Elephant Mountain via Elephant Mountain Road

This route starts at a parking area on Elephant Mountain Road, off South Arm Road north of Andover, where active logging has closed the road to vehicles nearly 2 miles in. From the parking area, continue on foot up the closed logging road, climbing several hundred feet with occasional views east toward Old Blue Mountain and the Appalachian Trail ridgeline. The road narrows into a grassy, overgrown track through a small clearing, then reaches a second clearing where a rock cairn marks the start of the bushwhack into the forest. From the cairn, there is no continuous trail: the route crosses countless blowdowns, logging slash, thick young fir, and boggy saddles to reach a wooded, viewless summit, and map-and-compass or GPS navigation is required to hold a line uphill and east. The path becomes better defined only in the final steep pitch, where multiple faint routes converge below the top. Reach the high point at about 3.3 miles, where a summit canister sits in a small clearing. Retrace the same blowdown-choked route and closed logging road back to the parking area for a round trip of about 6.6 miles, gaining roughly 2,040 vertical feet.