Introductory Guide to Visiting the White Mountains
This was a pleasant hike to a pretty waterfall located near a scenic backcountry campsite. At just under five miles with only 1100 feet of climbing, it’s one of the area’s easier hikes.
View the Full Album of Photos From This Hike
The water level was low from dry conditions, but the falls were still pretty. Below: Signage at the parking area; Early parts of the hike followed the road; The hike enters the woods.
Christine Says…
We stumbled across this hike in one of my parents’ hiking guide books. They had never done it, but the description sounded quite appealing for a quick morning hike. Trailhead parking is on Coppermine Road, a private gravel road off NH116. Be careful to park only in the designated area, so you don’t infringe on homeowner’s private property.
The first .4 mile of the hike follows the unpaved road. You’ll pass a number of private cabins as you walk. Look for yellow blazes and a hiker sign on the left side of the road. Follow the path into shady woods. The trees are a mix of evergreens, maples, and white birches. It’s a peaceful setting and a gentle uphill. At 1 mile in, Coppermine Brook meets the trail’s right side.
The remainder of the hike stays close to the brook’s path, so this is a great hike if you enjoy the sound of bubbling water. There are lots of places to leave the trail and explore the boulder-strewn streambed. When we visited, water was running low, so it was easy to hop rocks and stand in the middle of the stream without getting wet.
At 2.2 miles, the trail crosses the stream via a sturdy wooden footbridge. Another .2 miles beyond the bridge, you’ll reach Coppermine Shelter and the base of Bridal Veil Falls. The shelter is a three-sided lean to for overnight campers. The falls are behind the shelter, tucked into a small cliffside. The falls drop several times over granite shelves. To get to the prettiest view of the waterfall, you have to cross the bottom pool and climb up one of the granite shelves.
The Coppermine Trail climbs gently and is only moderately rocky. This small bridge crosses the stream just a couple tenths of a mile before the falls. Below: Typical terrain for this hike; Stream scenery.
When we visited, the granite was really slippery from a brief rain the night before. We scrambled up to a viewpoint and surveyed the area. Adam wanted to climb even further up to another higher pool at the point where the falls take their largest plunge. We discussed the best route, as it looked a bit perilous and tricky.
While we were talking about the scramble to the top, my parent’s hiking guidebook, which I had set next to my backpack, went sliding down the rocks and into the water. It careened down two drops of the stream before settling in a eddy in the pool at the very bottom of the falls. CRAP – the book was full of years’ worth of handwritten hiking notes! Adam scrambled quickly back down to the bottom of the falls and retrieved it. It was completely sodden and I felt awful about not being more careful with it.
Adam eventually made it to the higher pool and took some closer photos of the falls, but worrying about the book kind of took the luster off the rest of the hike. Eventually, we headed back the way we came in. The hike back was quick and all downhill. When we got in the car, I turned the air conditioning on full blast to dry out the book’s pages before they stuck together. It was pretty hopeless, though.
Despite the mishap with the book, we enjoyed the hike and highly recommend it.
Adam Says…
This hike was one of the easiest hikes we have done in the area. The hike to the falls is uphill, but very gradual. We never felt out of breath on this one, so it may be a good one for a family hike. The recent rain had left some of the trail quite slippery, especially near the final climb up to the falls. When Christine mentioned it was slippery, we had to scramble on all fours to be able to make it up, because our feet could not find purchase on the slick rock.
This trail has an interesting, yet mysterious, past to it. After hiking about 1.2 miles on the Coppermine Trail (a couple of tenths after the brook and trail meet), there is a plaque on a large boulder in the streambed. While we didn’t see the plaque on our trip, we read about it later. To find the plaque, look for an area that has a steep slope down to a flat area. The boulder sticks out into the stream about halfway along the flat area and the plaque is facing downstream. The plaque states, “In Memoriam to Arthur Farnsworth ‘The Keeper of Stray Ladies’ Pecketts 1939 Presented by a Grateful One”. According to a 1987 Magnetic North article, there is an answer to the meaning behind this mysterious message. Arthur Farnsworth worked at a resort called Pecketts, located in Sugar Hill. Farnsworth’s job at Pecketts was to make his guests feel most comfortable. The actress, Bette Davis stayed there in 1939 to relax after a tiring filming schedule. Bette Davis fell in love with the beauty and anonymity of this area, feeling she could escape the burden of her fame. The story to be told here is that she strayed away from a hiking party on this trail and Arthur Farnsworth was sent to find her. They fell in love and were married in 1940 and moved to California, but often came back to the White Mountains to visit. In 1943, Farnsworth died from a fall at their Sugar Hill home. Bette Davis continued to visit this area afterwards, but eventually sold her home on Sugar Hill in 1961. This plaque showed up during this time.
The last bit of climbing to the falls can be slippery. Below: Boulders along the trail; The Coppermine Shelter; The pool at the base of the falls.
As Christine mentioned, our hiking book fell into the water. To watch a book slowly go down the rocks and fall into the lower pool pictured above was worrisome. Knowing how long her parents had spent hand writing notes as a journal of all the hikes they had been on, we felt so terrible. Before we returned home with our soggy mess of a book, we stopped by the White Mountains Visitor Center and purchased two copies of the replacement book – AMC’s Best Day Hikes in the White Mountains. We bought two because we thought we would be permanently banned from borrowing books in the future. The book had been updated and now included a few more hikes. To try and make amends, I spent several hours that evening transferring all the notes from their previous book (miraculously still legible despite wet pages). Her parents were not upset, but I wanted to make sure we made it right.
We both highly recommend this hike if you want an easy day hike to do for a nice waterfall view. Just please keep your hiking book (or printouts from this website) in a safe place.
Directions to trailhead: Parking coordinates are: 44.180903, -71.755717. Make sure you park in the designated parking area and nowhere else. This is a private road.
* MapMyHike is not necessarily accurate, as the GPS signal fades in and out – but it still provides some fun and interesting information.
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