White Mountain Sojourn

1-15-12 Heralding Winter's Arrival at the Observatory (photos are from the Mt. Washington Obs webcams)

2012-01-16T07:23:00.000-08:00

On Saturday afternoon at 4 pm the summit of Mt. Washington was clear. At the time the temperature was -11.0 degrees F and the wind was from the West at 58.1 mph and a windchill of -48.6 degrees F.

View North from the summit of Mt. Washington at the same time the top image appeared in the Observatory's Bretton Woods webcam.

View North at 4 pm on Sunday, 1-15-12.

About 24 hours later the cold temperatures persisted along with elevated winds. At 3:15 pm Sunday the temperature on the summit was -13.3 F with the wind from 316 degrees West at 60.6 mph and a peak gust over the previous 24 hours of 110.4 mph. The windchill Sunday afternoon was minus -52.4 F. Pretty cold! Windchill was expected in the -50 degree range throughout the forecast period. By Monday morning, 1-16-12, the windchill was + 2.6 degrees F with almost no wind but then decreased during the morning to stabilize around -13 degrees F as the wind increased. It will probably warm up in the next few days.

Snow fell on a few days last week with the summit posting 27 inches of snow on Monday, 1-16-12. New snow accumulation at the huts that are open for the winter is in the average of 18 inches. Winter is finally here. Time to get out an enjoy it.

1-7-12 Happy 2012 As We Await Winter's Arrival

2012-01-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

I had planned a quiet Christmas without a tree or a big meal. My oldest daughter, Julia, was working both days of the weekend and Lizzie was planning to stay in Tahoe, CA, where she was praying for snow. She called Thursday evening saying that there "wasn't a single flake of snow in the Sierras" and she was homesick and wanted to come "home for the holidays." Friday morning (12-23-11) she called to say she was driving and was going to try and get home by mid-Christmas day. I had wanted to hike at least one day of the weekend, preferably up North and I was going to choose the day based on which had best weather. With Liz on her way I was left me with only Saturday to hike. I was thinking: Ammonoosuc Ravine to Lakes of the Clouds and on to the summit. I set the alarm for 5 a.m.....

The view north from the summit Christmas Eve morning.

But in the morning I checked the Obs' weather and at 5:30 am the stats read: 0.5 degrees (F), wind 34.4 mph with gusts up to 86.4 mph and windchill of -26.5 degrees (F)(below zero). One good thing was the visibility was 120 miles. The day's forecast posted by Observer Ryan Knap didn't sound all that enticing and with Liz on her way (my excuse) I had to buy and decorate a Christmas tree and food for Christmas dinner. Liz explicitly asked for Tamales, a Christmas tradition, from a local Mexican restaurant and I'd have to buy them before 3 pm Christmas eve.

It was probably a good decision to stay home as by 4:30 pm the weather at the summit had not changed much. It was a gorgeous day but the windchill had stayed around -27 degrees below zero (F) as the air temperature dropped and the wind picked up a bit.

I'm including this shot from the Obs' North camcorder from 1-7-12 just to show the contrast in snow depth from two weeks ago. There's a little more snow but there's still not very much anywhere in the north country as of 1-8-12. It's a cool photo.

So for Christmas, when we finally celebrated on Monday, I got my best, best present of all in having both my daughters at home and together for the first time in what felt like ages. Liz had pulled into the driveway a few minutes after midnight Christmas night after a 3-day drive from Tahoe via Colorado, Kansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.

Another present I received worth mentioning is this history of the early British expeditions to Mt. Everest which is huge in its coverage as you can see by the title. It's astonishing in several ways. It's very well written and exhaustive in detail. It creates the sensation of actually "being there". It covers the 1921, 1922 and 1924 British expeditions to Everest particularly the long, desperate period with the 1921 expedition, made up of mostly military personnel, when they were trying to find a route to the summit from the north side of the mountain. Davis' account is epic and, for mountain and Everest buffs, it fills an enormous gap in the details about the arduous exploration and mapping in Tibet and northern Nepal that was necessary just to get to the base of the mountain. It paints extraordinarily detailed portraits of the members of each expedition and particularly of the enigmatic & charismatic George Mallory.

The book is also noteworthy for its attention to natural history particularly in the regions of Tibet traversed by members of the expedition which included the high plateau as well as the foothills up to 21,000 feet. The author is a well known botanist and natural historian and writes about these things well. His descriptions are astonishing, really, as are the images created of the people along the routes they explored. He obviously did a lot of research including retracing all of Mallory's steps. As you can tell, I'm recommending the book to one and all.

Over the holiday I also read The Challenge of K2; A History of the Savage Mountain by Richard Sale which is somewhat redundant in its recounting of the major expeditions. It was frustrating for me because it drags the reader through the controversy that flared up around the successful 1954 Italian expedition involving climbers Lino Lacidelli and Achille Companoni, who were the first to summit K2 in 1954, and the treatment of team member Walter Bonatti just before and during the last hours of the summit attempt. Like the French Annapurna expedition in 1950 that was rife with political intrigues, nationalistic and otherwise, the Italian K2 organization also had its share. The competition, favoritism, political alliances etc were mainstays of almost all of the larger expeditions of the 1920s, 30s up through the 1960s. Wade Davis' recounting of the early Everest expeditions details exactly the same situation that occurred on K2 in 1954 occurring in the 1922 and 1924 Everest expedition that involved Mallory. The large scale expeditions were similar to military exercises in the time of war with hierarchies and leadership stretching back to national capitols and the involvement of hundreds of people most of whom had never seen a mountain much less climbed one, and where failure was not an option.

Lino Lacidelli, on the left, with Loofa, in their Yin-Yang pose, slept through the holidays.

I know this is a long way from the White Mountains and natural history but while shopping for food Christmas eve I ran into Tracy Hightower, a well known valley farmer who, with her husband and business partner, John Reid, operated BioShelters, Inc. in Sunderland, MA, for several decades. On about an acre of land they were able to produce thousand of pounds of fish every year along with other types of food grown hydroponically. There are myriad details about the sustainable aspects of their operation, but it was forced to close when the land owner wanted a dramatic increase in the price of their lease; an all too familiar story. Now the buildings are unused, empty and falling down so it's a sad story as well, but it was refreshing to talk to her. In the past I, too, farmed here in the valley and helped start a valley-wide organization called CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) that nurtured a community-wide dialog on farming, farming practices, food, food safety, environmental issues linked with farming, aesthetics as in open space, etc., and that sought innovative ways to increase food production. CISA, Tracy noted, has evolved into a marketing organization and she quipped that "selling the food is easy. Growing it's the hard part," as she talked about the continuing need to help farmers find new ways to grow more food annually and make more money. In the photo above a barn on Michael Docter's farm in Hadley, MA, is covered with solar panels. He sells "food shares" directly to families (consumers) for fresh produce, an enterprise called Community Supported Agriculture or CSAs. Michael, a famously innovative farmer, has also been innovative in the use of his barn roof so that families receive food AND electricity. Michael was the farmer-manager of the Western Mass. Food Bank Farm for many years and is one of the premier organic farmers in the Valley.

His land is wintering, but one thing Tracy and I talked about was getting some funding for studying ways to extend the growing season in those years when the winter isn't as mild as this one has been so far. There is a huge demand here, in the Connecticut River valley, for more fresh, local, organic food by large markets like Whole Foods, Super Stop and Shop, etc. Several local farmers have begun exploring ways to extend the growing season at both ends of the growing season. We talked excitedly about organizing a Farmer-to Farmer meeting this winter to bring in farmers from Vermont, New Hampshire and Rhode Island to talk about ways to extend the growing season and strategies for what is called "vertical agriculture", similar to permaculture, where multiple crops are grown in "stories", one above the other, to maximize space.

This is one of local dairy farmer Gordy William's hay field with the east end of the Holyoke Range in the background. Yesterday the temps were in the low 50s here. It was a stunning day. The light was gorgeous and it felt and smelled like spring. Today it was in the low 30s but the light, as in this photo, and the colors were wonderful. It was windy on top of Mt. Skinner. When I can't get up to the Whites I can run-hike many combinations of trails along this ridge to get a good workout.

The light at this particular place on the ridge just
below the top of Mt. Skinner is always striking.

One thing I've been thinking about doing for a while and am now planning for the coming summer is a pretty long, 2 or 3 day bushwhack-traverse (completely off trail except trail crossings) of the Pemmigewaset Wilderness starting at the lower southwest corner, perhaps at the bottom of Mt. Flume, and then heading diagonally northeast over Franconia Ridge, down to Lincoln Brook, up over Owls Head, down to Franconia Brook, up the west side of Guyot, down into and across Zealand Valley, over the Willey Range, and out to Rt. 302 above Crawford Notch. It sounds pretty crazy doesn't it?

Winter trees waiting for winter (like the rest of us).

At any rate it's good incentive to get in really great shape again which is another reason I'm fortunate to have the Holyoke Range even though it only offers a small uphill gain. I used to train for running the mile by doing speed work on the track. I would run a 60 second 440 (quarter of a mile) rest for 60 seconds and then run another one, and another, etc., 16-20 times, to build core strength as well as speed. On Mt. Skinner there's one trail that has several steep sections but they are only 75 to 100 yards long. I run up them as fast as I can, jog back down, run up, etc. Bodie Miller, the Olympic skier from Franconia, NH, (I heard) use to fill a wheel barrow with big rocks, and then push it up one of the ski trails at Cannon Mt. as fast as he could go. That sounds like a good workout for the hut traverse. By the way, in Wade Davis' Everest book there's mention of traverse in the English Lake District that's 57 miles long with 23,000 feet in elevation that one of the 1922 Everest expedition members completed in 1905 in 22 h: 30 m. It sounds familiar.

Late Sunday afternoon hikers on Mt. Skinner.

12-11-11 Mt. Skinner (Hadley, MA), Solstice sunlight

2011-12-11T14:37:00.000-08:00

I spent part of the afternoon today running some of the trails on the nearby Holyoke Range, Mt. Skinner particularly because of it's steep terrain. Around 3 pm I was coming back up to the summit when I found myself bathed in this luxurious light and it reminded me it's only 11 days until the Winter Solstice when, happily, the days will begin to get longer again--pointing us towards summer but hopefully not before we get to enjoy the holidays and a long winter with lots and lots of snow.

The green in the background represents the dense stands of hemlock along Mt. Skinner's summit ridge and that sweep down across its north face.

It was in the low 30s all day keeping with the mild fall we've been having, but below freezing night-time temperatures have finally put frost in the ground and I hope the same is true for the White Mountains. It would be great to have at least a couple of inches of hard frost before the deeper snow arrives.

At any rate, I just wanted to share this lovely winter sunlight. It's reminiscent of the light I was hiking in last Saturday on Kinsman Ridge.

12-6-11 Editorial: The Hut Traverse as a Unique, Challenging, Local Treasure

2011-12-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

Whenever I mention the hut traverse I get myriad comments and emails from readers. A case in point is the 11-24-11 article, Zealand Falls Thanksgiving, in which George Heinrichs’ 12h:38m time on a recent traverse was noted. I received several comments regarding George’s traverse including one that asked whether it was on the same course I completed in 1963 or whether George had taken the “easy” route.

The traverse is a lovely, unique, and extremely challenging hike/run that not only traverses the AMC hut system, but also traverses one of the most beautiful mountain regions in the United States. It offers enticing varieties of weather, topography and physical environments ranging from Alpine to Northern-forest-wilderness. It has pre-established way stations, the huts, that can be used to cache food/liquids/clothing and are equipped with two-way radios in case of emergencies.

We, and I mean all of us who love trail running, distance trail running, and marathon hikes, are unbelievably fortunate to have this course in our backyard complete with its 80-year history. It’s also noteworthy for its potential to expand into a much longer course by including the Carter-Moriah and Mahoosuc ranges in the east and the Kinsman-Moosilaukee trails in the west. It may even be possible to create an outstanding100-mile course with the traverse as its centerpiece.

The lovely view towards the west (taken in 1967) from the summit of South Twin. Those who do the traverse going east to west are roughly 3/4 of the way at this point and often find this view mortifying because Garfield and Lafayette look so impossibly far away!

The traverse is never easy and there isn’t a separate, easier route. In the first 35 years that the traverse was part of hut history the course generally included Pinkham Notch Camp as one of the huts. Since the 1970’s the traverse became a straight line from Carter to Lonesome Lake or Lonesome Lake to Carter after the visit to Pinkham was eliminated.

The detour to Pinkham impacted the total distance and time factor and would have been a factor in my 1963 traverse except that I started at Madison and went first to Carter by descending Madison Gulf to the Glen House and then running up the Aqueduct Path and Nineteen Mile Brook Trail (hut to hut: 8.7 miles). I went over the Wildcats to the ski area and slithered down a ski trail to Rt. 16 and ran along an abandoned trail (that used to ferry skiers from Pinkham to the old Wildcat Ski Trail) to the old Trading Post at Pinkham (4.4 miles) where I gulped my first food. I then ran up Tuckerman Ravine and Crossover trails to Lakes before heading west.

George started his recent traverse at Carter and went to Madison via Madison Gulf and took Gulfside and Westside to Lakes before heading west. If you do the math (and use the 1960 AMC guide book distances for my traverse) you’ll find that George covered 16.7 miles to reach Lakes and I covered 17.8 miles, a difference of 1.2 miles (even though I included Pinkham). At the western end, after Lonesome Lake Hut was moved to the other side of Lonesome Lake in 1965, the traverse picked up a quarter mile so the difference between George’s and my traverse is about one mile. At 4-5 mph that’s about 15 minutes a mile and means that George’s most recent time is only 42 minutes behind my 1963 time, or 3/4 of a minute per mile.

The author (2nd from left in front) in his Adidas, fresh from the hut traverse, starting a fresh cross country season.

I’ve reported that I was in superb shape when I did the traverse in 1963. I was training for something larger in scope than the traverse and was a fiercely dedicated athlete. This is how serious I was: everyday throughout high school I ran a hilly 9.8-mile course and then put in some rigorous speed workouts on the track that added 4-5 miles to my day. I took a blood sample and titrated it for lactose acid content every day before and after practice and every 2-3 months I rotated my diet regimen using the titration data in an attempt to fashion a special diet for distance running (trying to follow in the footsteps of the Australian middle distance runners, like John Landry and Olympic miler Herb Elliot, and their remarkable coach, Percy Cerutty).

Those who attempt the hut traverse with a focus on time really need to think about diet. A fast time is about speed, strength and endurance but efficient energy uptake and hydration, along with pacing, are equally important. (Sorry, I know I promised not to preach.) At any rate, George’s cool, methodical nature is definitely a plus in helping him achieve a fluid pace with good hydration. His recent time of 12 h: 38 m is a good indication that he's in superb shape and may be able to break the 12-hour time that I was trying to break way, way back in 1963. I hope he does.

12-3-11 Kinsman Ridge (complete)

2011-12-04T13:53:00.001-08:00

South (long ridge on the right) and North Kinsman (looking taller than South Kinsman on the right) above Lonesome Lake. South Kinsman is 4358 feet in elevation and North Kinsman is 4293 feet in elevation.

