it is attached to two trees at neck level.
We also found the old stool up there that Mother Nature is slowly reclaiming. The tower was placed there to watch over the logging being done on the northern slopes of the Presidential Range. It was in use from 1916-1934. There are a couple of lookouts that give an idea of what the fire warden would have been able to see.
Overall this was an easy peak to bag. The road/trails were easy to follow and the bushwhack that we did to the summit was not bad either.
We originally attempted this back in August by following the abandoned Mill Brook Trail. It was the last day of our vacation that week and we had already knocked out 9 peaks. We were tired but went anyway. We went about 2 miles (very hard to follow) and then it started raining, so we figured it was Mother Nature's way of telling us to take a break. We turned around and waited for another day, Saturday was the day.
This time we were hiking with friends and decided to take the logging roads and snowmobile trails, then possibly run into the old Mill Brook Trail. Back in August we had checked out FR93 (Mill Brook Road) as a starting point too. The gate was locked then, so we were very happy to find it open on Saturday and we all drove down to FR93B. That saved us a couple of miles.
Looking at Google maps we could practically draw a line from the gate to the base of the mountain using roads/snowmobile trails. We followed the roads/snowmobile trails through the old log clearings. When we got to the last rather large clearing, we took a path at the end of it and continued towards Currier Mountain. We crossed the Mill Brook trail twice, but never did find any trace of it, so we went with the theory that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. We started a bushwhack when we were 0.22 miles from the summit and we went straight to the top.
On the summit, we hit the obvious high point then started our search for the artifacts on the summit. We found a lot of wire up there. In one spot it is attached to two trees at neck level.
We also found the old stool up there that Mother Nature is slowly reclaiming. The tower was placed there to watch over the logging being done on the northern slopes of the Presidential Range. It was in use from 1916-1934. There are a couple of lookouts that give an idea of what the fire warden would have been able to see. Overall this was an easy peak to bag. The road/trails were easy to follow and the bushwhack that we did to the summit was not bad either.
