Rich Kaszeta's GPS Hiking Page

I love to hike, especially now that I live in New Hampshire. However, one of the biggest challenges is finding new places to go hiking. Many good hikes are not listed in trail guides or town maps, are unlisted, and many of the maps are outdated or inaccurate.

The purpose of this page is to describe some of the hikes in and around the Upper Valley of New Hampshire. Since I like hiking with a GPS, and believe that it is both a useful and fun hiking tool, I'm providing important waypoints, trail topo maps, altitude profiles, and descriptions for each of the trails.

As I get feedback and work with this a little, expect the page layout and such to change. Feedback is welcome.

The hikes are listed below:

(Click on Maps for a larger view)

Gile Mountain, Norwich, VT

Description: A short round-trip hike to a scenic fire tower with panoramic views Length: 1.4 miles RT Altitude Gain: 362 ft Difficulty: Easy Tracklog: gilemt.loc (ExpertGPS format)

Smarts Mountain, Lyme, NH

Description: A fairly long trail loop to a scenic fire tower along ridges with excellent views Length: 6.9 mile loop Altitude Gain: 2174 ft Difficulty: Moderate Tracklog: smarts.loc (ExpertGPS format)

Holts Ledge, Lyme, NH

Description: A short hike along part of the AT from the Dartmouth Skiway to the top of Holts Ledge, by way of the DOC "Trapper John" shelter Length: 4.0 mile RT Altitude Gain: 1102 ft Difficulty: Easy Tracklog: holts.loc (ExpertGPS format)

Mt Kearsarge, Kearsarge, NH

Description: A nice, scenic loop hike to one of the area's nicer mountains from Winslow State Park. Ascent via the Wilmot trail, return via the gentler Barlow trail. Length: 2.6 mile loop Altitude Gain: 1175 ft Difficulty: Easy Tracklog: kearsarge.loc (ExpertGPS format)

Indian Ridge, Hanover/Lebanon, NH

Description: A nice, hike around a reservoir and up a hill with a scenic overlook of Dartmouth and the Connecticut River. Length: 4.4 mile round trip Altitude Gain: 531 ft Difficulty: Easy Tracklog: bostonlot.loc (ExpertGPS format)

Velvet Rocks, Hanover, NH

Description: A short and easy hike from the Hanover Coop parking lot to the Velvet Rocks. Length: 2 miles round trip Altitude Gain: 501 ft Difficulty: Easy Tracklog: velvet.loc (ExpertGPS format)

All waypoint data and GPS tracklogs are provided in ExpertGPS .loc format (which also works in EasyGPS and PanTerra). Contact me if you have other formats that would be useful (I don't yet own MapSource, I'm working on that).

All the trail maps were generated with ExpertGPS, which uses topo maps provided by the US Geological Survey, and the elevation profiles were generated by grabbing screenshots from my Garmin Etrex Vista using G7ToWin.

Links:

• ExpertGPS by Topografix, a very nice low-cost Windows-based GPS utility for US GPS users. It provides waypoint, track, and route management, and will superimpose your tracklogs on both USGS topo maps and aerial photos from Terraserver. They also make a nice freeware program, EasyGPS, which doesn't support maps or tracklogs, but is still quite useful for waypoint and route management.
• G7ToWin, a nice freeware Windows application for GPS waypoint, tracklog, and route management. I've found this program works well for making periodic backups of my GPS's waypoint list.
• GeoBuddy, a conversion program that will convert between ExpertGPS .loc files and various other GPS programs' formats, so that this site isn't completely worthless to people with non-Topografix software.