Blue Job Mountain

Trip Details
Date: April 12^th, 2015
Total Distance: 1.97 mi (via Trimble Outdoors Navigator Pro on iPhone 4S)
Total Time: 59 minutes
Total Elevation: 356 ft gained
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As a warm-up hike and an easy trail to test out Boomer's new hiking bag, Cupcake, Boomer, and I headed to Blue Job Mountain State Forest in Strafford/Farmington, NH. Blue Job Mountain stands 1357 ft tall, but the parking lot off Crown Point Rd is already at 1000 ft leaving you little left to gain. It is a nice little mountain and trail system though, but it gets very crowded as the day goes on. This mountain is also part of the Tower Quest, which is another list for hikers to complete and asks you to ascend the New Hampshire mountains that have a fire tower at their summit.

Trail Head

Trail Map...they really need to make this available online.

Left Trail

Right Trail

We went right at the trail head and made the quick ascent to the summit. The summit has a fire tower as well as a communication tower and associated buildings. The views were great from up in the fire tower. Mt. Washington still looked daunting in mid-April.

Looking northeast. In the distance is Bauneg Beg Mountain (left) and Mt Agamenticus (right).

Looking north towards the Belknap Range, Ossipee Range, and the White Mountains in the far distance.

Mt. Washington. It was tough to get a non-blurry shot with my advanced point-and-shoot.

Looking northwest towards the Belknap Range and Mt. Cardigan in the way distance.

Mt. Cardigan

Looking west. In the distance is Mt. Kearsarge.

Looking south.

Boomer with his new hiking pack.

We took the other trail on the way down, which does not get as much sun so it was a little slower going down. This trail had some good sections of ice covering the whole trail as it descended.

Another lookout at a radio tower provides some more views west/northwest.

Looking northwest with Mt. Cardigan in the way distance.

The trail then kicks way out and then makes its way back to the parking lot. The snow got ankle deep in a few parts near all the wooden bridge water crossings.

No problems today as this hike was short and sweet.