Peppercorn Hill Conservation Area — Attraction in Upton

An excellent local trail for hiking, walking, and trail running if you're interested in shorter hill-oriented trail running and sprint work. The main parking lot is rarely crowded with six spaces and four additional spaces along the road. A full loop on the trail with no offshoots is roughly 2.5 miles long, and can be accomplished when starting from the left fork path by taking every successive right fork you come across. Turning left from the main entrance 'T' takes you on a long, gentle uphill with an abrupt downhill finish, while going right gives the opposite: a steep elevation climb of nearly 200' in under a half-mile, followed by a gentle flat/slightly downhill remainder.

There are several trail offshoots that can take you to alternate trailheads in residential neighborhoods, dead ends, or even over the town line/firebreak into Upton, but all parts of the trail are easily navigable and major intersections are clearly marked. This is definitely...

As a local hiking area Peppercorn Hill is quite a nice place for a hike that doesn’t require a long drive. Not like being in the White Mountains but as a recurring fitness hike it does just fine. Trails are easy to follow and well marked. There is a good trail map at the trailhead on Crockett rd and a small parking area. I met several people along my 4 mile weekend hike. All were friendly and courteous. During the week you can expect the trail traffic will be light. There are a lot of boulders and trail footing can be challenging so use caution,...

We discovered these trails just two weeks ago. Since the lake is frozen we entered the trails on two separate occasions from two separate entrances...one near the dam at the end of North Pond and another directly across from the beach at North Pond, We loved these trails and snowshoeing on them for just shy of ten miles was an amazing workout. There is one section after you cross the power lines into Milford where the red dots disappear and so we took many side trails that lead to neighborhoods but these little forays were still...