Hiking the Ice Gulch in Randolph, New Hampshire - A rugged hike of a wilderness glacial flume

The Ice Gulch is located in Randolph, New Hampshire, in the mountains just to the north of the very popular Appalachia Trailhead on Route 2 outside of Gorham, NH. The Gulch is an undeveloped, wild glacial flume that descends down the side of Mount Crescent. In places you’ll be climbing over and around car sized boulders, and many of the spaces are filled with ice and snow, even late into the winter.

Compared to the number of visitors you’ll find just to the south, the Randolph trails are little used, quiet, and explore a number of unique areas. On this trip, Jeff and Patrick explored the Ice Gulch, located on the shoulder of Mount Crescent.

For this hike, we utilized the Peek Path, Cook Path, and Ice Gulch Trails to make the loop. There was also some road walking on Randolph Hill Road to complete the loop. Overall it was a 8.6 mile loop hike with about 1,263 feet of elevation gain along the way.

Ice Gulch is only about a mile long, but it will take at least an hour, if not more to traverse that distance. It’s rugged, rocky, wet, and in the early summer, still snowy and icy. We descended the gulch and would recommend tackling it that way, as you don’t have added challenge of climbing the entire way, instead you’re descending. The majority of the hike is easy to moderate, but the mile through Ice Gulch is a moderate to difficult hike, as you navigate through the large boulders the entire way.

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