BENTON, N.H. — The hiker trudged up a logging road and into a valley, tracing a route that seemed unremarkable. There were no sweeping views of the mountains that towered nearby. There was no summit to scale. Yet he stopped suddenly, jubilant, after about four miles of walking. He had found exactly what he was searching for: quiet.

“Let’s see,” said the hiker, Dennis Follensbee, “how we experience three minutes of silence.”

In these loud times — with political foes yelling on television, trucks rumbling through streets, and smartphones chirping all around — who doesn’t want a little peace and quiet? But some wilderness lovers have taken their aversion to the cacophony of the modern world a step further, traveling to some of the country’s most remote areas in a quest for utter silence.

Armed with Google Maps, bushwhacking tools and 16 years of experience hiking in the area, Mr. Follensbee, a programmer from Lebanon, N.H., is on an exhaustive search for the noiseless hollows and dells of New Hampshire’s White Mountains.