Mount Cardigan
Bald Granite Summit Of About 3,155 Feet In Cardigan State Park, Stripped Of Trees By A Mid 1800s Fire, With A Fire Tower; Reached By The West Ridge Trail From Orange Or From The AMC Cardigan Lodge In Alexandria. · Orange, New Hampshire
A bald granite dome of about 3,155 feet in Cardigan State Park, west of Newfound Lake, whose wide bare summit looks far higher than it is. A forest fire in the mid-1800s is said to have burned the upper mountain to bedrock (confirm the year), and the soil never returned, so the last stretch of every trail crosses open ledge with cairns and paint blazes, and a steel fire tower stands on the top. The view takes in the White Mountains to the north, Mount Kearsarge and Monadnock to the south, and the Green Mountains of Vermont to the west. The shortest route is the West Ridge Trail from the state park lot at the end of a rough road above Orange, about 1.5 miles each way (confirm), a family favourite. On the Alexandria side the AMC Cardigan Lodge is the base for longer, tougher routes: the very steep Holt Trail, the Clark Trail, and loops over the neighbouring bare peak of Firescrew on the Manning and Mowglis trails. The mountain is busy on foliage weekends, exposed in wind and storms, and treacherous when the granite is wet or icy.
Cardigan Mountain Road (Cardigan State Park), Orange, New Hampshire, 03741, United States
The mountain and its trails are open all year, day and night, with no gates on the trails themselves. The gravel road up to the state park lot on the Orange side is generally not maintained in winter and may be gated or impassable from about late autumn to spring mud season, which adds a road walk (confirm). The summit fire tower is typically staffed by state fire lookouts only on high-danger days in spring and summer (confirm); otherwise the cab is closed. The AMC Cardigan Lodge on the Alexandria side keeps its own season and booking hours. Snow and ice cover the summit ledges from about November into April.