Bike Trails NH. New Hampshire Northern Rail Trail
Login or register to download files
Raw file: Northern Rail Trail.gpx (277.15 KB)
My wife, brother and I are bicycle enthusiasts who enjoy riding the ever increasing number of rail / canal trails mostly in the Northeastern US. We also do volunteer work for NOAA by recovering US Coast & Geodetic Survey Benchmarks. We often combine these hobbies while trail riding.
Unlike geocaching, benchmark hunting serves a valuable purpose by providing NOAA with updates on the condition of their 700,000+ benchmarks across the Unites States. Information on Benchmarks is available here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/.
We have been riding these trails for over 10 years now and I decided to share some of the .GPX files I’ve created. Of the hundreds of trails available in this part of the country, I selected these for their quality, scenic beauty, lack of excessive grades or hazardous terrain and overall riding or hiking enjoyment. These files contain tracks for trails and waypoints for significant features such as road crossings, bike shops, campgrounds, points of interest and USCGS benchmarks along or near the trail. All waypoints include elevation data for use in plotting trail slope and planning outings.
This file is the Northern Trail which traverses 58 miles of scenic rural New Hampshire countryside from Boscowen to Lebanon and is the longest rail trail in the state. This popular, well maintained rail trail follows the right of way of the old Boston & Maine Railroad over numerous trestles and past many beautiful lakes.
Also included in this file are the nearby 10 mile Sugar River Trail and the 5 mile Winnipesauke River Trail. Although short, these trails are known for their historic covered bridges. The Sugar River Trail has two of the seven remaining covered railroad bridges in the US.
This file was compiled using a variety of resources including:
Traillink.com’s Northern Trail web page http://www.traillink.com/trail/northern-rail-trail.aspx
Friends of the Northern Rail Trail website: http://www.fnrt.org/
Northern Rail Trail.org website: http://northernrailtrail.org/
Traillink.com’s Sugar River Trail web page: http://www.traillink.com/trail/sugar-river-trail.aspx
Traillink.com’s Winnipesauke River Trail web page: http://www.traillink.com/trail/winnipesaukee-river-trail.asp...
NOAA - http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/
Rivopom’s Combined US campgrounds POI Factory file
Garmin’s Mapsource & Basecamp software
USCGS Topographic Maps. Available legally at no cost for many States here:
http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/
Google Earth
Garmin’s Birds Eye Imagery
Various Internet & Print resources
Personal Knowledge
Anyone interested in Benchmark hunting can obtain detailed data sheets for each mark by going here: http://www.ngs.noaa.gov/cgi-bin/ds_pid.prl The PID is the waypoint name symbolized by the color coded cube icons. Green= Recovered within the last 10 years. Blue= No recent recovery but set in a massive structure which still exists. Red= Likely missing or reported destroyed.
Free, legal, 24K and 100K topo map downloads for the states with these trails are available here: http://www.gpsfiledepot.com/ Segments of these maps covering the above trails can be loaded into many older handheld GPS receivers with limited memory by using Garmin’s Mapinstall program available here: http://www8.garmin.com/support/download_details.jsp?id=3291
I’ll post more trail files as I update and clean them up. I always enjoy conversing with fellow bike trail enthusiasts so please feel free to contact me with comments, questions, inclusions or revisions. – Enjoy!
***** UPDATE 3/7/16 *****
Complete revision
Added 240 waypoints
Revised parking area information
Realigned entire track
Added information for the nearby Winnipesauke River Trail
POI Packages
Change History
charlesd45 - Apr 2, 2016
48 BMP, WAV