News

By Kim Nilsen

Everyone is familiar with the AMC’s high huts in the White Mountains and many have dropped in on the Randolph Mountain Club’s huts 3,000-plus vertical feet above Route 2 in the northern Presis. In Colorado, the 10th Mountain Division hut system stretches across the state. In Europe, of course, high mountain huts and hostels are a continental treasure.

And the Cohos Trail? Could there be a hiker hut in the mighty CT’s future? If so, what stones would we have to look u [READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

The new 2020 Cohos Trail maps will feature mileage between points. There, we said it, and in one stroke of the computer key we will have remedied one substantial problem that has bedeviled us and hikers on the Cohos Trail.

Former president Ken Vallery has been championing the cause to upgrade the maps so that they feature mileage designations between points along the entire length of the CT system from southern Crawford Notch to Canada. He has been working closely wi [READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

Each year now, The Cohos Trail Association (TCTA) has to produce an Annual Work Plan for the State of New Hampshire. In the paragraphs below, we shed light on what we have introduced to the state for possible projects on state lands and state easements in 2020. Here’s a breakdown.

 
MT. COVILL TRAIL BOG BRIDGES
TCTA anticipates carrying out a trail maintenance project by installing a short series of four or five 10-foot bog bridges near the southeastern trailh [READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

When hiking uphill along the international border swath path that is Fourth Connecticut Lake Trail to the little wet fen of the same name, turn to look north into Quebec Province periodically. Some 20 miles to the north (30 road miles) is a hulking mountain with several broad summits. The height of it is not so impressive, but the girth of it is. It is huge. That mass of creation filling the horizon is beautiful Mont Megantic, home to Canada’s largest astronomical obser [READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

Over the course of 20 years of work on establishing the Cohos Trail, volunteers have come across a few things, well, many things in the woods and on the new pathways that shouldn’t be there. Items accidentally left behind by trekkers or simply tossed to one side as trash. Getting the trash out of the woods should be everyone’s concern.

Here’s a list of some items that we’ve come across in the great Coos forests:

[READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

What is a Whiskey Jack? If you were raised and live in the North Country, you know. No, it is not alcohol. A whiskey jack is a Canada Jay, a member of the Corvidae family of aves (jay, crows, ravens) that, unlike blue jays, inhabit high elevation boreal and subarctic forests. Winter and summer hikers know them well, for Canada jays very much love to see humans on high, particularly on summits. We are walking supermarkets to the birds, and they know it full well.

[READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

2019 solo thru-hiker Willow Nilsen, daughter of the founder of the Cohos Trail, recently queried the editor of Northern Woodlands magazine with a pitch to write a feature about her trek on the trail. To her delight, the query got a thumbs up, so Willow has hunkered down at the computer to hammer out a story about her 13-days in the Coos County backcountry.

[READ MORE…]

By Kim Nilsen

If Facebook is any guide, it’s apparent that the winter months are no longer an obstacle to those who wish to climb the mountains. Snow and ice, high wind and arctic cold be damned, trekkers are out day hiking in force on Cohos Trail paths and summits.

From little Mt. Covill in northern Pittsburg, with its view over First Connecticut Lake to Mt. Magalloway, to the remote topknot of 4,000-footer Mt. Isolation, the winter warriors are stomping around in the white stuff [READ MORE…]