By Matt Mead
If you live in New England, you know there are plenty of great places to ride in the northern portions of Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine. Beyond the U.S. border are more riding opportunities in Quebec, New Brunswick, and the other Canadian Provinces. All of these locations are great if you have an entire weekend, or better yet, a week, to explore them. Where do you ride when you only have one free day available? When this occurs, you want a place that is close to home, offers great scenery, and has a well maintained trail system. My choice: Twin Mountain, New Hampshire.
Twin Mountain is an easy 2-3 1/2 hour drive from locations in eastern Massachusetts, or southern Maine and New Hampshire. Located 10 miles northeast from the top of Franconia Notch in the White Mountains, the town of Twin Mountain is a snowmobile friendly community offering plenty of parking areas and access to restaurants, gas, and even lodging. If you are a Ski Doo rider, you will also find Garneau's Garage, one of New Hampshire's top dealers, located here as well. Twin Mountain is situated in such a way as to allow easy day trips to destinations in all directions. You can go east to Gorham and Maine, south to Lincoln and Plymouth, west to Littleton and north central Vermont, or north to Lancaster and northern Vermont.
I live in Portsmouth, N.H., and between mine and my wife's schedules, I frequently find I only have one day to spend riding. On a recent three day weekend, I found myself busy both Saturday and Sunday, working on projects around the house. Since Monday was a holiday and my wife had to work, I gave one of my snowmobiling buddies a call to see if he was interested in going riding. As expected, he said "you bet!", and plans were made for me to pick him up at 7:30 the next morning.
Monday arrived with overcast skies and the weather report calling for rain; lots of heavy rain, clear to the Canadian border.... After picking up my riding pal, we headed north. The trip up was uneventful, and we only encountered a light mixture of snow, sleet and rain. We arrived in Twin Mountain at about 10:15 am and had the sleds unloaded and idling by 10:30. Since I had parked in the Lower Falls parking area, (east of Twin Mountain on Hwy 302), we decided to head north on Corridor Trail 11 up past Bretton Woods Ski Area, and up and over Jefferson Notch. Due to the northeast's general lack of snow, recent rains, and the fact the groomer hadn't been out since Sunday's heavy sled traffic, the trail conditions were less than ideal. I won't say they were bad, but they were rough enough that we had to keep speeds down in the 20-30 mph range. Too bad, because the Jefferson Notch trail is a wide and twisty road that can be ridden at a fast pace when the snow conditions are perfect. We had been pretty lucky so far with the weather. There had been some occasional light rain, but it was of an intermittent nature and wasn't affecting our sledding pleasure. After topping the 3,000 ft summit of Jefferson Notch and bouncing our way down the backside, we arrived at a trail intersection and decided to stop and take a break.
While sitting there talking about which way to go, we realized that neither of us had thought to bring a trail map. That was stupid! While I have ridden this area several times, it has been spaced out over the past five years and my memory isn't so good.... Unfortunately, the local clubs in this area don't offer much help as far as signage is concerned either. Yes, the intersections usually have arrows with the name of a town or trail scribbled on them, but nothing any fancier. You won't find professionally painted signs with information such as mileage to the various points. Nor will you find much info on the location of food and gas stops. Forget finding those nice big trail map type signs with the little "you are here" arrow on them. Now granted, if we had brought a map, it wouldn't have been such a big deal.
As it was, we made the decision to continue heading north on Corridor 11. The trail condition improved and we were able to pick up our pace to about 35 mph. Soon we arrived at another trail intersection with no real markings at all.
"Geez, we should have brought a map."
This new trail traveled down an abandoned railroad bed, so after flipping a coin, we decided to follow it left. (We later found out the route to the right was the combined Corridor 5 and 11 north, leading to Gorham and other points northeast.) Our choice to go left turned out to be a good one. This section of trail was pretty smooth and we were able to make good time through some interesting and diverse terrain. At one point we found ourselves out in the middle of a swamp with what I would later discover was a picturesque backdrop of the White Mountains to our backs. Other times we were riding through areas surrounded by thick stands of trees followed by open farm land with houses sprinkled about.
We eventually arrived at another trail intersection and stopped to take a break. The route straight ahead was marked as Trail 102 back to Twin Mountain, and the route to the right was labeled Corridor 5 to Littleton. We were about ready to flip a coin again to decide which way to go when we noticed a dingy sign advertising "Food/Gas five miles" down the trail towards Littleton. Looking at our watches we realized it was just after noon, and then we felt our stomachs starting to grumble.... The decision was made! This section of Corridor 5 was very icy and suffered from extremely low snow conditions. The trail follows a powerline right-of-way and has some pretty soggy areas in it. With the recent warm daytime weather the North Country had experienced, a lot of snow had melted and the water settled in the low spots of the trail and then re-froze during the colder nights. We were able to maintain a 20 mph speed through most sections although the snow depth was probably less than six inches. A few areas had large rocks poking up through the ice and brought our speeds down to 5 mph. Some don't enjoy this kind of riding but I find it technically challenging. I like having to think about my line through an area instead of just mindlessly cruising down the trail. Normally this area has more snow and the conditions are better suited for high speed trail riding.
