If you've searched some version of that question in the last ten days, you already know the short answer: not yet. The trailheads off Buffalo Road that lead to Rumney Rocks and the Rattlesnake Mountain Trail are still marked closed, and as of the most recent public update, they hadn't reopened.
The longer answer is more interesting, and it has almost nothing to do with fire. Rumney's climbing scene was already headed into a quieter fall than the town has seen in over a decade, for a reason that predates the smoke by nearly two years. The fire is temporary. The other change is not.
What actually burned on Rattlesnake Mountain
The fire started around 10:30 a.m. on Friday, August 14, near the summit of the Rattlesnake Mountain Trail. Rumney's fire department was first on scene, and within hours the call had grown into a regional response: sixty firefighters from fifteen agencies, including crews from Ashland, Bristol, Campton-Thornton, Center Harbor, Haverhill, Hebron, Holderness, Meredith, New Hampton, Plymouth, Sanbornton, and Wentworth, along with the New Hampshire Division of Forest and Lands and the U.S. Forest Service.
The terrain made it hard from the start. Thirty-mile-an-hour wind gusts on the first day pushed the fire around unpredictably, and the ground was too rough for ATVs to get close. Investigators believe lightning from thunderstorms earlier that week is the likely cause, not a campfire or anything suspicious, though the official cause was still listed as under investigation in the most recent reporting.
Here's where the numbers get a little confusing if you're following along from different sources:
| Three days in (Aug 16) | Most recent official update (about a week later) | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | About 30 acres | About 14 acres |
| Containment | 50% | 100% |
| Source | NH Forest Protection Bureau | US Forest Service |
That's not a typo or a mistake in one of the reports. Early wildfire acreage is usually a rough estimate radioed in from spotters and drones while the fire is still active, and it tends to shrink once crews walk the actual perimeter and map it on the ground. By the time the Forest Service marked the fire fully contained, the mapped footprint came in well under half the earlier figure.
Contained doesn't mean open, though. The most recent Forest Service alert describes crews still strengthening control lines and watching for creeping and smoldering fire inside the perimeter, which is standard practice even after full containment. The trail's status page still listed it as closed as of late August.
Fifteen towns for one mountain
The mutual aid list is worth sitting with for a second, because it tells you something about how this part of New Hampshire actually works. A fire on a mountain in a small town pulled in fire crews from a dozen surrounding communities, several of which sit well outside Rumney's own borders. That's not a formality. It's what keeps a fire from becoming a much bigger story when the department responding first doesn't have the staffing to fight it alone.
One detail from the first day stands out. Plymouth Police detective Tom Arnold was called in to fly the department's drone, a thermal-camera-equipped Autel Evo T that Plymouth received through a donation from Mount Prospect Academy. Smoke was visible from the road, but nobody could tell exactly where the fire was until the thermal camera picked it out from the air. It's a small, specific example of how a piece of equipment donated for one purpose ends up doing something nobody planned for, and it's the kind of detail that only shows up in the local paper's coverage, not in a wire report.
What's actually open right now
While the mountain itself stays off limits, the rest of Rumney hasn't slowed down. If you're trying to figure out what to do with a weekend while the crags are closed, here's where things stand:
- Closed: Rumney Rocks, the Rattlesnake Mountain Trail, and the trailhead parking areas off Buffalo Road.
- Likely affected: the American Alpine Club's Rattlesnake Campground, which sits on Buffalo Road directly across from the closed trailhead. Its 2026 season runs through November 1, but access depends on the same road closure.
- Open and unaffected: Sole Track Brewing on Main Street, a community brewery that's become a regular gathering spot for locals and the outdoor crowd who'd otherwise be climbing.
- Open and unaffected: Quincy Bog Natural Area, Smith Covered Bridge, and Polar Caves Park, all a short drive from the village and none of them anywhere near Rattlesnake Mountain.
If you're hosting a friend who drove up specifically to climb, the honest move right now is to redirect them toward those spots and check the trail status again before making a second trip.
The change nobody's blaming on the fire
Here's the part that matters more than the fire, once you've been paying attention long enough. For thirteen years, the American Alpine Club ran the Craggin' Classic Series, a rotating set of climbing festivals at destination crags around the country, and Rumney was one of the regular stops. The last one here ran Labor Day weekend, September 6 through 8, 2024. By that November, the AAC had announced the series was over, effective that October. Across all seven festival locations combined, the club's own count put total attendance over 30,000 people and nearly 8,000 clinic participants over the program's run.
That festival used to be the thing that filled the Rattlesnake Campground field with tents on the first cool weekend of September, brought food trucks and a brewery tent out to a mountain that otherwise sees mostly regulars, and gave the town's fall climbing season a fixed, loud, well-attended kickoff. It hasn't run since 2024, and there's no indication it's coming back to Rumney or anywhere else.
So this September, even without a fire, Rumney's crags were already set up for a quieter start than climbers who've been coming here for years might expect. Add a trail closure on top of that, and it's easy to read the whole season as unusually slow. It isn't, not really. Two separate things happened here. One is a wildfire that will get cleaned up, remapped, and reopened, probably within weeks rather than months based on how quickly this one reached full containment. The other is a permanent subtraction from the town's calendar that took effect two years ago and just happens to be showing up for the first time this fall, in the same season the trail is closed for an unrelated reason.
If you live here, that distinction is useful. The mountain will reopen. The festival won't come back. Knowing which is which keeps you from mourning the wrong thing, or waiting around for something that isn't returning.
Keep an eye on the Forest Service's own alert page for Rattlesnake Mountain before you plan a trip up Buffalo Road, since containment status can change day to day even after a fire is marked fully contained.
For more on what makes this stretch of the Lakes and White Mountains region tick, from trail conditions to the small businesses that keep towns like this running, visit Rumney's neighborhood page or catch up on our full outdoor guide to the area. And if you're the kind of person who wants to know what's actually happening in a town before you decide it's home, that's the same instinct Juli Kelley brings to every corner of this region. Reach out anytime you want a local read on a place before you make a move.
