Moultonborough's Red Hill Has One Summit and Two Completely Different Hikes to Get There

On a Saturday morning in late September, two cars pull into the Red Hill Road parking area within a few minutes of each other. One hiker heads straight for the trail sign marked Red Hill Trail. The other angles left toward the Cabin Trail. Neither one hesitates, and neither one asks the other which way is better. They already know. What they don't always say out loud is that they're about to have two different mornings that happen to end at the same fire tower.

That's the part of Red Hill that doesn't show up in a trail listing. The "Fire Tower Loop" gets described as one hike with two names for its halves, but the two halves aren't mirror images of each other. They're built differently, they pass through different centuries of the town's history, and picking one over the other changes what your Saturday actually looks like before you've climbed a single foot.

Same Trailhead, Two Different Mornings

The Red Hill Trail is the direct route: a steady, rocky climb of roughly 1.7 miles up an old fire warden's jeep road that gains about 1,300 feet before it flattens out for the final approach to the summit clearing. It's the trail people take when they want the workout part of the hike to be the point, not the scenery along the way.

The Cabin Trail covers a shorter distance, about 1.4 miles, and takes a gentler grade to get there. It's the trail people take when the hike itself is supposed to be unhurried, because the terrain lets it be.

Both trails sit inside the Lakes Region Conservation Trust's Red Hill Conservation Area, a 2,820-acre parcel that LRCT maintains in partnership with the Squam Lakes Association, the Squam Lakes Conservation Society, the Lake Kanasatka Association, the Squam Lakes Natural Science Center, the Society for the Protection of New Hampshire Forests, the Moultonborough Snowmobile Club, and faculty and students from Moultonborough's own schools. That's an unusually long list of local organizations sharing upkeep on 6.2 miles of hiking trail, and it's a reminder that this mountain isn't a backdrop the town happens to sit next to. It's infrastructure the town actively keeps working.

What the Front Trail Skips

Here's the part most first-time hikers miss entirely, because nothing at the trailhead tells them to expect it. The Cabin Trail passes directly by the remains of the Horne family homestead, one of the settlement sites documented along this route, and continues on to the Cook family homestead cellar holes and a well-preserved hunter's cabin tucked into the woods. A connector trail marked with yellow blazes branches off toward the cellar hole itself and the old barn foundations.

None of that is visible from the Red Hill Trail. If you go up the front, you get the climb. If you go up the back, you get two centuries of farming history sitting quietly in the woods, unlabeled except for what the Lakes Region Conservation Trust has documented on its own property page. Locals who've done the loop both directions tend to have a preference, and it usually comes down to which version of the hike they wanted that day, not which trail is objectively better.

Every Path Ends at the Same Spot

Both trails converge at the summit, where a fire tower has stood on Red Hill's cleared, grassy top since long before it earned a spot on the National Historic Lookout Register in 2003. Henry David Thoreau climbed this same mountain in July 1858 and wrote about the views in his journal, which means the summit has been drawing people up for at least a century and a half longer than it's had a formal name for its trail network.

The reason people keep making the climb is straightforward once you're standing at the tower deck. Lake Winnipesaukee spreads out on one side and Squam Lake on the other, with the Ossipee Range, the Belknap Range, and the Sandwich Range visible in the same sweep, and Mount Chocorua holding its own point on the horizon. It's a 360-degree view that doesn't require a technical climb to reach, which is part of why the mountain shows up on so many family hiking lists despite the fact that the tower itself takes a few nerve-testing steps to climb.

If you want a third option beyond the standard loop, the trail network offers two:

• Eagle Cliff Trail, accessed from Bean Road on the Squam Lake side, is a steeper, ledgier approach that turns the hike into a five-mile round trip with real elevation gain, the version locals pick when they want more of a workout than the standard loop offers.
• Sheridan Woods Trail branches off from the Cabin Trail side and leads to a quieter overlook of Garland Pond and the Ossipee Range, with a second viewpoint toward the Sandwich Range, for hikers who'd rather skip the crowds at the main summit.

The Actual Finish Line

Ask a handful of Moultonborough residents about hiking Red Hill and the fire tower comes up, but so does a small shop at 392 Red Hill Road called Red Hill Provisions, sitting right at the base of the trail. It sells organic herb-infused lemonade, homemade jams and jellies, bug spray made from the same plants growing on the property, and homemade muffins, and it runs a scavenger hunt for kids who need a reason to finish the last stretch of trail without complaining. Dogs are welcome on the property, and there's enough outdoor seating that finishing a hike here feels less like leaving the woods and more like extending the morning by twenty minutes.

It's a small business, and it's not trying to be anything more than what it is. But ask around and you'll notice that plenty of people describe the hike by where it ends, not just where it peaks. The tower is the postcard. The lemonade at the bottom is the part people actually plan around.

Right Now Is the Window

The Lakes Region typically starts showing its first real color in late September, with the display building through October as it moves south and downhill from the higher elevations that turn first. That timing lines up with Castle in the Clouds' 2026 season, which runs through October 25, and the two properties share more than a season in common. The Lakes Region Conservation Trust's printed trail map for Red Hill includes the trail network for the neighboring Castle in the Clouds Conservation Area on the same fold, which means a hiker who wants to turn a Saturday into a longer outing can move between the two without switching maps.

The Squam Lakes Association also runs a guided fall foliage hike up Red Hill most years as part of its Adventure Ecology programming, led by members of the Lakes Region Conservation Corps and open to the public at no cost. It's the kind of program that only exists because enough people already treat this mountain as a shared piece of the town rather than a private errand, which says something about how Moultonborough actually uses the land it's protected.

None of this requires a decision about which trail is correct. The two versions of Red Hill both end at the same tower, and most people who hike it regularly have simply learned which morning they're in the mood for. What's worth knowing, especially if you're new to it, is that the choice is real. You're not picking a direction. You're picking which hike you're actually going to have.

If you're getting to know Moultonborough this fall, whether you've lived here for years or you're still learning which trail sign to trust, Gail McCarthy and the REEN USA team are always glad to talk about what makes this stretch of the Lakes Region worth exploring. Let's Connect.