Blog

By Kim Nilsen

Photo courtesy of Kristin McLane

Each year we try to inform the Cohos Trail universe of potential trouble spots to watch for along the trail system between the Saco River in Harts Location to Fourth Connecticut Lake on the boundary with Canada. Here is a rundown of rough edges you may encounter out there in 2020, much of the problems confined to the southern quarter of the journey.

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By Kim Nilsen

A major seven-mile trail relocation initiative between Coleman State Park and Lake Francis has been stalled now for most of 2019, and there is no telling at this writing when the project may gain traction.

The new, so-called Nilsen’s Leg path is planned to run directly north out of Coleman State Park campground and thread its way through the Deadwater hillocks in Stewartstown and around and just east of big Whipple Ridge to eventually cross the Cedar Stream Road and reach the easternmost dual-inlet bridges at Lake Francis in northernmost Clarksville. It is the ironclad stated goal of the Cohos Trail Association to move as much trail as possible off ATV corridors and tertiary roads so that the pathway is confined to forested and mountainous terrain over the vast majority of its length. Nilsen’s Leg would be a major step in that direction.

Coleman State Park. Photo courtesy of NH Rocks

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By Kim Nilsen

A parcel of land just off Route 110 and immediately north of the Upper Ammonoosuc River sold recently to a Texas-based investment firm. That parcel, just west of the Bell Hill Road, between the river and the railroad tracks, was long viewed as a potential parcel of land to be purchased in the future, should the Cohos Trail Association ever move to create a headquarters and overnight bunking facility in the town of Stark.

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By Kim Nilsen

The single most troublesome bit of infrastructure on the Cohos Trail, an abandoned snowmobile span known as Coon Brook Bridge, received a much-needed overhaul this past fall thanks to an all-volunteer crew. Now instead of the deck being a hazard, the structure in the middle of the Bog Bridge Trail in Pittsburg township is safe and a cakewalk to navigate.

The association made this bridge project the highest priority and scheduled a work day in northern Pittsburg. The project entailed ferrying in by ATV and by hand pressure treated lumber a mile from the vicinity of the Magalloway Road to the boggy spruce barrens north of First Connecticut Lake that Coon Brook drains.

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By Kim Nilsen

It’s not every day that a twenty-year-old latrine makes news. But our oldest outhouse on the trail, the one on Baldhead Mountain close to Baldhead Shelter, has come up in the world and is worthy of reams of front-page copy.

After many years of use and weathering at 3,000 feet of elevation, it was decided that in 2019 the Baldhead latrine would be refurbished and turned into a true, simple composting privy like all our other units in Coos County. The Baldhead creation was fabricated by one Carl Vornberger of Holderness, and it was ferried in various pieces up to Baldhead summit by Cohos Trail volunteers and a NorthWoods Stewardship Center trail crew. It was installed as a basic one-holer privy and it’s served its purpose well for a while. But time takes its toll, so the association thought it best to give the little relief station an upgrade.

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