Bear Brook State Park
Distance: 3.25 Mile Loop, but up to 40 miles of trails
Difficulty Easy side of Moderate
Located in Allenstown is one of New Hampshires largest state parks. Bear Brook State park has a variety of amenities such as camping, hiking, swimming and biking. Our main reason for visiting was to hike some of their 40 miles of hiking trails.
We parked at Catamount Pond off of Deerfield Road, paid the small park fee and headed for a hike. I highly recommend getting a map since the trail system is so extensive. We started out on the One Mile Trail, which is an old dirt road.
After a little walk down this trail we turned left onto Catamount Trail. The trails are well marked and easy to navigate.
We followed the Catamount Trail to the Cascade Trail. This was a steady incline trail. It was very pretty walking through the trees and rocks.
The trail goes up and over a small hill before looping back down and following a stream. There was not a lot of water, probably due to the lack of rain this summer. My guess is in the spring or after a lot of rain the stream is very pretty.
We connected back to One Mile Trail that brought us back to the parking lot. The total hike was 3.25 miles long. It had a decent incline providing a good workout. I would like to go back when we have had more water to see what the stream is like. We only saw a couple mountain bikers and a group of people walking dogs. I did wish I had running vest with me for water, as the hike had more of an incline than I expected and it was humid.
Off the parking lot was Catamount Pond that had a swimming area, boat rentals, a playground, a pavilion and a park store with snacks. My husband and I agreed that we would not travel to swim here as it was not our type of swimming hole, but if I had my bathing suite after the hike I would have jumped in.
Overall we enjoyed exploring the trails at Bear Brook State Park and would absolutely return for more hiking.
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