You Are Here: Bear Brook State Park

I was in the mood for a big hike today. The weather, albeit windy, was gorgeous.. perfect for a long adventure. I've had my eye on the Lost Trail loop at Bear Brook for a while. I'd heard conflicting stories on what it was like, whether it was passable or not, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Lots of reports say it can get ambiguous, and I've heard it's swampy with possibly a bridge out. I'd also heard the trail crossed private land, but had permission to do so, but the landowner is often out target shooting. I was prepared for anything. I started at the Hiker/Biker lot on Podunk Road and started down the road to Hayes Farm Trail. I continued past where I had been previously and made it out to Hayes Marsh, which was really pretty. For the next few hours I would see no one! Lost Trail could live up to its name. Most of the trails on this side of the park are part of a snowmobile network so, while not blazed, are easy to follow, wide and relatively flat. All the intersections were marked with signs. I wasn't too far down Lost Trail when I hit the intersection with Lowland Trail. Here I encountered a NH Parks Sign that stated the trail from here on was permanently closed! I could still see a blaze further ahead, but I respected the sign which asked for people to stop trying to reopen the trail and use it. That made all the wondering about whether it was easy to follow or not simple enough! Thankfully I had a map, so I quickly created a new route and headed off down the Lowland Trail. Here I encountered the first real wet sections of the day, but was able to skooch around the edges enough to keep my feet mostly dry. Lowland Trail connected to the other side Lost Trail, which was a wide open snowmobile trail. I took a right here and figured I'd follow as far as I could seeing if there was a closed sign on this side as well. At the bottom of the loop there was another sign the same. I could see a sign further down saying "Bridge Out" also, so some of the prior rumblings seemed to be true. Respecting the wishes of NH Parks, I have eliminated that section of trail from my redlining spreadsheet. Seeing as though I was mentally psyched for a long day out, I decided to continue along Lost Trail to Lost Trail Extension and do an out and back on this trail to get it checked off. At 2 miles each way, it was a little longer than I had anticipated, but it ended up being one of my favourite sections of the day. More snowmobile trail, mostly flat, it just went through a really quiet section of woods with a really pretty marsh/pond/I'm not sure what type of body of water that had all trees coming out of it. It seemed like a painting! I opted to take a section of Ferret Trail back towards my car instead of backtracking on Lost Trail. I'll have to repeat this section as Ferret Trail is a loop in and of itself, but that's OK. It was a gentle climb and quite wet in some places. I took Hedgehog Ledge Trail back over to Hedgehog Trail, which was really the only trail of the day that wasn't also a snowmobile trail. It passed by a boulder section on the side of Bear Hill, which was really cool to pass through. At Hedgehog Trail, I picked up the small section I needed between where I was and Lowland Trail, and double back continuing on Hedgehog Trail (wide snowmobile trail) to Podunk Road. By now I was starting to get really tired. My original itinerary had me picking up Lane Trail to finish off a short section, and looking at the map, that was about half a mile longer than if I just followed Podunk Road straight back to my car. I thought about it briefly and just went for Lane Trail anyway. I knew I'd be glad it was done, regardless of how tired I was. I finished off Lane Trail and was back on Hayes Farm Trail to Podunk Road and back to the car. Just over 13 miles total! One of my longest hikes ever! I've only got 4 more planned hikes and I'll be done with Bear Brook. I've enjoyed exploring what seemed like an impossible task when I first started!

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