As I drove North on I-91 early Saturday morning I wasn't sure of my destination. It was forecast as a lovely mountain day and I was thinking about Mt. Adam or Mt. Washington, but they both engender two extra hours of driving when coming from the West. I thought of Franconia Ridge but with the perfect weather the trail was going to get crowded. I had a yen to hike somewhere quiet and out of the way; somewhere I hadn't been for a while. As I drove over Sugar Hill, in Franconia, I looked over at Cannon Mt., the Cannon Balls and the Kinsmans and decided that Kinsman Ridge would be a perfect hike on such a perfect day. It's been at least 30 years since I've been on the Kinsmans and I have fond memories of previous forays into this little known realm.

Getting to the Kinsmans from the east is easiest via the Fishin' Jimmy Trail that starts behind Lonesome Lake Hut which, in turn, is about 1 1/2 miles from I-93 in Franconia Notch via the Lonesome Lake Trail.

It was astonishing to not see more snow. The lake ice was still thin but is smooth enough for skating later, when it gets thicker. Hopefully it will be smooth as glass and a foot thick by New Years Eve! Franconia Ridge, with Mt. Lafayette on the far left, Mt. Lincoln (center) and Little Haystack (to the right).

Cannon Mt. with Coppermine Col (deep notch to the left) at the north end of Lonesome Lake.

The Fishin' Jimmy Trail starts at Lonesome Lake Hut and in 2 miles gains a saddle on Kinsman Ridge at the bottom of North Kinsman where Kinsman Pond and Kinsman Shelter are located. The trail is steep and rough in places but threads through a primeval landscape, including this dark forest where only a small amount of light reaches the floor.

The forest quickly alternates with more open areas like this birch grove where a lot of sunlight reaches the floor. Certainly one of my primary objectives in hiking the Kinsmans was to become immersed both in solitude and this rich, buttery, winter sunlight, now close to its ebb, and enjoy the colors and the stillness.

An open grove of young and old balsam firs that is flooded with sunlight. (This might be called a perfect picture of biotic succession with healthy young and old trees and lots of nutrient represented by all the detritus, e.g. dead wood, on the ground.)

A glacial erratic that looks just like half loaf of bread. It's large; about 8 feet high by 10 feet across at the face. It's mentioned in the guide book as the beginning of the steep section that extends up to the ridge. It made me want some french toast! With lots of butter and maple syrup.

In 30 years I had forgotten a lot about the Fishin' Jimmy Trail including how steep it is. This icy pitch is an example and was steep enough to require some rock climbing techniques.

Icicles on a rock face next to the trail catching the early morning sunlight.

An oasis.

In between steep sections there are short, level places where you can stretch out your calf muscles, but.....

quite quickly another steep section presents itself. I didn't photograph all the steep bits because I was too busy with hands and feet but this is one example of a long stretch of granite slab at about a 45 degree angle and 40 yards long. Towards the top you can see a set of steps placed magically

on the rock and tilted to one side so water can run off. In spite of the intent the steps were still icy and a little hair raising as you aren't quite sure what is holding them up.

I call sections of trails like this "escalators" and I prefer them to the wood step affairs because they're good and solid and offer better purchase in ice and snow.

Below the ridge the forest became dense and coniferous, or boreal in structure and specie, and with a light edging or rime in the December light they were jewel-like. The photos that follow are examples of the lyrical quality of the low-angled sunlight.

Photo taken in the vicinity of Kinsman Junction where the Fishin Jimmy Trail meets the Kinsman Ridge Trail. The woods were enchanted...

with rime coated scenes like this....

and this.

The ridge was a warren of shaded dells carpeted with thick sphagnum moss.

A close up of the rime which is really tiny ice pellets that are formed in wind that, due to its velocity and the ambient air temperature, has become super chilled. The tiny ice pellets become glued to everything the wind brushes. Rime formations are sometimes dramatic and are icons in the areas above timberline in the White Mountains.

This is the new Kinsman Pond Shelter constructed in the summer of 2011 and it's quite spiffy. Shelters made from local materials last about 25 years in severe high mountain environments. This one was designed to last a bit longer with it wide eves and steep roof to move the water away from the logs walls.

A side view. The shelter, like the one it replaces, can comfortably hold 12 people although there will be nights when it will shelter 20, or more. In addition to the shelter there are four large tent platforms nearby.

Kinsman Pond looking towards South Kinsman (4358' asl) with North Kinsman (4293' asl) to the right. I sat on a wide ledge of granite on the shore line and spent a wonderful hour there eating lunch and basked in the surprisingly hot sun in a vast silence. The only sounds came from occasional bands of garrulous chickadees darting through the spruce and balsams near the shore and the mysterious cracking of the ice.

Just below the North Kinsman summit.

The Kinsman Ridge Trail heading north has a wild, lonely appearance with its old log "bridges" that protect the bog-like ground. The Appalachian Trail (AT) descends the ridge via the Fishin Jimmy Trail so that the Kinsman Ridge Trail, of the two, is the one less traveled. It's a lovely trail with wild, roller coaster undulations as it rolls over the Cannon Balls and Cannon Mt. The clefts between these lesser, rounded summits, are steep and deep making legs groan and spirits flag.

There are rare glimpses of surrounding mountains like this one from the second Cannon Ball of towards Franconia Ridge in the distance and Cannon Mt. on the left where you can see the top of the summit building.

This is what I meant by primeval landscape. The only logging that has ever been done along this part of the ridge is by the fierce winds that come down out of the northwest and first strike this ridge before plowing across the successive ranges and only Mt. Lafayette gets the full bore of the wind that the Kinsman Ridge experiences.

This may be close to what the northern boreal forest looked like until the 1880s when the methodical butchering of the forest began in central and northern New Hampshire (all of northern New England is more accurate) as mechanized logging was introduced and continued into the early 1920s. If you enlarge this photo and the one below and just look at them for a moment and consider the beauty that's there, and wonderful sense of wildness and timelessness evoked by the interplay of light in the trees, the forest floor, the roots and the stones along the beckoning path.

Looking back and the Kinsmans from the second Cannon Ball.

On the last Cannon Ball I found this wild scene (above photo and below), also primeval, of a wind devastated forest coated with rime.

It was hard to tell when this damage occurred but it was from a storm that approached the ridge from the north, possibly from the northeast, but the repairs to the trail were minimal.

The Lonesome Lake Trail joins the Kinsman Ridge Trail at the bottom of the last cleft, or notch, between the Cannon Balls and Cannon Mt. I was happy to see see it. With all of my rejoicing about the winter light I had also been a little on edge because, judging only by the sunlight, it felt like it was quite late, almost evening, when it reality it was only 2 pm, or so.

As fair warning, two of these notches, this one between the last (or first going south on the ridge) and Cannon Mt. itself in particular), are very steep and require extra time in trip planning. They can be run quickly using hands and feet but with packs they require extra care. On my traverse there was some ice on the steep sections but navigable without traction. In winter you should expect a good bit of ice on the trail throughout.

The descent from Coppermine Col to Lonesome Lake is rapid. The trail is basically a brook wending its way under and around these large felsenmeer like blocks of granite. The geology of this region is fascinating and well worth perusing. There are a number of texts available. Charles R. Williams, a student of Marland Billings at Harvard, published Geology In the Franconia Region, and edited version of his doctoral thesis, in the June 1934 Appalachia. It sounds technical but it's a good place to start if you're interested in the glacial history of the Kinsmans and Lonesome Lake area as well as the local geology.

Speaking of glacial history this is an extensive area of muskeg that's in slow succession and may be reminiscent of the landscape here at the close of the last glacial period 11,000 years ago. I timed my hike to return to Lonesome Lake as the sun completed its arc here and descended behind the Kinsmans to enjoy the sunset from the lake shore.

Looking east across Lonesome Lake towards Mt. Liberty in the distance.

Looking back up at Coppermine Col and the steep, southwest side of Cannon Mt.

The "Round the Lake" Trail utilizes these board walks for much of its circling around Lonesome Lake and particularly the west side.

Looking down towards the south end of Lonesome Lake from the lake trail.

Franconia Ridge at sunset from the west side of Lonesome Lake.

The Kinsmans at sunset.

The fast ebbing of the lovely, last bits of light (reflected from the lake) along the trail down.

I had the great pleasure of hiking back down to the highway with Beth and Mack who were at Lonesome Lake Hut on some official business. Beth has the highly coveted position of Hut Checker for the winter which translates into being a 'professional hiker' as she makes regular, unscheduled visits to all the huts that are aimed, hopefully, at reducing vandalism. Mack has worked in the huts for several summers and is on his way West for the winter, possibly Colorado or California, looking for snow.

Bib: Charles Williams, Geology In the Franconia Region, June 1934 Appalachia. Email macphail.alexander@gmail.com to request a copy.

Paul Jenks, The Fishin' Jimmy Trail, December 1930 Appalachia

11-24-11 Zealand Falls Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T11:16:00.000-08:00

First of all, my plan to spend three days at Zealand over Thanksgiving was altered a bit by a large snow storm that began to materialize last weekend and grew in intensity with each successive forecast until it carried severe storm warnings. That cut my plans down to two days. Then, due to the storm, the Forest Service closed the Zealand Road which meant walking the extra miles and that cut down more time. Finally, the back country got a lot of snow, up to 12 inches in some places, and with trails unbroken the time involved in hiking places got longer. So, I settled on an overnight trip to Zealand Falls Hut (Zool) to celebrate Thanksgiving with George Heinrichs, the hut caretaker. On Wednesday night, as the storm was ending, Hannah Orcutt, formerly of Lakes of the Clouds Hut and currently working at the AMC's Highland Center, broke trail up the road and up to the hut, which made the going a little easier.

There were a kazillion tracks left in the fresh snow by denizens of the dense woods on either side of the road. Every animal you can name was represented (well, almost). This was left by a white tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus).

Moose (Alces alces).

A big bunny. Technically it was a large Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus).

The Zealand Road, like the Gale River Trail and other access roads in the north country, tend to be really, really long, boring slogs in the winter.

George wasn't able to get his car out before the storm. Luckily the forecast for the next few days is unseasonably warm weather so he'll be able to get it out before winter sets in.

Into the wild starting out on the Zealand Trail with Hannah's footprints leading the way accompanied by an astonishing profusion of snowshoe hare tracks. Where were they all going and where were the lynx and bobcats? I saw one set of lynx tracks in the snow a mile or so up the trail.

I'm not going to add comments to each photo as this is primarily a "sketch" of my Thanksgiving. I simply wanted to show you how beautiful the trip was, so enjoy the photographs.

At one point I stopped to peel off another layer of clothing and change a camera battery. In the time it took to do that I kept noticing that the dark spot in the center of the photograph kept moving slowly and it turned out that it was an insect traveling a centimeter under the snow. I'm not sure what kind of insect it was but it offered me some insight into the winter life of bugs.

Half-way bridge showing the snow depth.

This area, about two miles from the trail head, was the location of a large lumber camp and logging railroad switch yard 100 years ago. In winter, without foliage on the trees, it's easier to see the lay of the land and how much the landscape was altered by logging and the men that worked here. This was a large clearing and the soil moved to make the clearing was pushed into the mounds in what is now that wooded area.

Seed casings.

Whitewall Mountain from the top of Zealand Falls.

Looking down Zealand Falls at Zealand Pond from the hut.

Zealand Falls Hut.

Hut interior.

Zealand Notch and Whitewall Mountain from the front yard of the hut.

It turned out that a large group that was expected, including some friends of George and I, didn't make it but this family, playing cards, and a couple showed up to spend the night. This family (in the photo) brought all the fixings for a Thanksgiving dinner including turkey and stuffing and cranberry sauce and spinach and potatoes and rolls and pie, which they generously shared with all of us. It was a real thanksgiving!

The night was mild with temperatures in the low 20s (F) and by 11 pm the clouds cleared leaving a clear sky filled with brilliant stars. I thought of sleeping outside but then lost the momentum. This is the first in a series of photos of the sunrise on Friday morning taken from the hut porch and looking down the notch to Mt. Lowell (pointy lower summit on the left in the distance) and Signal Ridge leading to the summit of Mt. Carrigain (on the right in the distance).

Again, Mt. Carrigain is on the right in the distance (tele-photo).

Anticipating an early departure this couple wanted to get out on the trail and ski out while snow conditions were still good. Temperature in the upper 40s were expected by mid-day.

The assembled hut guests with George, the hut caretaker, in the foreground.

George Heinrichs at 23. George, a 2011 graduate of Middlebury College, has worked in the huts for 4 summers and has had a stellar career. This past summer he was Hutmaster at the new Madison Springs Hut with a truly all-star croo. From Zealand he heads for Lonesome Lake Hut at Christmas where he will be the caretaker for the duration of the winter.

In our long, animated discussions on Thanksgiving day George mentioned he had completed another hut traverse this summer in the very impressive time of 12 h:38 m. Anything in the 12 hour range for this rugged 52 mile course requires an extraordinary level of dedication and discipline. George's focus, he said, has been on both pace and hydration, which, I think, in addition to core strength, are the keys to pushing the envelope time-wise on the Traverse. George also mentioned that 9 others completed the traverse this summer which is close to a record in itself.

This photo, as I took it, caught my eye as a watercolor painting.

This is the pond that I did some snorkeling in two summers ago looking at the aquatic plant life. The photos I took are featured in blog piece number: "8-20-10, Zealand Pond, Zealand Valley" if you'd like to see what's under that ice. Soon after I took the above photo I went through the ice up to my knees and, as you can image, it was icy cold.

The Ethan Pond Trail with untrodden snow.

From the east side of the pond looking up at the hut which is visible without leaves on the trees.

Looking north towards Mt. Hale.

Zealand Mt. in the background.

Zeacliff Mt. in the background.

Trampen Zee bridge.

The cross-country ski trail that runs from US Rt. 3 to the hut.

We dug out George's car and discovered a note from the Forest Service that they'd left the gate ajar for him to get his car back out on to highway which we did and it saved me from having to slog out those last 4.3 miles.

These are elegant! They're tree shadows on the snow in the trail head parking lot.

Aren't they cool?

This was the missing gang from the night before. Their reservations were actually for Friday night. Tim Traver is kneeling in front, third from the right. He began working in the mountains about the time that I left (early 70s) and his son, Toben, center rear in red, is currently working in the huts. Happy trails, everyone!

10-29-2011 Gale River Research Site

2011-11-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

On Saturday, 10-29-11, I was again starting up the Gale River Trail heading to the research site just off the trail at the site of the 1954 landslide (Hurricane Carol: 8-29-1954). I started up the trail bathed in this gorgeous October-morning light but a major snow storm was forecast for the mountains beginning in the late afternoon/evening and continuing into Sunday, the 30th. I didn't race but I wanted to get up, collect my measurements, check out possible alterations to the research site from the heavy rains at the end of August, make a quick run up to the hut, and try to get back down to the parking lot before the storm became so intense that I might not be able to drive back out the Gale River Road which which the Forest Service does not plow. In the morning I ran into Mike Carifio, the Forest Service district police officer, as I was readying my pack and about to head up the trail. He assured me that the storm wasn't expected to start until well after night fall.

