Found! Catamount Hill's Lost Cave

Catamount Hill is the highest land in town. At the E. end of this hill is a precipice of 70 feet nearly perpendicular, at the foot of which is a cavern of some extent, inclining upwards. 

- 1817 State of the State, Allenstown NH

This 200 year old snippet was the only clue I had when I began my search for Catamount Cave in Allenstown, New Hampshire. Only a couple vague online references to the cave's existence are on the Internet, but even those are muddied by the fact that there's an unrelated Catamount Cave in Massachusetts that hogs all Google's attention. This lesser known NH version is on Catamount Hill in Bear Brook State Park, which at 10,000 acres and boasting over 40 miles of trails is the largest developed state park in New Hampshire. And as an area I've yet to familiarize myself with, I started my search the same way I start a good many of my searches - with Google Earth and a beer.

Having found things like trains in the woods or sections of abandoned highway from my laptop, I figured 70 feet of rock cliff would be easy enough to pick out from an overhead view. Sure enough, I found three separate rocky areas along the mountain that seemed like good matches, and on a recent Saturday where Logan suddenly decided an afternoon with his buddy at Blitz Indoor Park would be more fun than an afternoon with dad, I grabbed my hiking gear and headed west.

Knowing there is more than one entrance to Bear Hill, I drove to the road closest to where I'd pinned my suspect locations and found a trailhead conveniently right where I needed to find one. There I started up the trail.

After climbing about fifteen minutes and stopping to enjoy this view, I mischievously ignored the signs telling me to "stay on the trail or stay home" and followed my GPS into the woods.

One by one over the course of the afternoon I reached my pinned destinations and searched for a cave, and although I poked my head into plenty of suspicious looking areas like this one, one by one I was forced to check each destination off as being cave free.

To make things extra fun I came across these tracks which led to me carrying my pepper spray in my hand for the next half hour.

At some point it was closing in on 3pm and my thinking turned to heading home, deleting these dud locations and looking for new and better ones to search for on another weekend. On my way to the car I trudged, thwarted but not dejected, when I realized my front pocket was a little light. More good news; somewhere along the way I had dropped my flashlight. There goes $8 from Amazon, I decided. But after walking another 30 seconds I changed my mind - I really liked that flashlight, and I thought I'd have a descent chance of finding it if I turned back. My footprints would make it easy to backtrack, and finding a black flashlight on a fresh sheet of snow didn't sound all that tricky.

The good news is that fifteen minutes later I did indeed find my flashlight. The better news is that after plucking it from the snow I took the opportunity to walk a different route back toward the main trail, and that's when I came to this cliff.

Without measuring shadows and trying to triangulate the height of this sucker, I decided that yup this precipice looked 70 feet tall and I could check off the first part of the clue. Part two said the cavern was at the foot of the cliff, so moving left to right I search for possibilities until coming across this small opening. It was tight, so I dropped my backpack and crawled in.

The crevice went in maybe 5-6 feet before squeezing to a close. It was a cavern at the foot of the cliff and so technically everything matched, but I was not happy. If this little cubbyhole was the cave they'd been bragging about I was going to have a real beef with some dude from 1817.

Out I crawled, and to make sure I wasn't missing anything I continued to the end of the cliff. Then I saw a crevice big enough for me to actually walk into.

Suddenly there wasn't any doubt this was the Catamount Cave I'd spent all afternoon searching for. Here I am looking back from about 10 feet in, where I'd just risked pretty serious injury maneuvering over this triangle-shaped rock.

I rounded the bend but that's where the adventure ended this day. The cave continued, but there was a pinch point I was 90% certain I could get through, but not 100%. And since I was already breaking one of the cardinal rules by hiking alone, I decided not to push my luck.

At least I had found it, and triumphantly I exited the cave and made sure my GPS was still recording. For good measure I separately pinned the location on my phone, which had surprisingly good LTE service in these hills. Smiling like I'd just found King Tut's tomb, I hiked back to my car.

Now comes the fun part, gathering up some friends and planning a spring trip when the weather turns nice, to revisit and further explore the no longer hidden Catamount Cave.