Blueberries are getting ripe in SW NH!!

Hiked up the Pumpelly trail to the Cascade Link and the blueberries are ripening up nicely. Still only 20% or so on the ridge, but they were tasty on a warm July day. Next weekend should be even better. I'll try to hit N. Pack and will report what I find, or not!

I was on Mt Major July 3rd and there were some blueberries here and there. Most of them were well picked over from the mobs on the mountain. However, over on Straightback Mountain there were tons of ripe blueberries and no crowds.

Looks like I have to plan my annual blueberry hike to Rumford White Cap to gorge on berries in a few weeks. Finest berries in western maine.

peakbagger said:

Looks like I have to plan my annual blueberry hike to Rumford White Cap to gorge on berries in a few weeks. Finest berries in western maine.

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2 weeks ago on Bald Mtn in nearby Woodstock the berries had no color at all. I agree, Rumford White Cap is a great place to pick!!

Which of the White Mountain 48 include(s) good blueberry picking along the hike?

Moriah via the carter moriah trail has some potentially nice patches, but the trade off is that they stop quite a distance from the summit. Realistically the lower summits tend to have better berries. Hard to beat the Baldface circle trail or the appropriately named Blueberry ledge trails in Evans Notch. The Red Ridge trail in the Moats is also good. The Shelburne Moriah trail also has some potentially great picking

The tough part is that the quality and quantity or berries is very dependent on past years weather and spring conditions. A good patch one year may be a very poor one the next. One of the reasons I like Rumford Whitecap is that there are 3 distinct varieties of berries, usually one variety is doing well and if all three are prime, its easy to pick a few gallons without moving much more than a 100 feet. The yield of berries is very dependent on rain in the last few weeks of ripening, its been great conditions recently but a shift to hot an dry can really impact the picking.

North Pack blueberries bushes are loaded and about 1/3 ripe as of Monday. Local picking in the Weare area is even better. Probably the best year I've seen in the last 15yrs or so.

No berries yet on Moriah, I was there Friday. On Thursday we did the Moats and there were a few that were ripe.

Thanks for the beta, everyone. I'm heading up soon and plan to interperse big hikes and smaller hikes, so berry hunting will be in order on some of these.

One of my favorite hike memories is of my second climb of Connecticut's Bear Mountain, July 17, 2010. My best hiking buddy and I were rewarded with a panoply of blues on the cone, countless. We returned and hit Everett and Race a few weeks after and were similarly festooned amid a sea of blue.

I've been back a couple summers since to the Southern Taconics and struck out - 2010 was a special year in that area, evidently. Looking forward to painting my face and fingers blue up north soon.

Driver8 said:

Thanks for the beta, everyone. I'm heading up soon and plan to interperse big hikes and smaller hikes, so berry hunting will be in order on some of these.

One of my favorite hike memories is of my second climb of Connecticut's Bear Mountain, July 17, 2010. My best hiking buddy and I were rewarded with a panoply of blues on the cone, countless. We returned and hit Everett and Race a few weeks after and were similarly festooned amid a sea of blue.

I've been back a couple summers since to the Southern Taconics and struck out - 2010 was a special year in that area, evidently. Looking forward to painting my face and fingers blue up north soon.

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In the South Taconics, you'll also find them on the Braces.

I was staying in Newport, NH last weekend and had a couple of hours to spend on Sunday, so I decided to hike a segment of Monadnock Sunapee Greenway that goes over Oak Hill, so that I could finish adding up this section of the trail to Open Street Map (http://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=43.158486&mlon=-72.109451&zoom=16#map=16/43.1585/-72.1095). Oak Hill has been heavily logged not that long ago, so now there is a lot of brush, sunlight and blueberry bushes along the trail. Blueberries were truly delightful and I had all of them to myself as I didn't meet a single soul during 2+ hr hike. Also nice views from the top of the hill.