Belknap Mountain Hike
 

Hiked Belknap moutnain this weekend with my 10 year old. I have hiked that mountain more than a dozen times and did not know about the plane crash wreckage that still remains from 1972. A gentleman at the tower told me about it and we checked it out. Very ominous but also interesting.

Patch
 

Hike all 12 in the Belknap Range and get a patch from the sportmen's club! A fun thing to do with your son!

http://www.belknapsportsmensclub.com/hiking.html

where is the wereckage
 

We hiked it last month but did not know about the wreckage. Where is it?

crash site
 

coordinates are:
N43 31 09.6 W71 22 04.6

From the summit of Belkanp go about 1/10 mile on the trail toward Gunstock. Then there is a very rough trail heading steep downhill (NE), decend about 1/10 mile to the site.

crash site
 

When you are at the top follow blue trail down. There will be a narrow trail on the right. There is some orange surveyors tape. Follow down until you start to see the big rocks. The wreckage will soon appear.

We just completed the Belknap Range this weekend. Sent in for our patches today actually :-). We went from Major over to Straight Back, Anna, Mack, to the Woods Rd parking lot. 7.5 miles. We did Mt Major to Gunstock last year via the Quarry trail. 2 awesome hikes. We missed the plane wreckage though. I'll have to check it out next time I'm up there.

Belknap Plane Crash
 

Here are a few pics of the plane crash site.

Forum Member dcr's Information about this Crash
 

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...sh_site_ed.jpg

Tragedy on the Mountain

34 years ago (6/18/72) a small plane (Piper) crashed into the eastern slope of Mt Belknap a few hundred yds below the summit. It landed on a steep, heavily wooded slope - the plane disintegrated and the pilot was killed. The plane's remains still lie on the slope - a crude, steep path leads from the summit to the crash site (about .1 mi long). This photo doesn't do justice to the real steepness and extremely rocky roughness of the crash site - it is part of an old rockfall, now covered with trees that have grown up through the rubble. You can see part of the plane wreck near the center of the photo, some distance below the spot from which the photo was taken. Mysteriously, the plane wasn't discovered until 6/3/73, a year later - one wonders what took so long.

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...ing_etc_ed.jpg

Plane Crash Wings

These twisted remains appear to be all that is left of the wings, and perhaps a small part of the fuselage. Most of the fuselage seems to have been rendered into tiny pieces - perhaps there was an explosion after the crash, or maybe it simply disintegrated upon impact on the rock-strewn, ledgy site. Note the remnants of the seats hung in the branches of the tree to the left.

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo..._engine_ed.jpg

Plane Crash - Engine

Here we see the engine, apparently 4-cylinders, which lies close to what's left of the fuselage and the wings.

Lin's response:

Hi dcr, these are neat artifact photos. Amazing no one ever carried that stuff out. Years ago while hiking Saddle Hill across the river from our house, I tripped on something. What I tripped on was a fusalage line attached to metal. Then we noticed several small pieces of a plane scattered throughout the terrain. We asked some older folks about it and found out it had been a small military plane and private plane collided during WWII over a passenger train headed for Boston killing all aboard the planes. Funny the historical items and facts you can find in the woods off of trails.

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...tail_piece.jpg

Plane Crash - Tail Section - Elevator

Here we see the horizontal, or elevator, section of the tail, which lies separate from, but close to, the vertical or rudder section.

More of dcr's information and photos
 

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo...ne_tail_ed.jpg

Plane Crash - Tail Section - Rudder

Here we see the rudder section of the plane's tail, lying where it landed over 30 years ago.

http://www.winnipesaukee.com/photopo..._-_view_ed.jpg

View From the Crash Site


When the plane crashed the first part of it to become disengaged was the rudder section of the tail. It landed below the rest of the crash remains, near the edge of a small cliff - this provides an opening in the tree cover so that, by looking out over the destroyed tail piece, one can get a view out across east Gilford and west Alton to the lake, where Ship and Moose Islands and Wolfeboro Bay can be seen to the east.

(Note to the Webmaster: Please feel free to resize the pictures as necessary... Working from iPhone is tricky. Thanks!)

Hiked to the crash site today, between rainstorms. The trail starts a lot closer to the top of the mountain than I figured, right across from the little brown hut. The trail is steep.

The site looks just like the pictures posted. I little spooky when you think about it.