Please explore these images taken during a hike up Mount Cardigan via the South Ridge trail on a beautiful summer day. You can click each of these images to get to a site where you can zoom way in then pan around. When you get there, click the double arrow above the image on the right to see it full frame. Please wait for the resolution to download. You can use the + and – keys to zoom and the arrow keys to scroll. Or use the scroll wheel to zoom and the left mouse to drag.

This 360 degree panorama shows the White Mountains of NH and the Green Mountains of VT. Most of the major peaks are labeled with help from Brent Scudder and his book “White Mountain Viewing Guide”. You will have to zoom in to read the labels. The fire tower was almost directly south of me when I took the 58 photos that comprise this image. 

The South Ridge trail is longer than the most-used and more direct West Ridge trail. But it rewards those who take it with long views of the summit which begins to come into sight three-quarters of a mile away. Here we are on South Peak nearing the summit but with still some ground to cover.

At the summit we saw the line of very tall cairns leading down the West Ridge Trail. They are in this image leading down to the left from the fire tower. To the left of the tower you can see Canaan Street Lake and Canaan with the Green Mountains of Vermont including Killington in the distance. To the far left is Orange Pond and, above and to the right of Orange Pond, Grafton Pond. To the immediate right of the tower is Smarts Mountain with northern NH and the White Mountains to the right.