Maine Forest Rally - Success Pond Road

[peakbagger]

FYI

"The Sports Car Club of America will be holding their yearly rally and race*on July 29th and 30th.* On Saturday, the race will be held in Berlin.* The NH course consists of starting at*Success Pond Road, off Hutchings Street, racing towards Success Pond and will also including the Mary Grandee Road."

My experience with these type of rallys years ago was that the roads would be blocked off for the duration of the event. May not be a good weekend to access the Mahoosuc trail from the North !*

 

[kltilton]

Yes peakbagger, the roads are usually closed off for safety reasons. I had heard that everything was coming in from the Maine side and would be in Grafton Notch though.

More info: http://www.maineforestrally.com/mfr05-flyer.html

 

[arghman]

[begin rant]
!$@!%#!W%!@#%!@%!@#!!!
[end rant]

Thank you for the heads up, a few of us have a hike scheduled up the Success Trail for 7/30, now we have to figure out how to handle this...

 

[Bob Kittredge]

I emailed the rallymaster of the Maine Forest Rally and got this in reply:

"YES the Success Pond Rd and access to it will be closed from about 2 pm to about 6 pm on Saturday July 30."

 

[arghman]

Bob-- thanks again for posting the times.

I went w/ a small group up Mt Success with some trepidation about the road; we were planning on getting there early & staying late, & hoping the 2-6 thing was accurate (and wondering how we would know when the coast was clear ).

We got to Success Pond Road, there was a small sign posted about a mile into it, with small print saying "Road closed 2:30pm-6pm". I hope there was nobody that missed the sign & got inconvenienced by the road rally.

We couldn't see the cars but we could hear them and could see clouds of smoke rising from the road just about everywhere! I can't imagine taking that road at high speed. As it is, I feel like every mile on that road takes 100 miles off my car's lifespan. On the way out we saw one racecar abandoned on the side of the road, looking in pretty bad shape. (It had been taken out by the next morning; I went back with another group for Mt Carlo.)

Road/trailhead condition report -- (I hadn't been there since last year)
Road seems in fairly good shape, for a gravel logging artery road, at least to the Carlo/Goose Eye trailhead. There are a few deep dips where there are some culverts; I don't remember these being there before in prior years. The first mile always seems the worst, I guess that's because it's hilly whereas the rest is relatively flat. There are now mileage markers on the road (!), which almost seems to spoil the ruggedness of the place, but then again it's nice to have some idea where you are.

The Goose Eye/Carlo trailsign is easy to spot (a little ways past mile marker 8). There used to be a sign for the Success Trail (somewhere between miles 5 and 6), but it is gone now. (A round log post is still there, with a wooden square nailed to it where the trail sign should be.) A side road leads into a log landing about 1/2 mile in; there are still two signs, one about halfway where the side road forks, another at the log landing where the hiking trail starts. When we went, the side road was blocked off with yellow "CAUTION" tape (hiking in from the main road adds that extra 1/2mile each way), but the next day the tape was gone & hopefully anyone should be able to park at the log landing (if you can find it!!!).

 

[Heather]

Shoot! I wish I had read this post before we drove to Berlin this Saturday. Although it seems like we got there early enough that we could have drove up the road (10 am). It was a weird situation how we found out, we were informed that the road was closed by a father and son who were siphoning gas out of a crashed up tanker into their four wheelers. The thought had crossed my mind that maybe they just made up about the road being closed to get us out of there. Oh well, at least I can find the road easy next time.