Cohos Trail Thru Hike: Full Series // A 170 Mile Journey Through The Mountains of New Hampshire

#newhampshire #thruhike #backpacking

Filmed from September 27th-October 12th on an iPhone 12 Pro and Sony ZV-1 (with a Rode Video Micro)

Join the Trail Tribe as we embark on an autumn New England thru hiking adventure for the ages, filled with beauty, challenges, and lessons learned along the way.

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Timestamps for each part of the video:

-0:00 Intro
-3:29 Travel Day 1 (Lexington to Cincinatti)
-4:49 Travel Day 2 (CIncinatti to Colebrook, NH)
-6:52 Day 0 (Dropping off truck and resupply packages)
-12:35 Day 1 (Southern Terminus to Mt. Isolation)
-25:24 Day 2 (Mt. Isolation to Mt. Deception CG)
-37:14 Day 3 (Mt. Deception CG to Jefferson Inn)
-51:42 Day 4 (Jefferson Inn to Mt. Cabot)
-1:03:39 Day 5 (Mt. Cabot to Devil's Rest Shelter)
-1:17:05 Day 6 (Devil's Rest Shelter to Gadwah Notch)
-1:25:46 Day 7 (Gadwah Notch to Panorama Shelter)
-1:50:16 Day 8 (Panorama Shelter to Coleman State Park)
-1:59:03 Day 9 (Coleman State Park to Lake Francis State Park)
-2:11:55 Day 10 (Lake Francis State Park to Neil Tillotson Hut)
-2:20:37 Day 11 (Neil Tillotson Hut to Deer Mountain CG)
-2:32:35 Day 12 (Deer Mountain CG to Canadian Border)
-2:42:37 Bloopers

About the trail (and our journey):

“Cohos”. A strange and foreign word for some, but for others, especially in northern New Hampshire, evokes beauty, challenge, and mystery. Cohos is the Abenaki word for pines, and also was used to identify inhabitants of the region. Those living in the area were customarily known as "Coo-ashe-aukes", or "dwellers in the pine tree place."

The word Cohos also inspired the name for the first county in The Granite State which was established 1803. The original population was only 3000 people. The original settlers of the North Country were hardy and courageous. At that time, the county was home to vast tracts of woodlands, Abenaki tribes, and wild animals.

Today, 200 years later, what few people reside here still have the same sense of purpose and strength of character. Coös County contains nearly 20% of the total land area of New Hampshire, but only contains 2.6% of its population.

Another part of Coös County that requires a strong sense of purpose and character to fully experience is the appropriately named “Cohos Trail”, which runs 170 miles from The White Mountain National Forest to the Canadian border just north of Pittsburg. This footpath traverses some of the most rugged and steep terrain in the Eastern United States, with a whopping 31,500 ft of elevation gain across its duration, which is higher than Mount Everest, comparatively. Over the course of these miles, you will traverse bald granite mountain summits, submerge in spruce and fir forests, sludge through mountain bogs, and be on alert for grazing moose and bear. The sense of solitude is palpable in these Great North Woods, with those calling the sensation of being so remote and removed from civilization a “continental silence”.

The Cohos Trail was first envisioned in 1978. The founder, Kim Nilsen, was working as a reporter for a small weekly NH newspaper when he wrote an editorial about the concept for a long-distance trail through one million acres of forest in New Hampshire’s largest and most isolated county.
The idea languished for twenty years, but while on vacation in Maine, Nilsen revived the concept and began planning a trail route from Crawford Notch at the southern end of the county to the Canadian border 100 crow-fly miles away to the north. Hundreds of volunteers, from children to those in their eighties, have worked on the Cohos Trail over the years, and they are still at it today. The rest, they say, is history.

During the first two weeks of October, my Trail brothers Chad and Nick, and I embarked on a 1000 mile journey north to pursue this “continental silence”, aiming to thru hike the 170 mile Cohos Trail in one fell swoop. Over the course of 12 days, we would be tested beyond belief, pushing ourselves to physical and emotional limits we didn't know were possible. This is our thru-hike story.