Nature Conservancy Trail

Dogs No Dogs

Features Views

There are lots of log steps and roots along this trail, which can make it seem technical in places.

Starting from the Knight Park trailhead, this trail heads out, paralleling the Three Rocks Road for a short distance, then crosses the road, and heads up into the forest. The trail more or less parallels the road for about a half mile and crosses it a couple of times, but for the most part still feels removed from the road as it crosses small foot bridges and runs through a pretty thick forest.

After crossing the road for a second time, the trail branches away from the road and starts to climb steeply up some log steps through the forest, and then after a decent climb starts to undulate through small drainages and across more foot bridges until the trail emerges from the forest at a little less than 1.5 miles into the trail. At this point, the trail contours around until it reaches a small ridge, where you can get some amazing views of the Salmon River Estuary and some cool surrounding rock formations.

At this point, the trail starts to climb up some steep switchbacks until it reaches the top of the ridge, at which point the trail mostly levels out for the rest of its length. There are some slight ups and downs as the trail crosses back into and goes through the forest, but for the most part the elevation gain gets finished in the first 2 miles of the trail.

After crossing back into the forest, the trail gets a little bit wider and can sometimes get boggy in places but overall is an enjoyable trail with cool views of moss covered trees until the trail reaches its end at the National Forest Development Road 1861, where there is another trail sign and some information about the area.