Northeast Airlines Flight 656 crashed into Mount Success in 1954. I knew right away that I had a new adventure to plan. I took a long weekend away from work at the end of October. This was perfect because I also wanted to checkout a hostel I discovered in Conway (we don’t have many hostels in New England).
Turns out I picked a bad weekend for exploring the wild. When I got to Conway the weather was cold and rainy. This made it so I even had to go to the shopping outlets to buy a new jacket to deal with the cold and wet weather because I was under-prepared for this weather. I made the best of everything though. I went and took some pictures by the river before it got dark. Then while waiting to go to dinner I decided to jump on my computer to get more information about where the crash site is. That is when I discovered that there is a second crash site from a World War 2 bomber. Thankfully being in Conway put me right in the middle of the two crash sites with both being about an hour away.
Needless to say my attempt for getting to Northeast Airlines Flight 656 site did not amount to much. Unexpectedly the rain changed to snow, I had no cell phone signal and somehow managed to wander off the trail. Since I was alone I decided it was not a good idea to push my luck. Don’t worry though I still explored other parts of the White Mountains and took plenty of pictures along the way.
The next day I regrouped myself. The sun was shining and it was only a little cold out. Perfect conditions for hiking. I set off from the White Mountains Hostel determined to make today a successful day. I needed to find the World War 2 bomber.
Unlike most of the popular trails in the area, the crash site does not have a lot of information on its whereabouts. Thankfully I stumbled upon a 3 year old website post with a topographical map of the trail and where it begins (later I found out some of the information is wrong/outdated).
The trail starts on Walker Brook Road, so I threw that into my GPS and was on my way. There is no parking area so I just left my car to the side of the dirt road so I wasn’t blocking the gate. The first part of the trail is super easy. It is just a small dirt road for basically the first half of the hike.
Once I got to an this open field the real fun began. The trail went off to the right towards the treeline but was poorly marked. I stood there for a moment wondering if I was even in the correct spot. After my luck from the day before I was going through a lot of doubt in my head. I was about to go back to see if I missed a turn on the trail when I noticed a little stack of rocks. I knew that must be the way.
Between the light snow cover under the trees and an ungroomed trail, I was at the mercy of my phone telling me my elevation (a cool feature on the Samsung Galaxy Active phone) and sparse trail markers in the form of ribbons tied to trees or little stones stacked on top of each other. Thankfully it was a beautiful day for a hike, so I didn’t care about reaching my goal as much as enjoying such nice weather mid October.
Since I was alone I was texting my friends to let them know my progress and that I was safely exploring. While texting them I started to complain that my phone was showing me past the elevation that the crash site was supposed to be. I was getting tired and cranky because of my weekend of bad luck.
I paused from Snapchatting and texting for a moment to use a small tree to lift myself up the next part of the trail. I look a little to the left and that is when I saw it. A snow covered engine from the B-18 that had crashed. As I looked around I realized I was surrounded. Parts of the plane where scattered all over the mountain side. I couldn’t help but smile. After all my misfortune over the weekend, I did it, I found one of the two crash sites I set out to find. I spent a fair amount of time carefully examining and photographing the site. I was impressed with the amount of people that had clearly already found the site, but saddened by the amount of damage done by people looking to make their mark.
If I had to make any recommendations for this adventure I would say that you should consider doing it when there is no chance of snow and pay close attention for trail markers, otherwise you could fine yourself off course very quick.
