RoySwkr
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This peak SW of Plymouth NH is SW of Plymouth and officially unnamed, but Texas Hill Rd loops around 3 sides of it. I had a couple hours to kill after a meeting downtown and thought this would be an easy bushwhack but instead found an extensive trail system. The shortest approach to the summit would have been from the N, but there was no good parking so I came from the SW so as to also include a visit to 1147.
I parked at the Plymouth Mtn lot a short distance down Old Hebron Rd and walked back up Texas Hill Rd to where I had seen a narrow path marked by a small American flag. As expected this led to an old cemetery where one grave had a similar flag. From there I bushwhacked a couple hundred vertical feet to the ridge, and climbed a small rocky bump to my R that had some outcrops at the summit but no views. There was some survey tape but no apparent trail, so I went back down to the col and headed N on the ridge.
I soon picked up an obvious path occasionally marked with more flagging, from the way stones were placed it appeared to have been built for mtn bikes but I saw no bike tracks along the ridge. The path was frequently intersected by other paths but there were no signs or maps. There were a lot more rocky bumps on the ridge than the map showed, and an old cairn on what may have been the summit of 1147.
After crossing a deep col with a couple of mudholes, I followed a series of paths to the summit of 1170, marked by a cairn just off the path. I went down beyond quite aways to check things out but this summit which looked flattish on the map was substantially more distinct than the previous one.
I had expected to follow a different path W from the deep col to avoid all the rocky bumps, but somewhere missed a turn and saw that I had dropped off to the E instead. Because the path was headed S and was good walking with even a few mtn bike tracks, I decided to stay on it. Eventually it became a woods road and swung W, hitting Texas Hill Rd (where else?) just E of where I'd parked. It was longer than my up route, but better and faster walking, and can even be mtn biked to the summit.
Perhaps you can find a map of the trails on a mtn bike site, but with a GPS or good sense of direction you don't need one.
I parked at the Plymouth Mtn lot a short distance down Old Hebron Rd and walked back up Texas Hill Rd to where I had seen a narrow path marked by a small American flag. As expected this led to an old cemetery where one grave had a similar flag. From there I bushwhacked a couple hundred vertical feet to the ridge, and climbed a small rocky bump to my R that had some outcrops at the summit but no views. There was some survey tape but no apparent trail, so I went back down to the col and headed N on the ridge.
I soon picked up an obvious path occasionally marked with more flagging, from the way stones were placed it appeared to have been built for mtn bikes but I saw no bike tracks along the ridge. The path was frequently intersected by other paths but there were no signs or maps. There were a lot more rocky bumps on the ridge than the map showed, and an old cairn on what may have been the summit of 1147.
After crossing a deep col with a couple of mudholes, I followed a series of paths to the summit of 1170, marked by a cairn just off the path. I went down beyond quite aways to check things out but this summit which looked flattish on the map was substantially more distinct than the previous one.
I had expected to follow a different path W from the deep col to avoid all the rocky bumps, but somewhere missed a turn and saw that I had dropped off to the E instead. Because the path was headed S and was good walking with even a few mtn bike tracks, I decided to stay on it. Eventually it became a woods road and swung W, hitting Texas Hill Rd (where else?) just E of where I'd parked. It was longer than my up route, but better and faster walking, and can even be mtn biked to the summit.
Perhaps you can find a map of the trails on a mtn bike site, but with a GPS or good sense of direction you don't need one.
