The Westside Trail is found on the Mount Cardigan road. From RT-4 in Canaan take RT-113 past the fairgrounds. Take Orange Rd which turns into Mt Cardigan Rd.
This is a popular hike with families and often the parking lot at the Mt Cardian State Forest will be full on weekends. From the parking lot is a wooded path which rises moderately through a dense forest. The trail is well maintained and in summer is mostly dry. There are a few wet places and several small bridges help you along the way.
Several rocky areas are encountered about .7 miles from the parking lot and are easy to climb up and over. Throughout the wooded portion, the grade never gets heartbreakingly steep. From the .9 mile mark, the ledges begin and you will be hiking on rock now to the summit. The trail is well marked with cairns and orange paint blazed rocks.
Once you encounter the ledgy portion, notice how the vegetation changes. Gone are most hardwoods like birch and beech, oak and maple. The climate up here is too harsh for them. Spruce, Balsam and some gangly wind-whipped birch. Blueberries lie low in the scrub of Mountain Rhododendron and in late July are ripe.
Take care not to step on the fragile alpine tundra. The vegetation here is similar to that of the White Mountains above tree-line and the tundra up in Northern Canada.
From here the views open up giving clear views of the valley below. From here, you are very exposed to the weather. It's definitely not a good place to be in a thunderstorm.
Up and up you go over rough granite ledge. You can stand and walk, there is nowhere steep enough on this trail to really need to climb hand over foot. You can see the fire tower now. Listen to the wind whip through the guy wires that hold the tower to the rock. The stairs are open to the first landing but unless a warden is around.
Views from the summit are stunning, a full 360 degree panorama. Kearsarge is to the south and Monadnock to the west. To the northeast are the peaks around Waterville Valley.
Remember when descending to follow the orange blazed rocks down as the trails from the summit split off in all kinds of directions. Round-trip mileage is 3 miles.