"New England Trail" thru-hike, starting this fall

[Guthook]

Hi all. I figured I'd share this little project of mine with you to get some thoughts.

Starting at the end of September, I'll be taking a month and slightly more to do a trail that's been on my mind for a little over a year. The New England Trail (www.netrail.org and the new National Scenic Trail) consists of several trails that don't seem to be used as one network as far as I know:

The Cohos Trail
Several White Mountains Trails
a roadwalk from Plymouth to Sunapee
The Monadnock-Sunapee Greenway Trail
The Metacomet-Monadnock Trail
The Metacomet Trail
The Matabesett Trail
The Quinnipiac Trail

In all, this will take me from the Canadian border in New Hampshire down to the coast of Connecticut. By my most recent calculations, this is just shy of 600 miles, with about 70 miles on the road.

I'm putting a lot of time into figuring out the logistics of this, and I'll probably be picking VFTT's brains a bit in the coming months for advice and route ideas.

Here's a little blog I'm putting together for the trip, although I don't expect many people to read it, since I'm not web savvy at all:
http://guthook.blogspot.com

Cheers!

 

[Amicus]

That's a neat idea! A group of us, including other VFTT'ers and led by VFTT alum. Tramper Al. hiked your southern segment, from the Mass. border on the Metacomet Trail to a beach in West Haven, on Long Island Sound, in seven day-hikes in '06 and '07.

Unless new trails have been blazed since Nov. 2007, you'll need to do some improvising to get from the Matabesett to the Quinnipiac Tr., and to get from the West Rock/Regicides Trail (which is a spur off the Quinnipiac) to West Haven.

We were greatly assisted in getting from the Mattabessett to the Quinnipiac by the company of Paul G., proprietor of the NETrail website, who knew just how to keep our road-walking to a minimum for that stretch.

 

[bcborder]

Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway and Cardigan

a roadwalk from Plymouth to Sunapee

You could substantially reduce your road walk via the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway (http://www.srkg.com/) and trails in the Cardigan Mountain State Forest.

 

[Guthook]

You could substantially reduce your road walk via the Sunapee-Ragged-Kearsarge Greenway (http://www.srkg.com/) and trails in the Cardigan Mountain State Forest.

I plan on staying at the Cardigan campsite and using their trails.

I haven't looked at the SRK Greenway in a while, but I was going to skip most of it due to the anti-camping rule. I'll have to take a look again, though, because you're definitely right about cutting down on roadwalks.

Lack of camping availability in Connecticut and southern Massachusetts is going to be interesting. The Connecticut Explorer's Guide has an article about getting permission to camp on the Metacomet and Matabesett trails, which should help a lot. I'll keep looking into possibilities on the southern half of the M-M.