Pretty soon we arrived at what appeared to be a major road crossing, (although I'm still not sure which one), and looking up the hill to the right I could see a gas station. After crossing the road, I saw numerous sled tracks heading up through a field towards the gas stop, and I quickly followed them. Upon reaching the top of the hill, I saw a restaurant back across the road next to the gas station and made a beeline to it. We pulled into the parking lot, parked our sleds, and went on inside. The name of the place is "Barbara's Family Restaurant", and I highly recommend it. The service was a little on the slow side, but they appeared to be under-staffed that day. The food was great and they had a large display of delicious looking deserts too. What more could a sledder ask for? Oh, cheap prices. Barbara's was very affordable; I had a big taco salad for under $5. (I ordered the small; I wonder how big the large was?!)
Back on the trail, we continued off in the direction of Littleton. The last sign we had seen said it was 20 miles away, so we figured when we got there we would either turn around and head back, or if we were lucky, we might find an alternate route to get us back to Twin Mountain.
"It was really stupid to have forgotten my map!"
After riding about 15 miles on a mix of challenging powerlines followed by some steep and twisty trails through dense hardwood forests, we came to an intersection with one sign pointing to Bethleham and Twin Mountain. Wow, this is just what we were looking for! The sign for the other trail pointed to Littleton, so I felt a little bummed we weren't going reach our original destination. I shouldn't have. We rode on for a few more miles and the next thing I knew we were in downtown Littleton anyway! This was just another of the many cases of poorly marked trails. At this point I was a little hesitant about heading on further. I thought since the last trail intersection had apparently been mis-marked, who knew if this trail would really get us back to Twin Mountain! My riding partner was more trusting than I, and convinced me to follow the trail a few more miles. He was right. Soon enough we came to another intersection with a sign pointing left to Trail 104 with destinations of Bethleham and Twin Mountain. I think we were both pretty relieved to see this trail…….
"Sure would have been nice to have a map along...."
The trail ride to Bethleham was uneventful. We rode through some more of the heavily forested countryside and ended up on another abandoned railroad grade. A few miles past Bethleham we came to an intersection with the trail blocked in the direction of Twin Mountain. We were about to panic when a cross country skier showed up and assured us there was a detour route. He said the trail was closed due to flooding. Something about a beaver dam causing the problem. We took his cue and followed the trail off to the right, looking for the upcoming intersections and turns he had mentioned we would need to take. His directions were spot on and soon enough we found ourselves back on the original trail, and in fact we caught up to him once again. He said he had gone down the closed trail and said there was just enough room for him to get through, but that it would have been nearly impossible on a sled. We again thanked him for his assistance and cruised off down the trail.
Trail conditions through here were probably the best of the day. This trail seemed to have seen little traffic over the past weekend, and we found several areas where we could open our sleds up to New Hampshire's lofty (?) 45 mph speed limit.... By this time the rain was increasing and it was getting a little harder to see out of our faceshields. I won't say it was miserable, but I think we were both happy we were nearing Twin Mountain.... Around 4:30 pm we arrived at the intersection of Corridor 11. This time I recognized where I was.
"Who needs a stinking map!"
A right turn would have sent us south down through Franconia Notch to Lincoln. Straight ahead was what we wanted as it would take us to Twin Mountain and back to our parking area. This section of trail started out good, but quickly turned nasty. The Franconia Notch trail is one of the most popular in the area, and is heavily used. When there is lots of snow, cold temperatures, and frequent grooming, it can be a nice and smooth ride. Unfortunately on this trip it was heavily moguled, requiring slow speeds of 10-15 mph so as not to dislodge our kidneys. We finally arrived back at the Lower Falls parking area around 5 pm. The rain was starting to pick up so we were pretty happy to get the sleds loaded and crawl into the comfort of my warm van to change out of our snowmobile gear!
The days ride totaled 78 miles. Not a great accumulation, but good considering the weather and trail conditions.
Although this day's trip wasn't one of my best, I still heartily recommend riding the central area of New Hampshire, specifically in and around Twin Mountain. I have ridden this area several times over the years and find it a good compromise. You won't always find glass smooth trails like you typically see further north or in Vermont, Maine and the Canadian Provinces, and the trail markings are less than optimum. On the other hand, you have a location within a couple of hours drive that will usually have snow when locations south of Franconia Notch do not. Furthermore, when conditions are at their best, (lots of snow and cold temps), the trails do rival those of up north.
To find out more about Twin Mountain, New Hampshire, visit their Chamber
of Commerce web page. For current trail conditions, trail maps, and other
information related to snowmobiling, visit the Twin Mountain Snowmobile club's
homepage.