The soil depth measurements I made on Saturday will be added to the baseline I'm working on that, over time, will help me understand soil development on the northern slopes of the White Mountains. The north slopes, generally, tend to be damper and a bit cooler than slopes with different aspects so soil development may be measurably different. My measuring technique is simple and only involves inserting a strong, graduated plastic rod (1/4 inch diameter) inserted vertically down into the soil until it hits the hard-packed gravel till. The measurements are repeated at one inch intervals across the perpendicular transects in each study plot, then a graph of the measurements is laid out, and, finally, a profile emerges that reflects the incremental development of the soil from year to year.

The light, at the beginning of my hike, was dreamy. It highlighted the rich colors of this end-of-October day. This years crop of leaves was above average in volume (not sure why). The yearly harvest of leaves contribute a great deal of nutrient/biomass to the developing soil. As they decay they add all kinds of stuff including organic matter, numerous cations like calcium (Ca), and tilth. Beech leaves, like these in the photo, are noteworthy as they contain a slightly higher amount of calcium cations than other leaves found here. Calcium is a good thing because it helps lower the pH of the soil although the trace amounts of calcium in beech leaves wouldn't raise the pH of the soil much. Herb Bormann and Gene Likens, within their extensive research at the Hubbard Brook Experimental Forest in West Thornton, NH, have contributed insights into the developmental phases of forest soils in and around the White Mountain. They identify three "compartments" of biomass: living biomass (e.g plants and animals, deadwood, and dead biomass. Dead biomass is the "organic matter" in the soil a lot of which is decaying leaves.

A trace of snow at low elevations like this confuses the sense in October. It seems early but actually there are lots of precedents for this much, and sometimes much more snow, early in October. This trace was from a brief storm a few days earlier. Still, it's lovely to see it. I even like the way it smells in the fall air and the way it accentuates the shapes of things even the stones and leaves in the path.

I was shocked at First Crossing to find a sign directing me to use a "new" trail that was recently inaugurated and which cuts off the portion of the Gale River Trail (GRT) on the east side of the river. That means from this point in the photo the trail on the left side of the river is now closed to foot traffic. The new trail segment begins a 100 yards below First Crossing and meanders up a forested ridge on the west side of the river.

The sign is self explanatory. I was stunned and disappointed they were closing the long section of the original trail between the first and second crossings. This trail has been in use for 50 plus years. I knew about the new, alternate section of trail that would be for use in high water as a means to avoid the hazardous river crossings, but I had not idea the 1.5 mile-long section of the trail that follows the river closely would be closed for good. The Gale River Trail through its entire history has been intimate with the Gale River in every sense; with the water, the magical light that dances off the river and surrounding foliage, and the lulling, lyrical voice of the river. Hiking the Gale River Trail, particularly the section they're slicing off, is like a meditation. It's an intimate conversation with all things; great blue herons, deer, mice, the wind, ice, the sun and the rocks, and the huge boulders scattered on both sides of the river. The experience of hiking the whole trail including the 1.5 mile in question is irreplaceable.

The new trail follows a line away from the river. It keeps to a low ridge where it ascends in a serpentine motion bending back and forth along the ridge to keep the ascent angle low and, perhaps, to control water flow. I have to say I immediately missed the river! The new trail was probably justified in some peoples' minds, a reduction of hazard and liability, but new trails are like new anything, they take a while to get used to.

The new trail goes up and down a lot. This section section is referred to as "dugway". It's the same technique used to create logging roads in very steep mountain terrain. The road crews dig out the rocks and soil on the uphill side, spread it out towards the downhill side and pack it down. It washes out easily but can be refilled quickly as well. Remnants of the dugway logging roads built a 100 years ago are still visible in some places.

A positive, perhaps, is the new trail traverses places I'm not familiar with and that I found populated by som large yellow birchs (B. alleghenensis). I measured several that were 30" to 36" in diameter (DBH). One was 40" in diameter which is a good sized tree. In line with big trees another feature of the new trail, evidenced by the above photo, is a vast number of blow downs particularly at the lover end of the trail near its junction with the old trail. Many looked as fresh as one or two years and may have gone down in the February 2010 storm that came in from the southeast.

It's difficult from the photo to grasp the scale here but this is one of the yellow birch trees that's 36" in diameter. The crown is still alive and 60 feet above the forest floor. It's no longer a vigorous specimen and probably no longer a carbon sink. It's one thing to have an aesthetic sense of these old trees but with the current emphasis on global warming old growth forests are seen as carbon sources, meaning they have a negative value.

This yellow birch is 32" in diameter.

The forest traversed by the new trail is typical for most of the north-facing slopes of the White Mountains where the forest is somewhat cool and damp. There's a good mix of hardwoods and conifers on this ridge. Due to all the deciduous trees along the new trail there are good winter views of North Twin.

Balsam firs (A. balsamea) dressed up for Halloween.

The new trail rejoins the old trail a half mile above Second Crossing which, again, means hikers are all but severed from any interactions with the river. This log bridge has been here for as long as I can remember and for me it symbolizes a gateway, an entrance, into the enchanted upper valley of the North Branch of the Gale River, the ridges and summits, and the Pemigwasset Wilderness beyond.

The lower section, the first 2.5 miles, of the Gale River Trail, it should be said, is like a 'death march'. It follows old logging roads that are somewhat boring, often wet, and seemingly never-ending. It doesn't begin to feel like a mountain trail until Third Crossing, or now, perhaps, at the small bridge in the photo above. I loved packing the Gale River Trail particularly with a compact, perfectly balanced 100-120 pound load on my pack board, pushing myself to keep a steady pace, trying to make the 5.8 mile trip (in 1961) from the pack house to the hut in roughly 2 hours. My best trip for combined weight and time was 2 hours 10 minutes with 110 pounds. I had an exceptional day when I felt "fluid" and movement seemed effortless. I viscerally remember the "steps", or steep sections, where I really had to push hard alternating with the "flat" sections, like the one above, where I could relax and recover. Like everyone who has packed in the huts the enjoyment is the challenge and the wonderful sense of rhythm you have with the trail and the mountain. People look at our loads and imagine it's some kind of punishment to carry so much weight but I bet anyone who's packed will admit that, on most days, it's incredibly satisfying.

Keeping with the idea of a "gateway" to the mountain realm above Third Crossing I sense when I see these distinct configurations of stones and boulders strewn on the trail are actually old slide tracks and represent the change in topography where the valley narrows and the slopes become steeper as they rise towards North Twin and Garfield Ridge. There's definitely the sense one has finally entered the mountains. The above photo suggests that the array of stones in this location could be a slide track that is 400 yards north of the 1954 slide track and probably much older. The 1960 AMC's White Mountain Guide (book) reports that above second crossing the Gale River Trail "crosses two slides just before hooking right and heading up to Garfield Ridge. The two slides described in the guide book included the 1954 slide. The second was south of the 1954 track and about the same size. It may have occurred in the 1930s and was corroborated by Hanque Parker who worked at Galehead in the 1930s and said he remembers there was a fresh slide track at that time, well before the 1954 track. The main point is that "mass wasting" on the east side of Garfield Ridge has been going on for some time.

This is study plot #1 looking north. The mantel of snow is only a few inches deep but hindered taking measurements. I go to great pains to avoid disturbing anything on the slide track to the extent that I walk as little as possible on the site. I ended up having to move the snow away from the transects slightly to obtain accurate measurements.

Ever since the heavy rains of August 28th, when Hurricane Irene was moving north through Vermont, I have been curious to see if there was any alteration to the 1954 slide track itself or to this small research area on the lower end of the slide track. In response I have to say that at the lower end of the track there was no visible impact of high water anywhere. That does not exclude the shifting of rocks in the river and other perturbations that I probably would not have noticed to begin with.

Study plot #1 looking west and uphill. The snow cover which probably won't last long was hiding the leaf litter on the forest floor so it was difficult to get a measure of how much there was. The soil depth has increased incrementally but there are climatic and other environmental factors to include. The rains during the past two months, including the approximate 6.6 inches dumped by the storm of August 28th, have saturated the soil. I discovered this when I put in my measuring pins and the soil gripped them so tightly I had to use all my strength to extract them.

Study plot #2 looking east. The snow makes the area of trees look denser than it is but it was still difficult to collect measurements. The brook runs through this plot which makes taking measurements more challenging. There were no measurable changes in plot #3. There was incremental increase in depth on one side of plot #2, and an equally small change in plot #2. Until I graph the results I won't really be able to make much sense out of the data. The data baseline I'm constructing is just a few years old, not really enough time to observe patterns.

Looking for evidence of the heavy rains of August I headed up the slide track. This is at the bottom of the track where there's a lot of gravel mixed with clay and lots of odd sized boulders. As I've mentioned before the rocks on the slide path are varied to the extreme and occasionally I've found rocks the size and shape of basketballs or cannonballs; perfectly round and where they sit the soil is puffed up around them as if they fell from a great height. They're puzzling.

This configuration of stones is also puzzling. Some one many years ago went to some lengths to make what appears to be a throne-like seat, complete with arm rests, that has the view of North Twin in the photo below. Without the snow the seat, or chair, is quite comfortable to sit in.

This is the view from the lower northern edge of the slide track. The light, within the space of an hour, has changed dramatically and at this point I could smell the snow storm that was forecast moving in over the mountains.

This is the long clay bank that extends up the northern half of the slide track for several hundred feet. It has a soft texture and my boots would sink in an inch or two when I try walking on it. I try not to disturb it and walk at the right edge along the balsams. There is no visible sign that August's heavy rains altered this site in any way. Virtually nothing has changed and I could clearly see my footprints from three years ago in several places. Does this mean it didn't rain here as much as, say, on Mt. Washington which is 16 miles away? I don't know, but one would expect that the sheer volume of water that was poured over this landscape in such a short span of time would have left some trace. Either that, or the existing hydrologic system was able to handle heavy flows.

Looking north from the top of the clay bank. The west ridge of North Twin juts into the photo and beyond that are the Burke Mountains in Vermont. The sharpness of the features on the ridge in left center is another indication of an approaching storm and a drop in the barometric pressure.

Half way up the slide and from the middle of the slide track looking at a dense cluster of balsam firs that crowd right up to the north edge of the slide and bump up against the white birch growing just beyond the slide track. Even though the birches were not damaged by the slide they were impacted in other ways and most notably the huge increase in the amount of sunlight they received after the slide created the large opening. Vermont mountains in the far distance.

This is the upper half of the slide track and you can see attempts by various species of plants to colonize the rock ledge that was exposed by the slide. The succession here, since 1954, has included alder, pin cherry, balsam fir, poplar (aspen), and maple. The balsam are thriving in the areas up to but not including the ledge. There is some soil in pockets but for the most part the ground is a hard gravel with larger stones mixed in.

As I've noted before a new species in the mix is white pine (P. strobus) that is not represented anywhere else close to the site. In the center of the photo is a three year old white pine that is happily growing at 3250' asl. This is another puzzle in terms of where the original seed stock came from and probing the question of how far white pine seeds travel, generally. On a separate note, looking around from this vantage point that is 150 feet below the top of the slide there is nothing to suggest impact from the August 28th storm. The whole slide track looks similar to the way it looked in May.

This is the tallest white pine on the slide and is located just under 3000' asl and is a little over 40' tall.

The photo above and the photo below are of two white pine seedlings growing 100 feet from the top of the slide track. The evidence is that the white pine is pioneering this niche and seems thrive here, with the question still open about what conveyance brought the white pine seeds here, e.g. wind, animal, etc.

There are no other white pines in the vicinity.

Here on the slide track, however, there are now 20 established specimens. I recorded most of them last fall and their heights vary between 40 and 8 feet. In this photo, two white pines stick out. One's in the upper right corner and the other is in the lower left corner. The introduction of the white pines to this site offers us a good snapshot of the process of succession that we've been discussing. The site has been in flux for nearly 60 years there's . White pine is certainly a common species throughout northern New England so whether it belongs here is not an issue. It's not an invasive, but it is here at the edge of its range just in terms of the altitude. I've mentioned before in the blog that there's evidence of white pines growing up to 3000' but not over that altitude. The other nagging question is where did the original pine seeds that started this process come from. The phenomenon of "buried seeds" is a possible answer. This is an adaptation by which plants produce an abundance of seeds some of which germinate and grow and others that are eaten, rot, etc, but many get buried by environmental mechanisms like leaf drop and become incorporated into the top soil. When the soil gets disturbed by any number of events the seeds start to grow. There are vast differences between species in terms of how long a seed that has been buried will remain viable and there's the possibility that each seed might be affected by other environmental factors such as temperature. I'm not suggesting that the white pine seeds were somehow lodged here before the slide occurred but I do think it offers speculation about how the northern forest emerged at the end of the last ice age 10,000 to 11,00o years ago. Is it possible, I might ask, whether viable seeds were held in glacial ice for tens of thousands of years that were deposited in the post-glacial soil when the glacier ablated?

The colors, with the snow and the flat light created by the clouds, were lovely. The reds are the berries of Mountain Ash and the orange belongs to the needles of a Larch tree which, like the white pine, is rare for this particular site.

Getting to and from the slide track engenders bushwhacking 50 yards through this dense balsam stand. It's one of those challenges that requires the strength of football line backer. You kind of put your head down and push and try to prevent your clothes from getting badly torn.

While I had my head down and pushing myself through the trees I found this curious set of prints from either a raven or crow that were inside the dense cluster of balsams where no bird could fly. It looked as though the bird had done a dance on this stone, walking back and forth a few times, and then pooped and went on his/her way.

Red fox.

After a quick hike up to the ridge to check the hut I came down quickly. This is a glimpse of the new trail. The storm was definitely not a threat at this time, as I had originally thought it might be. I expected the clouds to descend and spitting snow at the hut but it was clear to the bottom of the trail.

There are some glades along the ridge that will offer good skiing with more snow.

Another skiable section of the new cut-off.

As I mentioned earlier there's a large number of blow downs in the area just to the west of the trail near First Crossing. The new cut-off threads its way through them including this towering root ball from a downed balsam and we are offered another snapshot of biotic succession in these downed trees.

The bole of this balsam is 18 inches in circumference and it's close to 90 years old. With it's demise a number of critical factors were triggered, including increased sunlight to the forest floor, that will bring a new generation of balsams and some competitive species to light.

Sub-angular glacial erratics on the lower section of the trail.

A wind-fall sugar maple.

Beech leaves.

The Highland Center with 6 inches of new snow, October 30, 2011

I spent the night at the AMC's highland center where I finally got to meet Keith Wehmeyer in person after corresponding with him for a couple of years. I pulled an all-nighter (almost) in the library going through old Appalachia (the journal of the Appalachian Mountain Club) covering the years 1902 -1922 and earmarking all of the articles on White Mountain history, natural history, including biographies. It takes hours to go through a single volume because it's easy to get pulled into reading all the articles. They're fascinating and filled with lots of great stuff. All this effort will hopefully aid the completion of the glossary I'm compiling of Appalachia articles focusing on the White Mountains that might be useful to readers of this blog.

The Mt. Washington Hotel at Bretton Woods in Crawford Notch. The snow storm raged into the late morning accompanied by a strong wind and when it was over the notch was pasted with wet snow under a concrete sky.

