Franconia Notch V10

Joe M. wrote:Can you do the same at Franconia, say at the Lincoln/Lafayette trailhead?

"legal" or "get away with"? Not legal. Franconia Notch is a state park (at least where the road is) and sleeping in the car is illegal. Ditto for Crawford. Pinkham - along with a lot of other areas that people tend to lump together as "the Whites" is NFS land. Very different rules and regulations along with the people responsible for enforcing them.

Get away with? As always it depends...

There's free camping and trail-head parking lots barely 10 minutes north out of the park. Take exit 35 (Route 3) to Gale River Rd. on your right, across from Trudeau Rd. (5-ish miles) and park at one of the trail-heads or numerous free camping sites. Nice quiet spots, though the gate will lock when the snow arrives, but you can park at the gate too and just crash there.

i've slept at lafayette trail head and cannon, sometimes the popo's tap the window and ask you to crash elsewhere, sometimes they just shine they're high beems around a bit and head out, but nh staties always seem to roll through them lots, a cop once booted us from cath ledge at 3am said go on down to walmart for some "free camping"

awesome, thanks for that info guys

wallmart in littleton has nice flat parking areas. the wally in Plymouth is sloped pretty good but if you keep leveling boards in the van it is doabe. Ditto on trail heads. they usually seem pretty low key. Not the ones right on 93 though.

Gotta love Walmart...

AWinters wrote:There's free camping and trail-head parking lots barely 10 minutes north out of the park. Take exit 35 (Route 3) to Gale River Rd. on your right, across from Trudeau Rd. (5-ish miles) and park at one of the trail-heads or numerous free camping sites. Nice quiet spots, though the gate will lock when the snow arrives, but you can park at the gate too and just crash there.

are these spots designated camping spots? I was looking online and couldn't find anything about free camp spots at the area you are talking about. I found info on a trailhead at gale river, but thats all that seems to be on the official webpage. It also say's no camping is allowed 1/4 mile from any trailhead here: fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DO…

Just curious since i'll be headed that way this week. Tempting to stay at the plymouth walmart, but i really don't wanna drive 40 mins to the trail head in the morning if i am gonna sleep in my van anyways so i figured it'd be nice to know if i'll be camping legally or not since i was under the impression that there is legal free camping off gale river rd?

There is absolutely LEGAL FREE camping on Gale River Road.

freecampsites.net/#!11254&query=sitedetails

Probably close to a dozen primitive sites with no amenities. There's two entrances to the road if coming from 93, it's essentially a loop: The one just before crossing Gale River (brown hiker sign), and then the one across from Trudeau Rd just farther up Rt. 3, AFTER crossing Gale River. If you take the right across from Trudeau, you'll see the sites on the left as you drive up the road. There's a 14-day limit, but that's the only regulation, first come first serve. FYI there are no road signs that actually say Gale River Road, but you can't miss it.

Like I said they'll be closing the gates soon, but you can always sleep in your car at the parking lot at the first entrance gate and since you have a van I'd say you're stylin'. People park there overnight all the time to access Mt. Garfield in the winter, myself included. It's not state park so it's fine.

Hope this helps!

very helpful! Thanks a ton, makes life much easier with all that info.

As of this afternoon the gates are still open

yup! I slept their tuesday, great spot for sure

How was the bouldering?

would of been wet the day I was hiking