Shelburne, NH: M-M Trail?

[vegematic]

I was hiking Mt. Crag today and I looped down around the west side on some trail that is on the AMC map. Near the bottom the trail intersects an old grassy road where there is a small cairn and a paper sign pointing back up the road reading "M-M Trail". It is blazed with standard sized orangey-red blazes.

My question is: What is this trail? I'm guessing it goes up Middle Mountain; does it go beyond that? Anyone know? Peakbagger?
-vegematic

 

[Lefty E]

Middle Mt.

yep vegematic it is the Middle Mt. Trail and it goes to the summit of Middle Mt. with nice views and a viewpoint off to the left of the Presis..also a trail diverges around First Mt. though I have not been there yet..another trail restored and open to the summit is Mt. Ingalls Trail..description is in previous WMG book not the present edition//peakbagger most likely would have more info!! lefty e

 

[peakbagger]

Sorry, I dont have any detailed info on the Shelburne trails that is up to date. There is an informal group in town that has been working to reopen trails that have fallen into disuse. A lot of them were centered around the Philbrook Farm Inn trails. Larry and Ginger Lawson are involved with the group, they were heavilly involved in a couple of major conservation easements in the area plus they were involved with the TPL purchase of the lands on the north side of the AT. I did hike one a section of one of the repopened traisl to Mt Cabot (in Shelburne) earlier this summer and the trail maintenance they were doing is quite impressive.

As far as I know they havent cut any new trails so the trail descriptions in older AMC guides of the area are you best shot. I will try to get you an e-mail address from a local for more info.

Philbrook Farm Inn had a lot of horses at one time, and I would speculate that the trails may have been intended for horsetravel as well as human travel. I have heard stories that the some of the daughters of the Browns that owned Brown Company in Berlin used to ride their horses from the Brown Company barns in the north end of Berlin to the house on the North road in Gilead near the Maine NH line.

 

[vegematic]

Thanks to both of you for the information. I hiked Mt. Cabot earlier this summer and kept an eye out for some sign of he trail to Mt. Ingalls but didn't see much. I was looking near the top of Cabot as that's where I thought the old trail left from. Sounds like I have some more exploring to do in that area.
-vegematic

 

[peakbagger]

I have a scanned copy of the 1981 map of trails in Shelburne but its too large to directly upload it. its 232K pdf. If someone has a place to host it and insert a link to it,let me know where to send it to.

Note it is a 28 year old map so things have changed in the intervening years. At a minimum, the Mt Evans trail is closed. The new Shelburne trail club is just forming, there current goal is to reopen what they can. The Scudder trail is reportedly the best way to acess Ingalls. There are new trails to Middel Mountains not shown on map