Compared to the White Mountains, the Mahoosuc Range outside of Berlin is a ghost-town—and that’s just how hikers like it. You may not see a soul on a spring hike through the range along the Appalachian Trail. And unlike the rest of the range across the border in Maine, this section of the Mahoosucs is full of moderate stretches with flowered glades and paper birch stands below the tree line. You can enter the range from the Success Trail, a former logging road off of Route 16 a few miles north of Berlin.

New Hampshire’s largest state forest isn’t the White Mountains, it’s the Nash Stream Forest, a vast wilderness of wetlands and wooded peaks that makes up the bulk of the Great North Woods. Cutting through the center of the forest, the Cohos Trail (www.cohostrail.org) offers 162 miles of virtually unbroken wilderness from the White Mountains to the Canadian border. The heart of the trail are hikes over South Percy, a gum drop of a mountain with some dramatic cliffs, and North Percy, a steep climb to a vast treeless summit with spectacular vistas over the forest.

Farther north, Dixville’s namesake Notch is a tight and narrow cut through the mountains with cliffs on either side. You can look straight down onto it from a height of 1,000 feet at Table Rock in Dixville Notch State Park (Rte. 26, Dixville, 603/538-6707, www.nhstateparks.com/dixville.html). The half-mile climb up on all fours starts on Route 26 across from the entrance to the Balsams.