I was just wondering if anyone had been up New Brunswick highest peak and had info on exactly how demanding it is. I have talked to lots of local people but haven't been able to get a time frame on what to expect from an adult. We're taking our kids to the back country spot below the summit and are confident in their ability to make it (it helps that my husband and I will be the pack mules) but am interested in how long I should expect it to take us to get there. If anyone has been up this mountain or better yet camped at the back country spots and have some info that would be great. I know the kids are really looking forward to getting to their second high point in Canada (they went to PEI's last December and thought it was surprisingly interesting even though it was rather flat and basically just a mail box in the woods in the snow between a couple of farmers fields, I guess it's just how you present it). Thanks in advance to anyone who has info and I'll be sure to take alot of pictures to ad to this site.

After doing a bit of reading it looks quite easy and should take about 2 hours with a length of 4.4km on groomed trail. There is a building on top which might make things a bit easier for the kids.

Yes that's why I figured it would be a good first mountain experience for the kids. Plus since we will be staying at the Headwaters campground they won't even have to go up and back in one hike. We'll go up to the site, which is not far from the summit, stay there for the night then finish the hike up the next day and come back down. Thanks for the time estimate, we took them back country camping last year and they hiked between 3-4 hours with their packs (which had little more then their sleeping bags) and they did well. On the way out we did say their would be ice cream at the end but who doesn't want ice cream after a hike on a hot day?

We made it up and down Mount Carleton with the kids. The weather held all day, though it was ridiculously humid and everyone was sweating like crazy on the way up. It was a nice trail, no hard parts at all, which is why I chose it for the kids. We went up the standard trail and made it up in under 2 hours which is the stated time (1 1/2-2 each way). I'm going to make a page for the mountain since there isn't one here yet. The only thing I didn't like was the amount of garbage on the trail! There was litter pretty much constantly and the old house where the people that watched for fires lived and the watch house at the top were literally full of beer cans, beer bottles, pop cans, etc and were covered head to toe with graffiti. Most of which reminded me of a high school bathroom stall if you know what I mean. I'm just glad my kids were to distracted to read much of it. We made it back down in 1 1/2 hours. Lots of animal sightings, a garter snake, a huge toad and a wood cock that let my daughter get within an arms reach. Not to mention deer like crazy between the park and Plaster Rock. On the way there the guy in front of us was about a meter away from hitting a deer that jumped out in front of his truck, then on the way back there were deer everywhere. All along the road, in peoples yards, we almost hit a fawn that was standing in the middle of the road. Apparently people there feed them so it's causing some problems! But overall the park was nice, very uncrowded that day. We only saw maybe 3 other cars in the park but it was calling for isolated showers. We ran into one couple on the trail coming down as we were going up and were the only ones on the top. Here's a photo of the firehouse at the top. The summit marker is about 10 meters behind it.

I just finished the page for anyone interested in going there.