One string of articles in the Appalachia from 1915 thru 1918 covers a massive storm that hit the White Mountains in September 1915 and according to the various articles that covered different aspects of that storm make it out to be the most destructive storm of the last 100 years. The detailed descriptions of the damage to the trails is awe inspiring. In one article by Charlie Blood who what trail master in 1915 he describes blow downs extending for miles across the Ethan Pond trail.

The Gale River Road with new fallen snow.

I didn't realize it at the time I took these photos Sunday morning that to the south in western Massachusetts where I live, and in northern this Halloween Storm had caused a great deal of damage estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The wet snow associated with the storm stripped large limbs off trees that brought down electric wires and caused black outs throughout the area that lasted for 8-9 days in some places. It was quite impressive. I had clients who were without lights, heat, or any way to keep fresh food for more than a week. All schools, colleges, malls, doctors offices, wings of hospital, and, best of all, most fast food restaurants had to close for an entire week. The nights were amazing with the bible blackness that settled in everywhere when the sun set. And then there were the stars.

The Gale River Trail.

A photo taken on October 30th of this familiar scene on the Gale River Trail.......

......also photographed at dawn on July 22nd.

10-9-11 Ammonoosuc Ravine, Mt. Washington

2011-10-10T14:42:00.001-07:00

This past Sunday, 10-9-11, marked the 10th week since I had been in the White Mountains or set foot on a trail there. My debut hike was to have been up Madison and Adams seen here at sunrise Sunday morning, but there were already 120 cars in the trail head parking area at 6 am so I opted for some place quieter and out of the fray. The weather for the entire weekend was exceptional with valley temperatures in the mid to high 70s and very clear skies. Coupled with the three day Columbus Day weekend, the weather was a big draw for hundreds of folks to make their way to the high peaks.

With an early start I hoped to beat the crowds that on a fine day like this were sure to be heading up the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail (ART) on their way to the summit of Mt. Washington. I only needed enough time to get up a half way where I would begin to bushwhack up into the ravine itself. My goal was to see if there was any prominent damage in the gullies or along the floor of the ravine from the prodigious rain dumped on the White Mountains by the storm associated with Hurricane Irene. The hurricane tracked west of the Whites through central and western Vermont but the Mt. Washington Weather Observatory collected 6.6 inches of precip (rain) on Sunday, August 28th. That's a lot of water.

I won't go on as I usually do about how wonderful it felt to get back on the trail but it was wonderful to be hiking again (and to feel strong and in good shape). Those ten weeks seemed like an awfully long time. As I finally got going there were a few people just ahead of me on the trail but the number would be much larger number by 8 am. I wondered if there would be a solid line of hikers, with only a few feet separating them, from the base to the summit by 10 am.

I was soon passed by these zany young guys from Montreal who were traveling light and fast and with the same intent to stay ahead of the crowds.

At several places on the trail there was evidence of storm damage although not necessarily from the August 28th storm. There were fresh saw cuts in this debris which mean it could have been storm damage or just routine fall trail croo clean up.

At the lower elevation on the trail the river looked unscathed by high water.

A quarter of a mile further up stream there were downed trees criss-crossing the river and some nominal signs of high water as in rock, even some fairly large ones, that may have been moved or flipped over so that they are free from mosses and lichen.

Less than a half mile up hill from the trail head there was this obvious damage. The trail here is close to the river and at about the same elevation (level with the river) which would account for any overflow reaching this spot. There were signs in other places downstream from this spot where the river, during the flood, had made some incursions on the trail that included areas covered by fine sand, like mason's sand, laid out in long stripes where there had not been sand before.

For the most part, though, the trail was as serene and undisturbed as this.

I caught up with these two young men from Mumbai, India by way of New York City who were on their very first hike in the White Mountains.

The higher upstream that I climbed, an towards Ammonoosuc Ravine, the more signs I saw of impact from the high water from the August 28th storm including the "blasting" that occurred here at the confluence of the Ammonoosuc River with a side stream coming down from Mt. Monroe. The two streams must have joined forces here with a magnified force and moved large rocks some of which were swept downstream.

The high volume of water was able to "float" a lot of debris from the avalanche of January, 2010, that was left upstream from this point. As the flood waters lost velocity in certain sections of the river, particularly at lower elevations, it left debris dams like this one also made up of the remnants of the avalanche.

There was just a minor flow on Sunday in this side channel of the Ammonoosuc River but it had obviously funneled a great deal of water during the August 28th storm. Eyewitnesses reported that rivers in and around the White Mountains rose quickly during the height of the storm on August 28th and may have reached 8-10 feet above the normal seasonal flows. (See entry for 8-29-11 "quick follow-up on Hurricane Irene".) It's hard to picture the river here in this photo 10 feet higher and I doubt that there are many eyewitnesses who were out on the trails during the height of that storm (remember that the whole White Mountains National Forest was closed for two days). At any rate, the rivers receded quickly, too.

I bushwhacked up the north side of the river for a mile through this dense and spindly balsam growth. It was not easy going. I hypothesized that along both sides of the river at this elevation, where the sides of the ravine squeeze together and force the river through a V, the vegetation must be damaged periodically by high water.

This was another confluence where the force of the flood water on August 28th became magnified and was able to cut through the river bank here and it also moved a lot of heavy rocks, gravel and sand out of the channels opening up this wide area.

Every 100 yards, or so, I encountered debris dams like the first one mostly consisting of the year-and-a-half-old avalanche debris from 2010. My expectation of the August 28th storm that I think I stated in an earlier entry was that it might "flush" a lot of the nominal debris found in and along a lot of the river and stream beds throughout the White Mountains that accumulated over time and it would get carried far downstream. The debris dams probably represent a small percentage of the material moved by the flood water on August 28th and that got hung up in these places where I found them as the flood water receded.

This is a side channel of the Ammonoosuc only visible if you hike along the north side of the river and it obviously carries water during heavy flows but on Sunday there was barely any water in it. It would have been interesting to see how much volume it was carrying on August 28th.

In the second photo above you can see some Mountain Ash trees that were smooshed by the flood but that are still alive and putting out these lovely red berries which are a favorite of a long list of White Mountain birds.

The bushwhacking became more and more difficult the higher I went. This is a boulder field most likely from a landslide that occurred many years ago. It does provide an illustration of something I've tried to describe a couple of times that's an important feature of the forest that mantels these mountains. If you look at the moss covered rocks in the above photo you'll see holes, dark splotches, that indicate there are openings in the top layer of soil. As you walk across this area your foot often sinks down a foot, or more and that is because the soil is a very thin layer lying on the roots of the trees. In other words the soil and root systems are suspended above the ground a foot, or more. This accounts for the slow growth and spindly trees in some areas along with the standing deadwood which, as Robert Monahan pointed out, dies from thirst because the roots, being suspended, don't get enough water.

At this point I'd hiked into the bottom of the avalanche track. In this photo you can see from the debris covering the rocks that the flood waters on August 28th must have completely submerged these rocks. It's interesting because the flood waters effected some areas and not others along the river channel.

Just 100 yards away this area that had been heavily hit by the avalanche received no damage from the flood and it looks as though the flood water didn't reach here (I presume that it did). Perhaps this is because the river channel is wider and/or deeper here so the flood water didn't rise as high.

It's interesting to see some of the impact that resulted from the avalanche which opened this area dramatically. These post-blossom Purple Asters are first succession plants that have moved into this area to take advantage of the increased sunlight.

Looking up through the trees killed by the avalanche and into the left side of Ammonoosuc Ravine. The summit of Mt. Washington is on the upper right side of the photo. The morning sun is just rising over the ridge on the fight and beginning to dip down into the ravine.

I took a line up the center of the avalanche debris and found his water course carrying a little water and that ascended steeply towards the right gully. In this photo the ravine suddenly became filled with smoke from the Cog railway that ascends Mt. Washington via the ridge to the left. From the smoke and the sound of the train I could tell it was a little after 8 am.

I tried moving out of the stream bed because it was disappearing in the avalanche debris. I was confident it would reappear up higher but moving it this landscape was almost impossible.

This is looking across the floor of the ravine at trees decimated by the avalanche (again, back in January, 2010). The avalanche probably had high water content (it rained for several days before switching to snow so that the avalanche was a dense wet mass) and it certainly had high velocity because it "rode" high up on the ridge opposite and snapped off the trees you see in the photo.

A half mile higher and the amount of dead wood from the avalanche is astounding. Some of the trees were pushed over but are obviously still alive.

Looking downhill the photo shows some of the birch trees that, being supple, were pushed down by the avalanche but are recovering a bit and standing straighter each year. The mountain in the distance is North Twin.

The day was warming up quickly as I climbed. The sun took it's time coming over the crest of the ridge and as I reached my high point it was just touching these trees.

The view down right gully shows that a huge force of water passed down this water course and moved a lot of stones and gravel which in turn scoured the rocks, cleaning the rocks of moss lichens, and washed the gravel as well.

The rocks radiate in an arc here where the water velocity was greatest. There force of the water much have varied by topography, increasing in steeper parts of the channel and where channels narrowed.

At this point the flood waters were moving very fast and carrying boulders and smaller stones with them down the steep gully. You can see the scouring on the rocks where water loosened rocks scraped and bounced down the channel. The raging current created that curious six-foot high wall, in the form of an arc, and, as the water receded, left the stack of woody debris on top of it as a decoration.

This was another place a third of the way up the headwall where the flood water created another wall and the scouring on the larger rocks is also evident. Above this point right gully becomes very steep. There are two magnificent cascades coming down from the top which I had difficulty photographing because the sun was directly in the camera lens. I'd like to return, though, and climb the gully walls with adequate protection in the form of rope, etc. Two summers ago Johanness Griesshammer and Arran Dindorf, both on the Lakes of the Clouds croo in 2010, bushwhacked all the gullies on Mt. Washington including the three prominent ones in Ammonsoosuc Ravine. They might be better able to define the extent of impacts from the August 28th storm based on their earlier explorations.

I bushwhacked down and to the left a bit to get back to the Ammonsoosuc Ravine Trail at Gem Pool. I often get scratched while bushwhacking in this kind of terrain on my forearms and shins and some blood oozes from these superficial cuts. When I pop out onto a trail and meet hikers they're sometimes alarmed by my appearance. Their first thought is that I've been mauled by a bear, or some other large animal.

This is the branch of the Ammonsoosuc that drops down from Lakes of the Clouds via Gem Pool. In fact this photo was taken a 50 feet down stream from the pool. It's difficult to tell if the August 28th storm impacted this part of the river as a lot of the moss on the rocks is still in tact, but there must have been significant increased flow here both in volume and velocity.

The storm did clean out Gem Pool to some extent. It would have been nice if it had taken out those dead falls to the left. I've tried to pull them out of there in the past but they're wedged in.

Gem Pool below the surface.

This is some new work by the trail croo just below Gem Pool and indicates some flood damage to the river bank here. It was always a little sketchy here but possibly water coming down the river bank from above washed away a small section of the trail.

This new bridge was further down the trail and in a perennial wet area.

Near the bottom of the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail on my way out. The sunlight "had the feel" like it was about noon. With winter approaching the light is changing rapidly.

I reserved this block of photos for the end of this piece in case some readers are not interested in photos of hikers. I took them coming back down from Gem Pool on Sunday only because I was astonished by the sheer number of hikers there was on the trail and the enormous diversity they represented. This photo reminds me of many discussions over the years about crowds in the White Mountains and the fear that some day there will just be long lines from the bottom to the tops of the popular summits. A photo above shows what it could look like. I tried to get the blur in this photo on purpose for effect. I won't comment on the photos as I'm not using them to be judgmental and I hope that you like them. Taking them was certainly enjoyable.

7-22-11 thru 7-24-11: Two Days at Galehead (complete finally)

2011-09-25T06:52:00.000-07:00

This entry's about two days spent at Galehead Hut in late July filling in for the regular croo. It wanders into personal experiences, a cursory history of Galehead, and the subject of two naturalists talks that explore the forest that contributes to the vitality of the WMNF. The entry's length reflects the time I've had on my hands during August plus a deep affection I have for Galehead. Several people have written saying how much they like the article which is gratifying as it seems very long. I'm indebted to Jonathan Hubbard, a former AMC croo (who worked at Pinkham Notch the summer of 1963 and Lonesome Lake in 1964) for his helpful grammar tips.

The first breaths of dawn were rippling with heat as my daughter, Liz, and I headed up the Gale River Trail. We'd come up from Springfield-Northampton, MA, where temperatures the week of July 18-23 stayed around 100 degrees (F). We were on the road by 4 am hoping for respite in the cool woods beside the Gale River and, perhaps, cooler still on the high ridges above where a cool breeze might be blowing; even something in the mid-80s would be okay.

Getting on the trail at dawn reminds me of the scene in Kenneth Graham's Wind in the Willows where Mole and Water Rat find Baby Otter at the feet of Pan who has directed them to the lost otter with enchanting music from his famous pipes. The moment the morning sun first touches the tops of the trees bringing with it a deep, reverent stillness, fills me with awe, as it did Mole and Rat at the sight of Pan ("The Helper"). On this Friday morning, though, the sun's entrance instantly made the air feel hot. We were motivated to move quickly up the trail.

Getting on the trail early Liz and I were also planning an early arrival at Galehead to relieve the regular croo who were eagerly waiting to run down the mountain and kick off their joint 3 day-set of days off. The heat slowed us down a bit and we got soaked through from sweat in a few minutes as if we were carrying heavy packs.

The water at the crossings was eerily low. The heat wave certainly had something to do with the low volume but it seemed a bit early in the summer for this extreme. There has been a lot of rain recently so one would expect a higher level of flow.

Even a minor rise in air temperature exponentially affects the evaporation/transportation potential of deciduous trees. A combination of warm winds and above normal air temperatures has an even more pronounced affect. Mid to late-July is the peak of leafing-out for deciduous trees and, all combined, they use enormous amounts of water daily which their roots suck out of the ground before it makes it into local streams. That might be part of the reason for the lower water levels in the brooks and streams. Trees use the water for sugar production and the suction is created by evaporation of water vapor from the surface of the leaves. The trees create enough suction to "pull" the ground water all the way up to their crowns. This process gradually declines through August as the days get shorter and cooler and it will drop off steeply with the cool nights of September when sugar production in the leaves halts.

At 8 am the river looked like a perfect place to escape the heat of a mid-summer day.

Liz walked upstream to one of her favorite haunts, these pools about 200 yards above the slide on the Gale River. There are two prominent pools each resembling a bathtub that are about 4 feet deep; just deep enough for a bone chilling soak.

The water is really, really cold, even on a hot July morning.

