Trip Report: Mountain Biking at Mt. Washington

This trip was awesome!  If you live anywhere within driving distance, you should definitely do this.  Full disclosure: this trip was HARD for me.  But the rest of the family was appropriately challenged and with some rest stops I was totally able to do it and we will definitely go back and do it again.


The details:
Great Glen Trails is a really fantastic outdoor center located at the base of Mt. Washington (across the street from the toll booth for the Mt. Washington Auto Road).  They have a ton of summer and winter activities.

We rented bikes and biked on the carriage trails.  I'm not sure why, but I thought these trails would be flat.  I was wrong.  But it was really fun.  The hills on the "easy" trails were not so steep that we couldn't get up - sometimes we walked up, but it's not a competition, so who cares?!  And not so steep that I was worried the kids would die as they bombed back down them.  They LOVED it.  We cycled to the cabin and had a snack and then cycled back down- the whole trip took us about 2 hours but could have been longer or shorter; there are plenty of trail options.  There is also a neat scavenger hunt for the kids- there are animal characters posted throughout the trails and they have a little punch attached so you can mark the matching animals on the map.  My kids LOVED when we'd be riding along and see one of the signs- we had to stop and fight over who was going to go first and go back over each one we'd found so far. 

After the ride, we had a quick sandwich lunch in the lodge, browsed the gift shop, and headed home. 

Overall- this is a great place to bring the family for some outdoor time.  We will be back.  I can't wait to try the kayaking in the summer and the snowshoeing in the winter.  They also run a specially-outfitted snow van up Mr. Washington in the winter, which sounds very cool but my kids just aren't up for a long trip like that yet.