Located in Mount Carleton Provincial Park, it is one of the highlights of the Canadian portion of the International Appalachian Trail.

Mount Carleton is also part of the eighth and final section of the Nepisiguit Mi'gmaq Trail.

[5] Before aerial surveillance was extensively used, a hut was maintained on the summit for fire-spotting in the remote north-central part of the province.

Triangulation among these huts and other fire towers allowed the locations of wildfires to be determined quickly and easily.

Mount Carleton is a monadnock, an erosional remnant of resistant igneous rocks that remained after an ancient Mesozoic peneplain surface was uplifted in the Cenozoic to form a plateau, and subsequently dissected via millions of years of erosion by wind, water and glacial ice.