A ragged, yet rewarding jaunt in Jay

Lincoln Hill Road provides a seldom-trekked bushwhack

Story and photos by Tim Rowland

Not all property of the state is State Property — by which I mean there are little tracts of managed forestland here and there that belong to towns or counties that are treated more or less like investment accounts that add a modicum of revenue to local governments every so often when they are logged over.

Some towns, including Lewis and Keene, have concluded there’s more value in recreation than in timber, so they’ve built multi-use trails on these lands that have proved popular in their communities. Other tracts remain static, save for deer-hunting season and the occasional dog-walker. 

These lands don’t always have stunning natural features, so there had seemed no particular urgency in exploring an Essex County Forest Plantation in the town of Jay at the top of the dirt Lincoln Hill Road.

We knew in the eastern heights there was a very pleasant woods road for dog walking flanked by a pretty stream and wetlands. But it dead-ends at private land after a little less than a mile. The lower, western side, meanwhile, seemed to have little to recommend it, particularly since the county land ended well short of the 2,350-foot Lincoln Hill summit. 

But on further review, it looked as if there just might be a cliff outcropping to the southwest of Lincoln Hill that would have views, so on a recent crystal clear day I packed up the dogs and the navigational gear and headed up into the mountains. From the hamlet of Jay, Lincoln Hill Road is scarcely two miles away, accessed from Glen Road to a left on Hesseltine and a right on Hazen and another immediate right onto the snow-scraped dirt road. 

After driving a mile up the hill there is a parking lot on the right where the snow plow turns around. The road keeps going to a second parking lot a half-mile later, where, if equipped with four-wheel-drive and high clearance you can (probably) reach to access the aforementioned woods road on the eastern end of the tract.

But in winter it’s not advisable, because whoever scratched Lincoln Hill Road out of the duff a century or two ago made it straight as an arrow until they confronted an erratic the size of a Jeep. Here, they made a shallow horseshoe around the boulder and kept going on their original vector. The deviance is so slight that you will hardly even notice it going up. You will, however, Notice It Very Much if you are descending this exceedingly steep grade in 14 inches of snow, and even in crawl mode your wheels have locked up and you are sliding down the narrow road straight for it.

It certainly adds interest to your trip, although you may want to hold off exploring this part of the property until spring, especially since it won’t help you access the cliffs on Lincoln Hill.

For that, park at the lower lot, cross the road and scramble over an old stone wall on the far side of a logging landing. This will land you in a very young forest of glorified saplings studded here and there with some granddaddy white pines. Bushwhacking northeast on a line toward Lincoln Hill, the woods tighten with spruce and a little blowdown as you gain elevation before opening up to hardwoods on the mountain’s flank.

There is an odd spike of private land that bisects the county tract, and it’s on your immediate  right as you climb. Here is a dilemma the bushwhacking gods should never visit on feeble mortals.

I’m pawing my way through the underbrush and young spruce, through wet swampy places and over blowdown and it’s not the worst you’ve ever seen, but not 100% pleasant either, and all of a sudden I come to the property line as evidenced by posted signs and a plethora of red blazes. So there’s no pretending that you missed it, in other words.

And here’s the killer, just on the other side of the property line is a nice unobstructed logging road hugging the boundary and heading in the exact direction I wanted to go.

You see the problem. To stay legal I had to continue trudging through the dark and bloody thicket, while not 20 feet to my left was quite literally a stroll in the park. The dogs had no problem making a choice, they were trotting happily down the lane, looking back at me every so often and exchanging a glance that said, “We love him, but boy is he dumb.”

The property line does make for a perfect handrail, if a somewhat discouraging one.

The private land eventually ends and you will be facing a series of knobs leading up to Lincoln Hill. The first knob is the objective. It’s unassailable straight on, so you will have to go to the left or right and approach the destination from the rear.

Neither is easy, but the hike in its entirety is only a mile one-way, so the pain won’t last long. The payoff is a wide-open expanse of open rock looking down over the hamlet of Jay with a grand view of Whiteface and the Sentinels to the southwest and a unique perspective of the Jay Range to the south.

With a trail, this would be quite a complement to the Jay Mountain, once a relatively untraveled trail that was peddled as a release-valve for High Peak crowds — and now itself can be a bit crowded. But that won’t happen soon, if ever, so for now a quick and decidedly uncrowded bushwhack is the satisfying answer.