Sandwich Range Wilderness

The Sandwich Range is in the southeastern part of the White Mountains, south of the Kancamagus Highway. The Sandwich Range Wilderness contains 35,800 acres of the Sandwich Range. This is not a particularly high area but it is rugged with long ridgelines, glacial cirques and deep valleys. The area sees a lot of snow every winter so the snowmelt continues well into summer with the boulder-strewn streams and waterfalls seeing lots of action. As this area was heavily glaciated during the last ice age, the hillsides tend to be steep and the valley floors tend to have small ponds and marshes. That amount of standng water attracts moose, beaver, muskrat and other water-loving mammals.

There are about 57 miles of maintained trails in the Sandwich Range Wilderness, some of them dating back to the logging days in the late 1800's. The trails tend to be steep and direct, many with short scrambles on granite faces in the higher reaches. The Lakes area of New Hampshire is directly to the south and these hilltops offer some great panoramas.