Old Cherry Mountain Road Camping

The amount of human feces and trash left behind at campsites was unreal. An absolute trip ruiner. Like on the site not even in the woods (don’t worry it was all throughout the woods surrounding the sites also) every corner there were mass graves of toilet paper and crap. My boyfriend stepped in a heaping pile while setting up the tent. We checked multiple sites, some were worse than others but the smell and the mood set was too much. The disrespect for these campsites by people is disheartening.

The semi-good rating is for the location and seclusion of each site on a nice dirt road alone.

Sites located off this road are a 1/4 to 1/2 mile apart and vary in RV accessibility: some are definitely for tents only, others you can back an RV into them. Most are fairly shaded, I believe site 5 or 6 had some decent sun and was RV accessible. Old Cherry Mountain Road is a hard packed gravel road plenty wide enough for one vehicle and with multiple pull offs for passing. Beware that the road slopes off fairly significantly into ditches on either side much of the time: if an oncoming vehicle approaches at the wrong time, someone may have to back up.

No cell service at all on the mountain, even with my booster. However, just 12 miles south is the AMC Highland Centre at Crawford Notch. They have a visitor centre with free WIFI for the public and a comfy seating area. They also have restrooms, garbage collection, cafeteria style restaurant and small gift shop. You can buy a week long day use visitors pass for the White Mountains here for I think $10.

Sites were not entirely clean - previous campers had left several piles of toilet paper and excrement on the site and some garbage. Yuck!

Even so, I loved my stay here: so much to see and do in the White Mountains - plenty of mountain hiking trails and various attractions like the huge Mount Washington. In Fraconia Notch, I enjoyed and recommend the Flume Gorge trail plus gondola up Cannon mountain - they had a combo ticked for this one. The Basin also in Fraconia is a beautiful series of cascades and it is free too! In the Crawford Notch, Mount Wiley rewards with a stellar view for an easy 3 mile round trip hike.