37 Fern Hill Road abuts over 1100 acres of protected lands. These lands are named the Gap Mountain Reservation and are owned by the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests. From the front door, you can walk to the top of the mountain in about 45 minutes and never have to cross a single road, making this is one of the most private and expansive backyards you could ever imagine!
Here is some additional information about the Gap Mountain Reservation, taken from the Society’s website -
Recreation: Hiking, birding, natural history exploration.
What you didn't know: Lush, high-bush blueberries are incentive for reaching the summit.
What to look for: Deer paths now crisscross thickets near old cellar holes, stone walls and apple orchards, signaling the forest's return to a peak that was once logged clean.
The inside scoop:
Monadnock may by the "most climbed" mountain in the world, but people partial to its smaller southern neighbor are certain that the hoards traveling the high peak are missing something.
"If you want to see Monadnock, don't climb Monadnock – climb Gap," says 81-year-old Ray McGrath, who has climbed Gap Mountain countless times in seven decades.
"Gap has something Monadnock doesn't."
McGrath grew up at the base of Gap Mountain and spent his free time roaming its woods and fields. He explains that Gap is so named for its topography – a gap dips between the mountain's middle and south peaks.
A mile-and-a-half trail from a Forest Society kiosk off Gap Mountain Road in Troy leads up the southwest side of Gap, through a predominantly pine and oak forest laced with the stone walls that once marked boundaries and pasturelands. The trail crosses brooks and passes through a high meadow – and wends past wild apples and through thickets of high-bush blueberries. (Making late July a particularly fruitful time to climb this mountain.) The main trail – flat at first and then heading uphill steadily – leads to Gap's rocky middle peak, with a view of Monadnock to the northeast, of Vermont in the western distance, and to the town of Troy at its base.
The 1,100-plus acre Forest Society reservation was once privately held, and threatened by development (the trail passes by the small ruin of a partially-constructed ski tow that never saw use.) It was protected through efforts of local citizens and landowners in 1974.
Ray McGrath is perhaps never so content as he is on Gap, he says:
"It's just a beautiful place to be."
