There’s something of a backcountry summit shangri-la found at 3,238 feet not far from Hanover.
Within — and above — a thickly wooded boreal forest mountain top is a grassy tent site overlooking 159-acre Reservoir Pond in Dorchester. A 41-foot-high fire tower and former warden’s cabin favored by Appalachian Trail thru-hikers sit patiently in the stillness. There’s even a privy and spring (tempered by conditions).
All that, plus some stellar vistas from the top of that fire tower, should Mother Nature allow it, are found on Smarts Mountain in Lyme.
The mountain is also highlighted by vestiges of yesterday found along the way, such as the warden’s maintenance garage and rock foundations that once held telephone poles for the warden’s line to the broad mass summit.
There are myriad pathways up Smarts, with the Lambert Ridge Trail from the southwest being the most scenic as hikers traverse a handful of ledges with long-ranging views. That trail is also part of the AT; for northbound trekkers, Smarts is the first three thousand foot mountain they encounter in the Granite State.
Also from the southwest on Dorchester Road, not far from Dartmouth Skiway, the cloistered Ranger Trail goes for three miles until it connects to the AT. Signage along this trail, like much of Smarts, bears the imprint of the Dartmouth Outing Club, which maintains it. Previously bereft of maintenance, trail work returned to the path in 2011 and now includes blue blazes for about 1.5 miles.
Hikers can also access the mountain from the northwest on the Daniel Doan Trail — its namesake a Dartmouth grad turned hiking author who first climbed Smarts in 1929 as a teenager — and from the north the via the J Trail.
To walk in the footsteps of those who once commuted to the Smarts summit and for those who traveled wicked long distances to get there on their feet, my wife Jan and I chose a 7.2-mile roundtrip journey up and down on the Ranger Trail/Lambert Ridge Trail from the dirt Dorchester Road trailhead for a moderate undertaking that involved some slippery moss-covered ledge as fall’s colors seemed to grow in intensity with each step.
The Ranger Trail, once part of the AT, follows an old jeep road and is initially an easy trek with soft underfoot as it bends through the pines with occasional dips as alongside Grant Brook, a well-known meandering stream that sees its fair share of anglers along certain stretches.
About two miles into the hike, we came upon an old garage where wardens once parked their vehicles before crossing a trickle of the brook and embarking on the steeper and rougher portions of the trail.
Along part of the stretch, jumbles of cairn-like rock foundations — two of them containing old wooden poles — were the base of a telephone line that stretched to the summit. As we ambled on, we spotted a handful of others on the left side of the trail, though they held nothing in them.
Soon after connecting with the AT, the trail steepened, with wooden and stone steps and metal rungs affixed to ledge to make passage easier. Then the pathway itself eased and the summit neighborhood was spotted, first by the tent site and then up the steps of the tower where Mother Nature fidgeted with her cloudy curtain, opening and shutting it on whims only known to her.
It seems the tower and cabin were recent recipients of some care. The tower, which went offline in the mid-1970s after its 1915 inception, sported a rehabbed roof and some new steps among its visible enhancements.
The dark and neat cabin looked freshly painted outside and in the corner a plastic-wrapped sign tacked to the wall of scrawl informed hikers about the May death of an Upper Valley trail angel— Dr. William Acklerly. The psychiatrist was called the Ice Cream Man because he provided ice cream to long-distance AT hikers from his Lyme home along that trail.
Before saying good-bye to the summit, we ventured along the spur trail to the tent site. As if on cue, Mother Nature opened her cloudy drapes wide enough to catch a look in the south out to Reservoir Pond. Once called Smarts Pond, it’s a lovely little jewel in the kingdom spotted from the top of a smartly utilized mountain summit.
Marty Basch can be reached at mbasch@gmail.com.