You Are Here: Beech Hill

Today I was feeling a bit sluggish, so I opted for 2 of the smaller peaks on the NH Fire Tower list. The first was Beech Hill in Dublin. Several weeks, my family and I walked up the access road to the cell towers, but after we got home and I looked at my Suunto tracks, I realized that was not the actual summit, so I was back to bag the true summit successfully. I parked at the kiosk on Beech Hill Road. I had downloaded GPX tracks from a trip report on Peakbagger.com and I'm glad I did. While the trails are well blazed and have signs at all the intersections, they intersect each other so often, I was feeling turned around until I checked the GPX tracks to ensure I was in fact heading in the right direction! Starting on the East Face Trail you quickly intersect with the Zig Zag Trail, which meanders up the side of the hill to Ridge Trail. Keep left at the fork (which looks like a herd path, but you will see a blaze on a tree a little ways down indicating this is still the Zig Zag Trail which ends very shortly after at Carriage Road. I headed left here and walked back out to the access road, which leads over to the towers and headed for the South Outlook. I had read the intersection can be tricky to spot, look for the 2nd utility pole down after the towers. I saw the pole with the blazes, but got confused if that was where I needed to go, so continued the entire length of the open field. I wasn't sure that was right either, but about halfway across the field I could see a sign on a utility pole, so I kept going. The sign said To South Outlook, however there was no arrow or any sort of directional instruction, but I felt like it was off to the right, so I headed that way. Sure enough a trail headed back into the woods with a sign saying To South Outlook and Cemetery with blue blazes. Made it to the South Outlook and had pretty views across to Monadnock. Headed back and this time stayed to the left on the red blazed trail and popped out at the intersection I wasn't sure was correct back near the cell towers. Found the Carriage Road trail directly alongside the cell tower fence and followed that along to the Ridge Trail. This was where I kept getting turned around as the Carriage Road and Ridge Trail seemed to join and leave each other several times. I made it to another intersection that said Eagle Rock Trail, so I took that up to the Eagle Rock outlook. Some views across to Skatutakee and Thumb Mountains and Monadnock in the other direction. Pretty little outlook. Headed back along the Ridge Trail towards the summit. What appeared to be the high point had another pretty view though starting to get obstructed by trees. From here I just followed the Ridge Trail back to the intersection with Zig Zag Trail. I had found that a little damp on the way up, so instead of taking that back down I headed back over to Old Carriage Road and the access road for the cell towers taking that back down instead. Overall, a great little trail network with many options to get in a few miles.

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