While Liz cooled herself I continued upwards to "free" the croo and get settled into the hut where Liz and I would be working for the next two days and nights. We would be joined by Sue Dickman and Ari Ofsevit later. My oldest daughter Julia had called Thursday to say that she and her boyfriend wouldn't be able to join us due to illness creating a bit of a bind in terms of croo strength. Meanwhile, Ari texted on Wednesday that he had to spend Friday in New York due to a family matter. He said he would drive back up late Friday night, pack up to the hut and be there early Saturday morning (which he heroically accomplished getting to the hut at midnight. We were happy to see him. )

Almost at the crest of Garfield Ridge I recognized this woman by her boots (they're Peter Limmer boots made in the 1970s from a beautiful chestnut brown Scottish aquatite leather) and her name is Nancy Thomas. It was wonderful to see her again! I last saw her several decades ago and like Sondra Cohen in an entry a month ago, Nancy was one of the first women to work as a paid AMC employee in the AMC Huts. She worked at Lonesome in the summer of 1973, was winter caretaker at Zealand 1973-74, and worked at Greenleaf in 1974. We reminisced about her two years in the huts, the hut folks of the 70s, and exchanged some current gossip, but I felt compelled to get up to the hut.

I did pause on the ridge to take a photo of this balsam spar that I hadn't seen before and that had managed to eke out a long existence and assume noble stature here on this weather beaten ridge.

Half the croo was waiting patiently for us to arrive, pack boards loaded with trash (yes, trash) which is packed out and recycled. (Left to right) Phil Crosby, Assistant Hutmaster (Phil was at Greenleaf last summer ), Hilary Burt, Hutmaster (also at Greenleaf last year), and Christoff Griesshammer (he was at Carter Notch last year). Missing from the photo are Anne Flemming, croo, and Alex Wick, Hut Naturalist. It should be made clear that croos regularly pack out all of the hut trash, everything but garbage, generated from the daily operation of the hut. Everyone else, as I hope you all know by now, is responsible for taking out their own trash.

Liz and I rested for an hour to look around and rehydrate. It was a gorgeous day. There was heat in the air but it was cooler than the valley and there was a breeze. The above photo is looking north towards Vermont and Quebec.

Looking west towards Mt. Garfield

Look at all those trees! Could you guess how many trees are in this photo? Everywhere you look from Galehead Hut you see gazillions of trees. Galehead Mt. is in the background. The mountains beckoned cheerily in the gleaming sunlight.

THE KITCHEN also beckoned and it's where we'll be ensconced the next two days and nights. The overnight counts for Friday and Saturday were 37 and 38 respectively. That means a full house each night. We would be spending a lot of time in the kitchen particularly with our diminished ranks.

Hilary, Phil and Christoff had left us in good stead. The bread had been proofed and punched down twice and was ready to go in the oven. The croo had started the soup which was simmering on the back of the stove as was the sauce for the chicken Parmesan, so we had a fairly light work load for our first night.

Sue Dickman and Liz in the comfortable, large, efficient, bright, new Galehead kitchen. Sue, a good friend who worked in the huts for two summers in the mid-1980s and an excellent chef and baker, arrived in late afternoon so we were up to 3 croo. If we needed more help we could barter with AT Thru hikers, offering food in exchange for work.

Guests linger at the tables after dinner on Friday night. Several activities are offered to fill the evening hours. One is a nightly Natural History program offered by hut naturalists. I'd been looking forward for several weeks to taking the lead in the natural history discussion on both Friday and Saturday nights. I worked at Galehead in the summer of 1961 but first visited the hut in 1949 so my first hand experience of Galehead covers 60 years. Friday night I wanted to explore some of the information contained in those 60 years that might be interesting and possibly useful. Sixty years can seem like a long time but in the mountain context its just the blink of an eye.

Guest watch the sunset from the top of the boulder.

The following night, Saturday, I planned to ask the guests to use their imaginations and multiply my 60 years experience here by the factor of 200 to try and create a picture of what the forest might have looked like in various developmental stages during the last 12,000 years. That's the approximate time period since the demise of the Wisconsinan continental ice sheet that pushed through here 30,000 to 40,000 years ago, got mired down as the climate changed, and over a period of a thousand years or more, melted ("down wasted" is the technical term). I was trying to get the guests to think how the current forest we're familiar with today evolved over time and by what mechanisms. In addition I wanted them to think about whether the forest is going to stay this way for eternity, or change (evolve more) and, if so, how? If it is continuing to evolve, adapt, etc, what agents (e.g. climate, biotic succession, etc) might bring about that change? To assist them I described an article in the June 1931 Appalachia by a well known ecologist who theorized that "biotic succession in the New England mountains will eventually succeed in covering the summits with dense, mature forests." My last question was what "limiting factors" exist to prevent this outcome and what attributes might support it?

On the other side of the hut, to the east, the shadow of Galehead Mt. inches up South Twin.

My first trip to Galehead was in 1948 or 1949. It was a long haul for me as I was young. I came up with my mum, accompanied by two men; Joe Dodge (manager of the huts at that time) and Carl Blanchard. Joe and Carl were on hut business but also carrying fishing poles and creels. They fished the river on the way up with some success. At the hut we were welcomed into the kitchen by the hutmaster and offered blueberry muffins and coffee. The hut was rustic to say the least, even the way it smelled. The kitchen was small and cozy with a wood stove, a cooking scheme consisting of a row of propane "burners" on a narrow shelf against the wall (there was a similar arrangement at Carter) and a dutch oven. There was a table covered with red and white checked oil cloth in the center and, along the north wall, a cast iron sink with a single cold water faucet. Sitting at the table was an older man with a dark green timber cruiser hat, a red plaid wool shirt, wool pants and high boots with hob nails in them. Both Carl and Joe joked with him and obviously knew him well. It turned out he was the "lookout" from the fire tower on Mt. Garfield. He'd hiked over from the tower for a cup of coffee and conversation. Carl quickly fried the fish they'd caught on the way up and we all got samples. I shyly stayed in the background watching and listening to the banter. The men talked about fishing and hunting. (It strikes me now that a passionate discussion about local fishing would never occur at any of the huts today.) It's safe to say I fell in love with Galehead the first time I saw it.

Back then the hut looked like this (photo). The balsam fir crowded in to kiss the hut and the sensation was of being in the center of a wild, expansive forest. Galehead is about forest, about trees, more than any other hut. I got to spend a lot of time there in 1961 during my first summer working in the huts. It was paradise! Joe Dodge wrote an article in the June 1932 Appalachia, Log of a Hill Jack, which is a must read if you enjoy the huts. It's a fine description of the construction of Galehead and Zealand Huts in 1931 (both huts formerly opened in 1932). The article also includes a thumbnail sketch of new construction at Lakes of the Clouds in 1931.

Galehead is romantic. Madison's romantic, too, since it's a high mountain refuge nestled among towering alpine peaks. Galehead's romantic in it's solitude and the pleasurable feeling that you're in a far outpost gazing across wild mountains and the beautiful Pemigewasset Wilderness. In 1961 Galehead was far from the maddening crowds. It was a great place to lie in the sun and stare at the clouds passing overhead and to read novels or write letters that you'd never finish. The technology at work at Galehead in 1949 didn't change up to 1961 but it was about to be swept out and completely replaced. Those rudiments, in place from 1932 to 1961, have been mentioned: cast iron wood cook stove, a barrel stove for occasional heating, propane burners for cooking, and, of course, flush toilets. (Dealing with human waste in the huts becomes a dilemma as hut use by the public increases. Read on.) Up to 1961 Galehead's toilets discharged into the Pemi via a long drain pipe but in 1961 a septic "pit" was dug to filter the waste. Fresh food (e.g. turkeys, hamburg, pork shoulders, hams, lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, milk, butter, eggs, oranges, bread, etc) was packed in twice a week, as needed, on our backs using AMC pack boards designed for carrying heavy loads comfortably. At the hut end, food scraps were disposed of in "the gaboon", a hole dug to a depth of several feet and sprinkled with lime once a week. The gaboon was filled in at the end of each summer. Lighting was provided by kerosene lanterns. The kerosene was packed up the trail in 5 gallon metal jerry cans. We also packed in 45 pound propane tanks (nicknamed "bombs") often two at a time. The hut used roughly two of the 45 lb. bombs a week but we always had spares around just in case. (In 1963, we were able to get 85 lb. cylinders that held more propane than 2 of the 45 lb. tanks together. Adding the weight of the pack board, the 85 lb. tanks were an easy-to-carry 100 lb. load.)

Galehead in winter. Up until the late 1960s the kitchens of
all huts were left open for the winter so they could be used
as emergency refuges. By 1965 increased vandalism made
this practice prohibitive.

One state-of-the art innovation I almost forgot to mention is the RCA wind-up "Victrola" at Galehead the summer of 1961. It only played 78 rpm records and there was one "78" at the hut that had Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" on one side and "Night and Day" on the other. I think I played "Night and Day" a thousand times that summer. In 1961 Sony FM battery-powered radios made their way into the huts. From Galehead we could listen to Montreal and New York stations after the sun went down. Being at Galehead (its nickname is Ghoul) was simplicity itself. Like other huts Galehead was a refuge from the storm and little else. It was a snug, secure, mountain shelter where one could stop for the night, enjoy a simple meal, rest, enjoy the views, watch the sunset or listen to the sound of rain on the roof, read a mystery, have a conversation with the croo and/or other guests, and sleep.

Until the summer seasons of 1961-1962 at least three of the huts (Galehead, Zealand, and Carter) used wood as a cooking and heating fuel. (see the above poem ) At Galehead the use of wood fuel impacted the site in varying degrees from summer to summer, but croos were instructed to spread wood cutting out over a wide area to minimize visual effects. Then, one moonlit night in the July, 1960 Galehead Hutmaster, Chuck Darlington, packed a four-burner propane range complete with a working oven (thermostatically controlled no less!), across the Twinway from Zealand to Galehead (Zealand got a new stove and Ghoul got their old one). Wood burning decreased dramatically with the new stove and the cooking improved.

Between my first visit in 1949 and 1961 I noticed few changes to the site and its immediate surroundings. In 1949 there were several large birch or poplar trees (roughly 12 inches in diameter) just west of the hut (see photo above). The above photo, looking out Galehead's kitchen window in the summer of 1936, shows two large deciduous trees growing behind the big boulder. They look like yellow birch trees but might be aspen and in the photo they look like they might be dying from drought or a disease. Their presence shows what the forest makeup on the ridge could have been up until 1936. Other photos taken around the site during the initial construction of the hut in 1931-1932 also show large deciduous trees near the hut. They weren't there in 1961. Hurricanes in 1954 and 1958 had toppled a lot of trees on Garfield Ridge which could be one explanation.

Mizpah Hut during the first snowfall of the season, Fall 1973

In 1964 the helicopter, the portable two-way radio, and the overwhelming increase in hut overnights that were spurred by the May 1961 National Geographic article: "The Friendly Huts of the White Mountains," by Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, irrevocably changed the way the huts were administered. Just a few years later all the huts had refrigerators, six-burner propane cooking ranges, propane hot water heaters, and two way radios that connected all the huts together and each of the huts to a centralized radio at Pinkham Notch. The light weight radios could quickly be made into portables and taken out onto the trails to implement search and rescue emergencies.

Another catalyst for change between 1961 and 1964 was the construction of Mizpah Springs Hut (photo above). As early as the 1920s the AMC wanted to add more huts/shelters along the Presidential Range as a backup for Madison Spring Hut that was often over crowded with guests. The AMC had been looking at sites on the ridge like Edmunds Col but the lack of good water sources was a limiting factor. Even Mizpah, a preferred site, had sketchy water. By the early 1960s there was a dire need for another hut somewhere on the ridge and in 1963 construction was a "go" for Mizpah. Its construction proceeded through 1964 into the early summer of 1965. The hut was opened for business in mid-season 1965. Many of the innovations installed at Mizpah soon made their way to the other huts.

This photo shows Mizpah Hut just after it's official opening in 1965 but still under construction. Willy Ashbrook, first Mizpah Hutmaster, is in back while several members of the construction croo sunbathe in the foreground. Syd Havely is in the center. (These four guys together probably packed more weight into the huts in a given summer between 1961-1966 than the rest of the hut croos combined.)

Galehead, October 1976

These innovations dramatically changed the culture of the huts. The radio, particularly, erased the sense of isolation, independence, and uniqueness of huts like Galehead, that for a long time had a reputation for solitude. With the two-way radios, the helicopter, and the 1960s in general, solitude in the White Mountains became more difficult to find: more people on the trail, more commerce, more rescues, more of everything. Croos talked about the changes. I remember the morning that the Lakes opening croo was brought out of our well deserved slumbers by a huge racket outside. (Like Santa Claus with his reindeer and sleigh). We looked out the window into the cold May morning to see a huge red helicopter, a Sikorsky, of Korean War vintage perched on the little knoll in front of the hut. For two days the helicopter made round trips from the Wildcat Ski Area parking lot to Lakes bringing in the entire initial requisition that, up to that time, was packed in by hut croos over weeks. The initials included everything that would be needed at the hut over the summer, e.g. all the canned goods, and at Lakes it weighed several tons. (Some huts originally got their initials packed in by donkeys).

This is the style of helicopter adopted by the AMC in late 1960s. It was faster, more efficient fuel wise and didn't make the racket the large Sikorsky made. In the photo the pilot is approaching the pad at Carter very slowly as he brings in a gas bomb.

By 1961, to insure reliable water, most of the huts had either propane or gasoline fueled water pumps that were used to fill 400 gallon reserve tanks that provided gravity fed water to the hut itself. Prior to 1961 a mishmash of water systems existed. Carter and Galehead had the most ephemeral water supplies that could easily disappear in dry summers and that were essentially spring fed from high up on the mountainsides. The water descended via gravity through black plastic pipe to the tank.

"The good old days."
Steve Colt (center), Zealand winter caretaker, & four volunteers move
a barrel of human waste out behind Zealand Falls Hut in March 1982.

All of the huts had flush toilets up until the 1970s. Madison Hut which was rebuilt this past year (2010-2011) was the last hut to boast flush toilets. The flush toilets were removed from a number of the huts by the 1970s due to environmental issues. The flush toilets were replaced with a labor intensive system consisting of ratchet hoists, 55 gallon barrels, dollies, and medieval devices for carrying the barrels to the back of the hut for helicopter evacuation to the valley. The 55 gallon drum was placed under the toilet seat. The waste would drop into the barrel. When the barrel was full the croo lifted it from the hole with a ratchet-operated hoist. The barrels were quite heavy when full, as you can imagine. The barrels were then lowered onto a strong dolly with very sound wheels underneath, the top of the barrel was sealed tight, and the barrel was wheeled to the side door of the hut. From there they were carried, with the help of volunteers using that rig you see in the photo, way around in back of the hut where they stood ready to be helicoptered out during the airlift. The helicopter would bring a load of supplies in and take out a barrel filled with, well, human waste. After being airlifted the barrels were taken by truck to an approved site for dumping. The amount of labor involved was daunting. The AMC hoped to install composting toilets at all facilities including huts and shelters as early as the 1980s but early experimentation with composting toilets at shelters and tent sites was moderately successful. Reliable composting toilets did not come on the market for almost another decade.

Galehead in 1982 with a group of revelers at its 50th anniversary celebration. In the background is one of the water tanks installed in the 1960s to help huts cope with sketchy water supplies.

