You Are Here: Blueberry Mountain

It had been a while since I'd done 2 hikes in a weekend, and even then they had been much shorter and less elevation, so I picked a much easier hike as my 2nd on this beautiful Fall weekend. Today I had my 14 year old son with me too. I like when he comes along, we don't necessarily talk a lot, and he's usually miles ahead of me, but I like knowing we're out there together. Blueberry Mountain is on the 52 With a View list and much like some of the other hikes I've been doing, seems to be less popular. There are 2 ways to reach Blueberry Mountain, the most common being from Long Pond Road to the East, and the way I chose being from Blueberry Mountain Road to the west. I like the idea of a quieter trail, not only due to our Covid times right now, but also so I don't have to keep stepping off trail to let others pass since I'm so slow! Blueberry Mountain Trail from the west begins at the gated end of the road, much like so many I have been doing lately on an old logging road. I actually don't mind these sorts of starts to a hike, gets the blood flowing and the legs warmed up gradually without going straight into a steep climb. This trail was blazed in yellow blazes, sometimes sparsely and sometimes faded, but they seemed to be there most of the way. Around 0.5 miles up the logging road, you will turn right at another old logging road, blocked off by boulders and with a sign indicating foot traffic only. This road will meander gently up and down and over several seasonal streams (mostly dry at this time) until it veers to the left onto a trail at an old logging clearing. The climb starts very gradually, the footbed becomes much leafier (at this time of year, though unlike other trails it didn't seem to be hiding a lot of rocks and holes, which was nice). At around 1.5 miles the trail becomes very wet, I imagine this is a consistent occurrence as there was some old logs and stepping stones to help you cross. The trail veers left here and begins a more moderate climb before passing through a pine area and popping out on the northwest facing ledges where the views are. The slab was wet for us today, but thankfully not extensively and the rock seemed grippy enough that we had no issue crossing it. The true summit is a few tenths past the ledges, reached by a side path marked with a small cairn. We located the side spur easy enough, however several hundred yards in, the path passes through a rock crevice and heads to the right, we had been looking straight and headed in that direction, quickly realizing we were not on a trail any longer. I kept thinking that I hadn't read about any bushwhacking of any sort, but couldn't see signs of the path. I had my map out on my phone and could see we were very close, so we just pushed through the woods until we popped back out on the path again and followed it to the true summit. There are restricted views here, mainly of Mt Moosilauke next door and over towards Smarts Mountain and Mt Cube. We started the bushwhack again back to the main trail, and ended up crossing the path again, this time in a different place and realized we were almost back at the true summit. The path had approached from the opposite side than we had, and once we followed it back, we saw where we had erred and I laughed at how obvious it actually was. Just goes to show though how careful you have to be, and how easy a trail can be lost sometimes. We made our back to the ledges, took a few pictures of the views and headed back down to the car. We didn't encounter anyone until about half a mile from the car. Another perfect day in the mountains.

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