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Corridors · Vol. 009Byway

Named for a mountain it never reaches

A National Scenic Byway in New Hampshire whose surfaced viewpoints are named for a river, a brook, a pond and a hill — and not for the summit on the sign.

The Kancamagus Scenic Byway carries the name of a mountain. Mount Kancamagus is on the roster at 1,127 m, and it sits seven tenths of a mile off the route — near enough to name the road, far enough that the road never arrives.

The summit is the one thing the byway is named for and the one thing it does not take you to.

What the overlooks are actually named for

Five viewpoints are surfaced along the corridor, and their names are a list of what is low and wet rather than what is high: Pemigewasset Overlook, Beaver Brook Overlook, Lily Pond Vista, Sugar Hill Overlook, and CL Graham Wangan Overlook. A river, a brook, a pond, a hill, and a person.

Sugar Hill appears twice on this corridor and means two different things. There is Sugar Hill Overlook, one of the five, and there is Sugar Hill the peak, 559 m, a little over half a mile off the route. The viewpoint is named for the thing beside it. That is worth knowing before you go looking for a summit view from it.

The range in a few miles

The peaks the corridor read returns run from 264 m to 1,127 m, and almost all of them sit within a mile or two of the road:

  • Mount Kancamagus — 1,127 m, 0.7 mi off route
  • Mount Huntington — 1,123 m, 1.03 mi off route
  • Black Mountain — 893 m
  • Potash Knob — 813 m, and Potash Mountain — 812 m
  • Hedgehog Mountain — 768 m
  • Spruce Hill — 334 m, and the only one the roster marks as on the road itself, at 0.08 mi

Spruce Hill is the smallest thing on that list and the only one you actually drive past. Everything taller is a short walk away and stays a short walk away for the length of the byway.

What that makes the drive

A road named for a summit, whose viewpoints all face water and low ground, and whose one on-route peak is 334 m. This is not a climb with a payoff at the top. It is a corridor that keeps the high country beside you and never hands it over.

You do not summit the Kancamagus. You drive along the bottom of it and look up.

Which is a fair description of most of the White Mountains from a car, and an honest reason to stop at all five overlooks rather than saving yourself for a view the road was never going to give you.

The song · Vol. 009

Stay For The Gold

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