Galehead from the back in August 1982. Between 1961 and 1982 an enormous amount of money was invested in Galehead including replacement of the original log walls, a new roof and new siding. Inside, the kitchen was re-done. You can see the rack of propane tanks, (referred to as "bombs") at the back corner of the hut. By 1964 Galehead and all the huts relied on propane for cooking. This was made possible by a number of innovation not least of them the use of helicopters for bringing supplies to the hut. For lighting, up to 1961-1964, the large huts had gasoline fueled generators they fired up in the evenings to illuminate the kitchen and common room. For efficiency the generators were only kept on for about an hour each night. Galehead and the other small huts had both kerosene lamps and pressurized vapor lamps with incandescent mantels that were bright enough to read by. By the late 1960s mounted propane lights, also with incandescent mantels, replaced all other forms of lighting in the huts. They produced more light, were more efficient, and also offered some warmth.

The Galehead kitchen was the hut's sore thumb in the 1990s. The kitchen was small and, for large crowds, inefficient. By 1998 the decision was made to tear down the old hut and replace it with a state of the art building with more permanency and a large, efficient, state of the art kitchen.

In this photo, taken in July 1996, Sarah Hurley, the Galehead Hutmaster, is at the stove on the left. Sarah had an all female croo that summer, a first for Galehead. In my opinion, the most important and far reaching change in the huts over the past 60 years occurred when women were finally allowed to work in the huts in 1973. Seeing Nancy Thomas on the trail in the morning reminded me of the vast importance of this. At the 50th Anniversary of Galehead in 1982, in the group photo above, Rebecca Oreskes, in the center of the photo and just to the right of the water tank, was Hutmaster at Galehead that summer. Seeing and remembering these women who were present in the huts for great spans of time inspire the question of what the plight of the huts might have been if they had not been given entry into this exclusive male realm? It's probably a moot question today. It's more than likely that most of the women working in the huts now have no idea what a struggle it was for women to win positions in the huts. On the other hand, it's important for the women working now to understand the incredibly positive impact created by having women working in the huts, and to really understand the profound changes that occurred as a result of that policy change.

On August 31, 1999 festivities at Galehead to commemorate its long, colorful history and mark its imminent removal, to be replaced by the present hut. This photo shows just a fraction of the gang, present and past Galehead croo, who attended this Farewell Party.

For the first naturalist talk on Friday night I told my audience the 60 years I've observed the site around Galehead had the potential to be a period of incredible change just as any other time period could. I reminded them that a lot of nominal change goes unnoticed only because we, as observers, don't stand still long enough to see it happening. More dramatic changes catch our attention for a moment and are stored away in our memories. For instance in August 1954 Hurricane Carol dumped a huge amount of rain across the WMNF that caused several huge landslides. One roared down from Garfield Ridge across the Gale River Trail and the river causing a huge flood that raced down the river valley towards Rt. 3. On my first pack trip to the hut in the early summer of 1961, the slide, then 7 years old, was a great surprise to me. I was astounded by the size of scar the slide had made; a huge open space several football fields in length and width. Fifty-seven years later there are only subtle reminders of the scar. To the casual observer there's nothing to infer a huge landslide had cross the trail there. These changes, I told the guests, occur constantly: gravity and rain sometimes conspire to move thousands of tons of rock and trees down a mountain side and within a relatively short period of time the trees become re-established, the precious soil that was washed away is replaced by new soil, the community of herbaceous plants and shrubs quickly reaches its former complement, and the slide area becomes relatively stable after a few decades (I'm anxious, however, to see if the rains from Hurricane Irene have compromised the site. Irene occurred almost exactly 57 years from the day the slide first washed down off Garfield).

Around 9 pm on Friday looking up at South Twin. Liz and Sue, with assistance from thru-hikers finished clean-up and were preparing "dries" for breakfast. At about 11 pm Liz turned the lights off in the kitchen just as I got into bed and for a second I was taken off guard by all the light suddenly coming through the window by my bed. I thought someone outside the hut had turned on their headlamp until I recognized that it was star light. It's such a treat, as I've said so many times, to suddenly look up and become mesmerized by the stars, to have your breath taken away by them and feel humbled by that beauty.

Suddenly it was 4:45 am. The sun had somehow taken a short cut and snuck up on us tugging at the weary and pronouncing it was time to make the coffee. The coffee was nearly my downfall Saturday morning. We were perking it in 6-cup percolators. I had made a full pitchers for the early-rising guests and had one spare. I started two more but started them with cold water (second mistake). I got caught off guard. The gist of the story is that guests got to drink the first pitcher, but thru-hikers quickly consumed the second without asking. At 6:30 there was no coffee. (getting out coffee out early is mainly a courtesy for early rising guests.) Anyway, we recovered in time to get enough coffee on the tables on time. It's a feature of working in the huts that you can find yourself in a lonely, anxious place if you happen to fall behind in your part of getting a meal out. You feel like you're messing everyone else up.

A Stunning Sunrise over South Twin....

and another gorgeous mountain day. It was tempting to take off and get an hour-long hike in. Ari got out for awhile and ran over to North Twin and back which must have felt good after his long drive the day before. I stayed close to the hut, though, as we expected a high volume of day visitors and a lot of over the counter (OTC) business at the hut.

The number of hikers each summer reflects things like weather, the price of gasoline, or the state of the economy in general, but over the years the numbers of visitors to the WMNF have been rising slowly. While working in the huts you quickly become aware of patterns. One impact on the numbers of hikers is the perennial popularity of the "4,000 Footer Club." Conceived by a small group of people that included Miriam and Robert Underhill the 4,000 Footer Club gets its first mention in the December 1958 Appalachia (pg. 258). It came under the aegis of the AMC and was designed to encourage people to get out and hike. It worked better than expected and continues to grown in popularity. Everyone who can prove they've climbed all the peaks in New Hampshire between 4000 feet and 6288 feet above sea level ( e.g. the 4000 Footers) can become members. Membership includes a nifty patch and an official membership certificate. Originally there were 46 peaks that qualified; that became 48 with better maps, though that may actually only be 47 thanks to the new GPS-Satellite technologies. Owls Head, in the Franconia Brook watershed and one of the most difficult to get to, may be under 4,000 feet in altitude. By the early 1960s a certificate was also offered to those who climbed the peaks the winter (between December 21st and March 21st each year). Now there's a new challenge, something called "The Grid", in which the hiker climbs each summit in each month of the year. (If interested: AMC Four Thousand Footer Committee, P.O. Box 444, Exeter, NH 03833-0444).

It would be interesting to take a survey and find out what percentage of hikers on a given day are out trying to complete their 4000 footers, or, for that matter, how many folks have completed it in the past 53 years. Similar clubs now exist in New York's Adirondacks, Vermont and Maine, and then there's the combined New England-New York 4,000 Footer Club, New Hampshire's 100 Highest, New England's 100 Highest, on and on and on. I have to admit that when the 4000 Footer Club was established I didn't think very highly of it. Being a purist, I saw the 4000 Footer Club as a fad. Using it, I thought, to get someone out on a trail and up a mountain was corrupt in some way, but I'm impressed by the numbers who have "been called" and who are in much better shape because of it.

North Twin at noon on Saturday in a lovely repose.

(Above photo) Looking down into the "Pemi" (short for Pemigewasset Wilderness) from the rock outcrop a few yards south of the hut. If you enlarge the photo you can see distinct lines slanting slightly upwards from left to right across the ridge slightly left of center. These are reminders of the logging roads, called Dugway Road because of the way they were constructed, that traversed almost every mountain side in the White Mountains 110-130 years ago, prior to the creation of the White Mountain National Forest.

In 1945 David Brower, of the Sierra Club, published an article in the Sierra Club Bulletin, titled "How To Kill a Wilderness." The article was published in the December 1945 Appalachia. It's a short article and well worth reading. Brower wrote down a recipe for destroying a wilderness. The recipe is suited for the time it was written when wilderness was still part of the American consciousness. Around 1913 there had been a huge debacle over Hetch Hetchy Valley (part of Yosemite Valley in California) which the government wanted to flood to provide water for California. The Sierra Club, under John Muir, fought fiercely against the federal government in an effort to preserve the valley. Muir lost the battle, but not without building strategies for the future. When Brower was writing in 1945 it was in preparation for fights over proposed dams in Dinosaur Monument and Glen Canyon (Interested in the history of this period? Read John McPhee's, Encounters With the Archdruid, 1971, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, NYC and available at Amazon), that had huge economic potential for developers but that were intrinsic parts of the larger fabric of American wilderness still in place in 1945 but shrinking fast. It's also important to remember that Brower was writing about the American west, not New England.

Brower's experience was that wilderness is easy to destroy but impossible to replace. His recipe for destruction: first, build a trail into the wilderness. People will use it. They'll want a lodge. Build it. They'll want conveniences and comforts like running water, then hot running water. Provide them with all conveniences they desire (they'll spend more money). They'll want a bigger lodge for all their friends. Make the lodge bigger. They'll want to supply the lodge with airplanes and guests will start arriving in airplanes. Brower warns that the argument FOR the development will drown out anti-development voices with the cry that we're "creating the greatest good for the greatest number" e.g. more jobs and more money, taxes revenues. Some of this applies to the White Mountains. They're particularly vulnerable because there's a lot of private land suited for development. Developers have come and gone, but they'll be back, I'm sure. It seems inevitable, only a matter of time, or perhaps I'm too pessimistic. With the large numbers of people who live only hours away and who visit the area with the enticement whetted by the incredible beauty of the area there is definitely a market. When the developers arrive some people, perhaps many, will applaud the potential for money and jobs.

The new hut was completed in 2000. In comparing it with the original hut that stood here for 67 years one has to compliment its design and purposefulness. The new hut IS beautiful. It was brilliantly designed and executed by the construction croo but it does not have that lovely secluded feeling. The old hut was very much an extension of place. It looked a part of the ridge and the trees and was subjected to the same forces of nature as the forest. The new hut exudes permanence rather than connection to place. It's rock solid and seems larger boldly states "I'm here to stay." This idea of permanence probably ranks high on the AMC's goals for securing the long term future of the huts as a means of securing the club's future in the WMNF.

Nearly all the huts have been refurbished or rebuilt in the past decade. Rebuilding Madison and Galehead and the retrofitting of other huts was to weatherize each of the huts, make them safer and more comfortable for guests and croo, make them more efficient e.g. solar panels to power lights and two-way radios and the installation of the composting toilets. Putting these factors together insures the huts have a minimum impact on the environment. Their footprints have grown in this process and justified at some huts just to accommodate the composting toilets. At Lakes of the Clouds the entire kitchen had to be moved to accommodate the bulky and unwieldy toilets. Other goals accomplished by all this investment of work and expense was to make them a positive experience for the hikers who use them, but could also be seen as a way to make the hut system immune to criticism from the public-at-large. The positive aspects of the invested labor and money, are that the huts, with their new water wells drilled into the core of the mountains, are free of the vagaries of temperamental water supplies (seeps, springs, streams, etc) and, with the composting toilets, free from health risk and potential environmental disasters. The new toilets are also more dependable and far less labor-intensive than older waste systems. Finally, these improvements insure the huts are compliant with New Hampshire health codes.

Saturday (7-23-11) turned out to be a busy day with a brisk lunch trade. Liz had made a delicious black bean and turkey soup that was a hot OTC item. Sue stayed pretty much in the kitchen all afternoon baking cakes and bread.

Every 30 years the AMC is required to renew its U.S. Forest Service permit to operate on public lands. I witnessed this process in 1965 when it took a week, or so, to complete and mostly in offices behind closed doors. What a lot of people hoped would be the same smooth process in 1995, however, took close to a decade. There were several reasons, but the central knot in the rope was that the public, rightfully so, wanted to be participants in the process. The AMC suddenly found that it had enemies, or if not "enemies," then detractors: people at large who felt the AMC was too big for its britches. These detractors alluded to the huts as "stores in the woods" zeroing in on the AMC's non-profit status and its use of public lands in retailing all kinds of items to hikers that local merchants felt was an unfair advantage.

The following photos demonstrate how a big boulder can win out over the best video game.

Another aspect of this schism is the belief by the AMC's neighbors in the North Country that the AMC doesn't put enough money into the local economy as it could, for instance, by hiring more local people. There has probably been a study done at some point to determine how much money the AMC contributes to local economies. Obviously hikers and campers buy meals, equipment, gasoline, and sundries and perhaps a motel room now and then (they make up for the small amounts of money they spend by their sheer numbers), but even so, the AMC had a reputation in 1995 of not investing enough money or enough interest in the local communities.

In 1995 the local people who live and work in the small, economically frail towns in the shadows of these beautiful mountains, felt transparent and resented the AMC's terse environmental stance on several issues that, if passed, might have meant more jobs and income for these towns.. They felt the AMC had too much power. Some complained that the AMC was telling the Forest Service what to do when it was supposed to be the other way around. Some of these observations were based in fact. In its response the AMC did what large corporations are apt to do and dug their heels in, or in other words, they circled the wagons and settled in for a long siege. They passed up a great opportunity to invest some good will in the local communities

Victory! Followed by a fresh ascent on a new route!

During the 1995-2004 re-permitting process what worried me most was the relationship between the Forest Service and the AMC. In 1965 the permitting process was friendly and collaborative. In 1995 it was occasionally bruising . On a few occasions I brought friends from both camps to engage in constructive conversations over dinners in neutral places to try and find common ground but failed to grease the skids towards collaboration. The most glaring criticism of the AMC-Forest Service relationship in 1995 was that the AMC was allowed to use public lands under Forest Service control to create and execute its own political agenda. The AMC could not run from that accusation. Instead the AMC's response, over time, has been to strengthen its considerable foot hold in the White Mountain National Forest and to rise above the criticism by making it moot.

This was a period when the AMC invested in aggressive membership drives with impressive results which gave it a larger constituency along with more power and influence. It was the period when plans were conceived and executed with the building of the highly visible Highland Center at the height of land in Crawford Notch where the venerable Crawford House had stood for a century. The Highland Center was the AMC's response to all the criticism. The site was not on public lands so it made the AMC free from criticism. The former hub of AMC activities, the Pinkham Notch Camp, is located on public lands and is still the tactical supply depot for the huts and a center for operating their excellent educational programs.

Dark afternoon clouds. Before the advent of two-way radios it was customary to (try to) forecast weather using interpretations of various things including the clouds, the wind and a barometer. When I was a kid in Intervale the mountain folk where I lived could give an accurate three-day forecast using the clouds, wind, and humidity. I became reasonably good at forecasting when I was guiding for the AMC. In fact, for several years, the AMC published a cloud chart with photos of all the different types of clouds with instructions how to interpret them. I have one of the charts tucked away somewhere. I'll try to find it and publish it here in the blog.

The AMC, during the long re-permitting process, answered the criticism of what was perceived to be its monopolistic advantages by pointing out to detractors that the White Mountains are within a 4-5 hour drive of millions of people and that its role is to collaborate with the Forest Service in stewarding the WMNF. It's a point well made because this is actually what the AMC does best. The AMC, remember, is 35 years older than both the Forest Service and the WMNF (1876 versus 1911) and it is, at its core, a conservative organization whose founders believed if the AMC (and RMC) had not existed there would never have been the powerful lobby needed to fight for the creation the U.S. Forest Service and National Forest system.

That aside, I've always felt that at ground level, away from the politics and posturing, the holier than thou attitude of the higher ups, and the incessant fund raising, that the AMC does a superb job of stewarding the WMNF as well as other areas of New England (principally northern Maine). The hut croos are the best example of this in their dedication and hard work. They're on the job 24/7 and hard pressed from every direction, often to the point of exhaustion, in taking care of people in the mountains. They often save lives. Their design and presentation of the various education programs is brilliant, the staffing is excellent, and the programs reach hundreds of people. There is a case to be made whether the U.S. Forest Service could afford to provide what the AMC huts, the AMC hut croos, the AMC construction croo and the AMC trail croo provides each summer, and what the AMC education department provides every day. I'd be willing to bet that it would cost the Forest Service 10 times what it costs the AMC in providing these services. On the other hand the forest service, meaning we tax payers, pays very little for the astonishing array of services provided by the AMC, the huts themselves, the hut croos, the education department, the trail croo etc.

Looking south into the Pemmigwasset Wilderness.

There have been discussions, of course, on the pros and cons of the hut system that have been going on for decades. Would the WMNF, like New York's Adirondacks, be a better place without the huts? Do the huts attract too many people, or people who would not otherwise be in the WMNF e.g. would there be fewer people in the mountains if the huts had never been built? They're moot questions. No one is saying, "The huts have to go!" On the other hand the AMC hut system is being copied in several parts of the world, in northwestern Maine, in Colorado, Canada, and as far away as New Zealand.

The idea of creating the chain of huts from Lonesome Lake to Carter Notch was brilliant, I think. It was inspired! To think that, in 1932, a person could travel 60 miles comfortably across the entire WMNF with just a few personal items in a backpack is astonishing. The alternative then would have been to carry a heavy, cumbersome pack, with blankets, pots, tent, etc, which for many people would have been too much of an ordeal. (Certainly there are those who thrive under the cumbersome pack who are passionate about their freedom to do as they please in the mountains. Those opportunities still exist.) For the men and women who designed and built the huts, and who first worked in them, as well as for the guests who stayed in them over the early years, the hut system was a great adventure. It still is. When you work in a hut you often see first hand the sparkle in peoples' eyes when the first enter a hut. But, yes, the hut system made the mountains more accessible to people who probably would otherwise not have ventured into them. On one hand there's the self-reliant, woodsman-backpacker thriving in the wilderness, perhaps sneering at the cosmopolitan, modern, go-light hiker, but there are people I've hiked with who are legally blind, or have progressive diseases like MS, or who have prosthetic legs, and each of these people enjoys hiking in the White Mountains because the AMC facilities exist .

A good question is whether the presence of the huts in the WMNF has a negative impact on the mountain experience of large numbers of hikers, or more simply, does the presence of the huts seriously impair the enjoyment of a large segment of the hiking public? Another question is whether many hikers spurn the WMNF and hike in other, more remote areas, because of the congestion in the WMNF and who see the huts as a main cause of the congestion? I don't know the answers to either question.

Dinner Saturday night was followed by this stunning sunset. The photos that follow were taken by both Liz and myself. This one is looking west across Galehead Mt. to Mt. Garfield.

Those people who built and staffed the huts in the first year were first and foremost woodsmen. They came to build and work in the huts because they liked roughing it. They had a passion for being out of doors and living off the land. While I was growing up in Intervale and North Conway, some of these men were my neighbors. I played with their kids. Carl Blanchard and his brother Bill, Roddy Woodward, Wen Lees, and Toni Samuleson, were a few that I interacted with daily. I admired them for how much they loved the mountains and the woods. They had a deep passion for hunting and fishing which they handed down to us kids (except hunting in my case). Most, like Carl and Bill Blanchard, were superb woodsmen, carpenters, and craftsmen. Carl worked in the huts into the early 1970s, and when I worked at Galehead those first years I thought often of the legacy these men had left my generation in terms of their woods ethic and the huts as an extension of that ethic. What I experienced during my first years working in the huts was the rapid transition from that ethic to the sometimes overwhelming effort to contain the large populations from the cities surrounding the WMNF coming here just for recreation.

Looking north (and the great unknown).

In my naturalist talk on Saturday night I repeated the conclusion that my 60 years of observing at Galehead was not enough time to really measure change. I asked the group, instead, to imagine that Galehead was built 12,000 years ago and to imagine changes an observer at Galehead over that period of time might have observed.

It's difficult to visualize 12,000 years. I use that figure because it's roughly the time that's elapsed since the Wisconsinan glacier, the last continental glacier, lost momentum and came to a halting stop in the White Mountains. I prodded the audience to imagine this huge, melting glacier, a vast sheet of ice 6,000 feet high stretching to the north horizon. Climate, of course, played a role in how fast the glacier melted ("down wasted" is the technical term). It would take 1000 years possibly, or more, to melt appreciably and in that time several things might occur. Paleobotanists say there were large areas of muskeg in what's now northern New England as the ice sheet melted, but there were also eskers and moraines of stratified layers of glacial till e.g. sand, gravel and stones of all sizes, and scattered organic detritus that had been plucked by the glacier as it came south and which dropped out of the melting ice. Plus, there were the mountains themselves. The landscape could well have looked like that at Glacier Bay, Alaska, today. The pattern of biotic succession, as in the Glacier Bay area, would be towards forest. We often see this pattern when beaver ponds fill in, first with washed in mud and then aquatic and then non-aquatic plants, and the ponds eventually turn into meadows and, finally, forests. That's an example of simple biotic succession. Another example of simple succession occurs when plants take over sand dunes where pioneer species get a start in a protected niche in the dunes and eventually colonize the dune, allowing other species access. Johannes Greisshammer, the Madison Hut Naturalist this past summer, wrote with the observation of how hemlock trees (Tsuga canadensis) often take over a moderately dry site, near a stream or on a north-facing slope, and create a damp site due to the density of the crowns.

In getting the guests to think in terms of this larger passage of time my emphasis is on the forest, the plants and the soil, because my real intent is to build a deeper awareness of the forest, to help hikers see it and understand it better. Most hikers are marginally aware of the forest. They think of it as just something to "get through", as one put it, on the way to the summit. It often blocks views, one of the keen pleasures of hiking. I remind them that this northern forest is a unique, amazing entity, definitely not static, and constantly interacting with other systems in a "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" collaboration. The collaboration is between the bed rock which helps supply soil ingredients, climate which affects everything, weather which is part of the climate but also different, the soil, the seasons, the sun and the sun's cycles, and water. The forest is like any living thing. It has a proclivity to experiment constantly driven by a flirtation with limiting factors. The forest is about vitality and growth and the tension of evolution which is the tension between adaptation and limits. Biotic succession is an off-shoot of those tensions.

I asked the guests how they believe the forest that we're familiar with today might have gotten started 12,000 years ago. Did the ice sheet grind up an earlier forest that existed here 40,000 years ago? Were there seed stocks caught in the ice that got planted again when the glacier ablated? Or did the Wisconsinan glacier shape this "new" forest in other ways? There are no solid yes or no answers to these questions. We only know what we know. For the moment it's wise just to say, "I don't know."

Mt. Garfield with the sun disappearing into Vermont.

What we know is that a vast trans-global forest system, the boreal forest biome, grew at the heels of the glacier and began a complex process of biotic succession in which the forest evolved for at least 10,000 years and eventually became the forest we're familiar with today. I asked the guests if their sense is that the forest has evolved as much as it's going to? Has it reached a status quo, a "climax stage", or might it continue to evolve over another 10,000 years, and, if so, what might it evolve into, e.g. what did they imagine the outcomes of future biotic succession would be?

The December 1931 Appalachia article by Irving H. Blake titled, "Biotic Succession on Katahdin" (p. 409-424) which I mentioned earlier to the guests has a provocative, interesting theme in which the author postulates that, in time (how much time he didn't specify) biotic succession will culminate with forests covering almost all the New England mountains, even the highest peaks. It's a revolutionary idea. We become so accustomed to the status quo that it's difficult to take leaps like Blake is suggesting. What Blake is saying is that the limiting factors we take for granted today, e.g. the timberline, may not be limiting factors at all and merely represent a dynamic that in our snapshot of time (like my 60 years of observations presented here) is not what we assume it to be.

Looking northwest.

Robert Monahan, who worked in the huts in the late 1920s and at the Obs in the 1930s wrote a classic paper, "Timberline," for his master's thesis at Dartmouth (accepted in 1932.) A condensed version was printed in the June 1933 Appalachia (p. 401-426). Monahan explored a wide spectrum of possible limiting factors that would prevent tree growth above a certain line on the Presidential ridge. He defined this line as a variable between 4,800' and 5,200' feet. For limiting factors he looked at the effects of climate, cold, heat, drought, precipitation, humidity, fire, topography, aspect, soil and wind. He wrote, "I have attempted to stress the necessity of considering each factor not only from the view of its individual effect on tree growth but also in its relation to the complex of factors whose combined influence governs the altitudinal extension of timberline." (p. 425)

He continues, "I do not claim to have solved this problem, which numerous investigators have failed to explain fully. I do, however, take this opportunity to emphasize one set of conditions which must be considered in the case of the Presidential Range. It has been pointed out that the snow cover on these upper slopes is surprisingly thin and therefore provides no protection to the soil beneath. Whatever moisture may be in the soil is frozen and consequently not available to the tree during long periods. Simultaneously strong dry winds are sweeping across and promoting a high transpiration loss that the tree is unable to sustain through further absorption of soil moisture. The result is that the tree literally dies of thirst. The leader may be killed, or the entire tree may die, if the period during which these condition prevail is prolonged." (p. 426).

This last paragraph, by the way, contains a brilliant insight for understanding a feature of biotic succession that is not a constant (trees dying of thirst) and not expressly about proving the formation of timberline areas of the Presidential Range. Most importantly it speaks to the phenomenon of fir waves, as they've come to be called, those areas of dense, standing dead wood on exposed areas of the higher peaks, like South and North Twin.

L.C. Bliss in his paper, "Alpine Zone of the Presidential Range" (1963), follows Monahan's lead.
He defines Timberline as the "upper limit of upright trees in high mountains." He distinguishes a timberline for "commercial timber" at 4800 feet and the timberline for "stunted upright trees and patches of dwarf, matted trees (Krummholz) that reaches a limit of continuous cover between 4,800 and 5,200 feet." (p. 15). Bliss continues, "The reason for such a fluctuation in timberline from 4,800 to 5, 200 feet is largely the effect of exposure. If one stands at the head of Great Gulf, the timberline on Mts. Clay and Jefferson is around 5,200 feet on the protected east slope where winter snow accumulates. On the opposite side, the wind exposed northwest-facing slope of Mt. Washington does not support trees above 4,900 feet." (ibid). Monahan and Bliss agree regarding limiting factors, those that control the upward growth of the balsam fir and black spruce in the Presidential Range.

Looking due North over the long, sloping west ridge of North Twin towards northern New Hampshire and Quebec.

Bliss continues, "The upper limit of tree growth is probably determined by a combination of factors including wind exposure and the related snow depth plus fog frequency. Decrease in temperature at higher elevations is no doubt also important for this affect the rates of food manufacture and good utilization by the trees (p.17)." (I summarized these passages for the guests.) So Bliss is close to Monahan in his conclusion about timberline. They're in agreement on the limiting factors that limit the upward movement of balsam fir and black spruce. (I was present in the early 1960s during some of the discussions regarding the nature of the timberline between Bliss, Slim Harris, Gramps Monahan, and Miriam Underhill as they moved towards consensus regarding Bliss' statement quoted above and can vouch that it was a probing and definitive discussion.)

To play the devil's advocate, I suggested to the guests that perhaps the factors impacting the location of timberline explored by and agreed upon by Monahan and Bliss regarding the altitudinal "zone" of 4,800 feet to 5,200 feet representing their definition of timberline on the Presidential Range shouldn't be taken as a constant. I explained that recently we've discovered balsam fir, small specimens, growing in semi-sheltered sites high up on Mt. Adams and Mt. Washington. Slim Harris in Mountain Flowers of New England (AMC, 1966) cites a rare variety of balsam fir, Abies balsamea var. phanerolepis, found growing on the cone of Mt. Washington. Are these plants anomalies, merely flukes, or could they be pioneers mapping out new territory? Again, the limiting factors are daunting. For instance, there is no soil to speak of except in the lawns and that is very thin and fragile. Still, it could be a beginning for pioneering efforts by the adaptive balsams. We have to bear in mind what we don't know, and I suggested to the guests that it's all a mystery meant to keep us observing and questioning. In meanwhile the forest is offering us a glimpse into the relationship, the enormous tension, between "limiting factors" and the "coiled spring." The forest, after all, could simply be trying to find ways to move higher and go over the ridge to make the forest on both sides seamless. It would not happen in a short period of time, either, but maybe during the next 11,000 years.

A foot note which may be interesting to some readers concerning the time period used of 11,000 years is that going back 11,000 years ago there were humans living here in the White Mountains, living at the face of the Wisconsin glacier and possibly on it and hunting wooly mammoths, sabre toothed tigers, bears, deer, etc, and making tools from Jasper, a stone found in what is now the city of Berlin, that shows up at many archeological sites around New England. This is interesting to me because I often wonder if any humans will be here 11,000 years from now to observe ongoing changes in the landscape.

Sunday morning's weather was unsettled. From the sunset the night before all signs pointed to a beautiful day, but a feature of these mountain, and probably all mountains, is they can easily make their own weather, particularly around thermal transitions periods like sunrise and sunsets. In this case it even rained for a few minutes just before breakfast.

The rain shower proceeded southeasterly and by the time we called "Breakfast!" the sun was coming out.

Sunday breakfast went well. The shortcoming of running a hut for just two days is that just as you get fluid again and have a clear sense of what you're doing you have to leave.

A 20-plus year-old hut tradition is the Blanket Folding Demonstration, or BFD. I've always been too shy to get heavily into the dramatics involved, but various croos, over the years, have come up with stunningly successful scripts for these short dramas. Ari is one of those gifted ones and he has a genius for these kinds of things. His repertoire contains quite a few original BFDs that rank high on the success list. The object of a BFD is simple: to encourage guests to fold their blankets in a uniform way to reduce work for the croo. The BFD can also be used to slow breakfast down when the croo needs to buy time when there's a problem getting breakfast out on schedule (the griddles acting up, etc.). An alternative objective is that BFDs are important for the local economy, and it's well known that a really good, hilarious BFD will add a few dollars to the tip jar. At any rate, against my nature, I agreed to take a small part in a BFD that stars teen-aged girls at a slumber party who are surreptitiously reading Glamour magazine. In the photo, Ari, who was hilarious, is sitting, wrapped in blankets, and I'm in the jacket and blonde wig playing an outrageously defiant 13-year girl (with a fake English accent) who won't agree to anything and who's flipping through her iPhone looking for tweets about Justin Bieber. The photo is blurry because everyone's laughing.

The day before, on Saturday morning, I was surprised when a guest asked if there was going to be a BFD. I said no, and he became upset. "You have to do a BFD! I brought my son up here just to show him a BFD. I want him to see one," he said. I'd never heard of a parent dragging his child all the way up to Galehead just to witness a BFD. Ari was glad to oblige and quickly, with some help from Liz, got one going and, back in the kitchen, all we could hear was the crackle of laughter.

I talked about the 4,000 Footer Club and its unequaled success at getting people off their couches and into the mountains. There's also the somewhat-related (not really) entity called Appalachian Trail (AT) thru-hikers. This could easily stand alone as a separate blog piece. The subject of the Appalachian Trail is as long as the trail and so is the history of the thru-hikers. One aspect that has not been explored (except by hut croos in personal conversations) is the relationship between the thru-hikers and the AMC huts. Thru hikers add a colorful piece to hut history. In the 1960s we rarely saw any. When a thru hiker stayed at the huts they were friendly, modest, and a lot of fun to talk to. They had great stories and were inspirations to us kids. Around 1978 that changed due to unknown factors, and instead of a few thru-hikers each season there were dozens and dozens coming through the huts, mostly going south to north on the Trail. The numbers kept growing from year to year as the average ages of the thru hikers decreased. In the 1960s most of the thru-hikers were in their 40s and 50s. In the late 1970s they were in their 20s and early 30s.

The young man in the photo is Aaron, and he's a thru-hiker in the literal sense meaning he started in Georgia and each day, or almost each day, he makes his way north. He is not planning to stop before he reaches the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail on the summit of Mt. Katahdin. He's an interesting guy. He's learned about social adaptations through his encounters with the different people he's met on the trail. Listening to thru-hikers talk about the trail quickly teaches you that hiking the trail is, for many, more of a social endeavor than one of solitude and self-study. Aaron was the first thru hiker to admit to me that he has a specific strategy for exploiting the huts and hut croos, He said he had thought about different strategies a lot in advance of the huts. I won't betray his strategy, but he's one of many thru-hikers who feel compelled to get what they can get from the huts for free. They get to the huts expecting to be treated like royalty because of the difficult thing they are doing.

Sunday morning Aaron introduced himself to us and stated clearly what work he'd do in exchange for a breakfast of leftovers. We agreed. He was well organized. He ate first. You can see he was hungry. Notice, too, that he's filled his water bottles with cocoa from the hut's cocoa powder dispensers and milk left over from breakfast. That's smart on his part as he's going for the calories. After breakfast he worked diligently sweeping the entire hut with the exception of the kitchen. This is a very different image from the thru-hikers of the 1960s.

I'm not trying to demean thru hikers. They're certainly important to the huts in varied ways: they will do work around the hut and some are extremely diligent, even skilled, and get a lot done in an hour or two of work. Their willingness to eat any and all leftovers placed within their reach is a great service to the huts as it reduces the amount of waste.

Pam is also hiking the AT but as a section hiker. When she has a vacation, or a long weekend, she will do a section. She'll hike for a weekend, or a week, or for a specific distance, and then red line her map to keep track of what she's done and what she has left to do. She does the sections arbitrarily, depending on the weather, or how much time she has, or how she feels. She might do a section in Pennsylvania she hasn't done and then head up to the White Mountains where she'll do another section (e.g. before cold weather sets in). Section hiking is becoming more popular and accepted. I wonder at times if some thru-hikers, the ones doing the whole trail, look askance at section hikers because they're not fully engaged in the full experience of being on the trail for months but who are primarily interested in saying they've done it, but that's probably true of a lot of people on the AT.

Ella was hiking with her family. She was a great help at mealtimes setting and waiting on tables both at dinner and breakfast. Many people who eventually work in the huts got their first tastes of hut life when they're quite young and hiking with families or camp groups. The relationship between families and the huts is an interesting history. Here again, back in the 1960s (and earlier) we often carried on long-term friendships with families that visited our hut(s) year after year. They often kept in touch during the winter with holiday and birthday cards, and brought us gifts (fresh corn!) when they returned the the next summer. I have several Peterson Field Guides in a book shelf at my elbow that were birthday presents from a family that I communicated with for years, even after I left the huts. That's extraordinary when you think about it today. People had their favorite huts and when they came back to visit it felt like a family reunion. It was quite special.

Ella with her family as they got ready to leave for Zealand. Aaron is on the left still diligently sweeping out the dinning room.

Guests who waited out a shower before getting on the trail over to Zealand. A few minutes after they left the sun came out and it turned into a perfect mountain day.

I'll write about weather later in the blog. I was moved, though, watching the sunset Saturday night by how lovely it was and priceless. I think for me and lots of other people the weather endears them to the mountains and a "perfect mountain day", a crisp, cool and ultraclear day, takes our breath away. There's nothing like hiking up a challenging peak like South Twin (or any mountain) on one of these perfect days and, getting to the top, being able to look out across the miles in every direction and to see, really see, with a deep, residing pleasure, all there is to see. It's a lovely and rewarding feeling, so much so that humans must have a genetic predisposition to go to the farthest range, to get up high and see what lies beyond.

For a few brief seconds a stillness fills the hut when the last guest leaves and the door closes behind them. It's a welcome moment. There's a pause as if the hut was taking a deep breath and girding itself for the next onslaught. In the quiet on Sunday, Sue and Liz finish up the breakfast clean up and start cooking the Sunday night meal.

Zealand Falls Hut in the moonlight. January 1976

I would be remiss if I didn't mention another brilliant idea the AMC put into action with the decision to keep Carter Notch and Zealand Fall Huts (and now Lonesome Lake Hut) open year round. Beginning in 1976 caretakers were hired to "winter over" at both huts. The caretakers were there from October to May with regular days off every two weeks. What made the idea brilliant was it gave the hiking public access to the mountains in winter that was never available before. What was also brilliant is that it gave the fortunate caretakers the opportunity to spend an entire winter in a cabin deep in the mountains. There's probably no other place on earth where that opportunity would occur. The winter huts became favorites for school groups and scout troops. On caretaker basis Carter and Zealand became economically accessible for a lot of people who took advantage of having their shelter provided for and only having to pack in food and sleeping bags (and other personal effects). It's not clear whether the AMC has ever broken even with the winter huts, but it has afforded a lot of people a truly remarkable experience they otherwise would not have had; this applies to both the caretakers and the hikers.

It was Sunday. The regular croo would be arriving around 1 pm and we would be heading down. It seemed like we just got there. I was just beginning to unwind from a difficult work week made more trying by the heat wave. I would have preferred to stay at Galehead, but my scheduled surgery was a week away and I needed to prepare for that. It's an echo of the frustration of the weekend hiker in which you get up to the mountains and hike for a few days and finally begin to relax just as you have to leave. It's what makes working in the huts a dream. You don't have to leave each Sunday. You have the luxury of all those days and nights to burrow in.

Our cars are parked somewhere out there and we know we have to leave, but.....

....going down is difficult.

This is a section of the Garfield Ridge Trail just below Galehead Hut, and looking at this photo brings up my last comments in this article about the impact of people on the White Mountains and it's along the subject of trail erosion. In 1961 the Bridle Path up Mt. Lafayette had a section known as "Subway" because hikers on Mt. Lafayette had gouged a trench in that part of the trail that was almost 5 feet deep by a hundred yards long. The trail croo worked on it in 1963 and that part of the trail gets occasional touch ups but is still in excellent shape. Trail erosion goes back prior to the large increase in trail use during the late 1960s-1980s. The Valley Way on Mt. Madison, a well trod trail, has had the trail croo's attention for years. Sections of it have been re-routed a few time and almost half of the entire length of the trail has seen work, mainly step building and water bar construction, to combat erosion. The discussion about the impact of the huts on the mountains should get mention here because it's true, the trails in some places are badly eroded due to foot traffic which leads to erosion by storm run off. At the same time the AMC trail croo's expertise in trail building and maintenance is known throughout North America and in places as far away as New Zealand. They do an unbelievable job. The croos are seldom seen at work by hikers and their finished work is equally invisible to most hikers. That's how good it is. Appalachia, particularly from the 1920s through the 1950s, has a lot of great articles on trail building, trail upkeep, and erosion prevention that make good reading.

The 1976 Fall Trail Croo in Pinkham Notch.

Admittedly, I have not known many members of the AMC Trail Croo over the years. The '76 Fall Croo was an exception. They were charged with rebuilding the Twinway from Galehead up to the summit of South Twin and eastward to Mt. Guyot. They stayed at Galehead for a few weeks while I was fall caretaker. I used to bring them a hot lunch from the hut at midday and had a chance to sit and learn from them. The photo is missing a few of that fall croo. I'm not sure why they are posing like that. I don't remember. They wanted a group photo as a keepsake. I recently looked through my negatives of them and printed some of them but I found that in many of the photos they were only half dressed. While I was getting ready to take the picture they would quickly turn around and drop their pants to moon the camera. What does that say about Trail Croo? At any rate, this croo did a brilliant job on that tough mile of trail up South Twin. They turned it from a steep, slippery ladder that was prone to erosion into a steep, heart-pumping staircase.

I find myself wondering whether the huts are sustainable in ways not mentioned. They're solidly built, extremely efficient,and accommodating but will the AMC be able to afford to operate the huts in the years to come amid stridently increasing costs. Will the AMC's existing sources of revenue suffice to operate the huts and will the number of donors and income received increase in stride with costs? For both non-profits and for-profits alike money is disappearing. There's a lot of competition for dollars. Non-profits are dependent on aggressive, endless fund raising campaigns which becomes a vicious circle when every activity, basically, is about fundraising. I've spent hours while hiking, or in discussions with other people, to try to figure out creative ways to endow each of the huts in order to lower the volume of fund raising and keep overnight fees reasonable so they will be accessible for people with low incomes. For me, exclusivity is a major issue regarding the hut system as the prices for consumers climb higher. Sustainable means that the huts remain accessible to people with lower and moderate incomes.

Then there's the larger question regarding sustainability, particularly while looking at these photos of the forest along Garfield Ridge, and that question is, will the huts and shelters adapt to pressures that are sure to come in the future? Will the AMC as a large organization be able to adapt to the pressures to come? If not, will there be a participatory process that includes public input in an open discussion regarding the long term vision of both the forest resources and the hut/shelters and trail systems?

As I talked to the guests Friday and Saturday nights about the 50-60 years that I've been hiking this trail I was wondering what it will be like 50-60 years from today. What will Galehead and the other huts look like in 2070? Will things be pretty much the same? Will they still serve pancakes and bacon for breakfast? Will the huts even be here? Will the forest look the same? Trees will be bigger, but will there be as few changes as in the last 50-60 years? It's interesting to think about. The worst case scenario is that population increases along the eastern seaboard will increase pressure on the forest and the hut/shelter system. Higher demands on the huts under those pressures might mean significant adaptations in the way they serve the public.

During the population-pressure-building years beginning in the 1960s we often joked about what the huts might be like in the future and the assorted and sundry systems that might be forced upon the public to limit the numbers of hikers in the WMNF at a given day or even hour. One scheme was a lottery in which prospective hikers will have to buy lottery tickets to hike in a certain time period on a specific trail, or a combination of trails. A limited number of tickets would be winners on any given day. This would help with over-crowding and raise money for back country maintenance. My favorite, the "pick a number" idea borrowed from supermarket deli counters where you take a number and then wait your turn at the bottom of the trail until someone is through with their hike and leaves the national forest. Another idea was to run the huts like a New York City automat where you'd buy pre-made foods like sandwiches and soup from a vending machine and sleep in tubes stacked up to the roof of the hut. Guests would sleep in shifts. Trail or hiking taxes could become the vogue, and a lottery just for a bunk. The AMC's reservation system is almost like that now. On the other hand the new hut system in western Maine might take pressure off the AMC huts in years to come or new huts might be built in the less traveled areas of the WMNF that would help pull people away from the more crowded areas.

Sunday was such a beautiful day! It was hard to face going back down to the blare and cry of the valley and as we descended we could feel the heat again. That meant a mandatory stop at Slick's Ice Cream stand a few miles south of Franconia near Woodsville, NH (on Rt. 10) for some really outrageously creamy homemade ice cream.

Up along Garfield Ridge the Clintonia berries were still green.......

...and down by second crossing they were already blue.

The end. Have fun and remember to always be kind and true.

8-29-11 Quick Follow Up on Hurricane Irene

2011-08-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

As most of you know Hurricane Irene went straight north from New York City into southern and central Vermont and eastern New York via the Poconos. It did not come up the Connecticut River Valley and curve towards the east and Central New Hampshire as anticipated. However, the Mt. Washington Obs reported heavy rains of 6.6 inches during Sunday and a peak gust of 104 miles an hour with a day-long average of 44 miles per hour. Several videos emailed to me show intense flooding in the Pinkham Notch-Jackson, NH area. Youtube has this video, made by Jim Doig of Jackson NH, for viewing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySLvby48OQ0

Flooding throughout the White Mountain National Forest, I imagine, is on the scale shown in this video of the Wild River in Jackson. There were reports that the Ellis River in Pinkham Notch was particularly high and it's logical that the Dry River, the Ammonoosuc, the Peabody, the east and west branches of the Saco River, the Gale River, etc. must have been at those same flood levels. I'll forward any data I get.

8-31-11: Keith Wehmeyer sent some photos this morning of Crawford Notch at height of rain over the Irene weekend. Here's a link to see the pix: http://www.meonmadison.com/2011/08/our-hurricane-story.html.

He also reported that the most damage reported was at Guyot Shelter not from the storm but from a bear (an old friend of mine) that ransacked the caretaker's tent. Thanks for the info Keith!

A photo of the Ellis River in Pinkham Notch during above normal, seasonal floods in the fall of 1976. As turbulent as this looks it probably was dwarfed by the volume of water generated by the Hurricane Irene storm system. The river last Sunday (8-28-11) may have had 3 or 4 times more water than this and 8-10 feet higher during peak flows.

The volume of water in the stills and videos provided by Keith and James show rivers and streams turned into monsters. With that kind of force the water can move just about anything. It's safe to say that whether it was careening down an existing channel, or moving in sheets downhill through tracts of forest it will be moving thousands of tons of logs, rocks, whole trees, boulders, gravel, soil, probably animal carcasses, and wiping out anything in its path that isn't tied down. It's rare, with the exception of a tornado, to see anything as destructive as water when paired with gravity. Remember the photos from last year's massive avalanche in Ammonoosuc Ravine? Just think of water volume in the Ammonoosuc River last Sunday with that much water and that much raw power and then think about all those trees the snow shattered on its way down the mountain. I wonder where all those trees are today.

8/31/11 Another email from Keith Weymehr reporting that the damage to roads and the back country is astronomical. Route 302 in Crawford Notch is closed and will be for a while. Route 16 through Pinkham Notch is negotiable but rough in sections. That will probably change during the week. The biggest news he had to report were the number of new landslides that have been seen including a large on on Mt. Bond. Information will get more accurate about slides during the next 10 days, particularly with the three day weekend coming a lots of folks out on the trails. Thanks Keith.

9/4/11. Doug Dodd called this morning. He drove through Pinkham Notch from the south and as far as Pinkham. He then climbed up through Tuckerman's Ravine to Lakes of the Clouds and then down Boott Spur. He said it was amazing to get a sense of the enormous amount of water that was funneled down the trails he was hiking on. All the water bars were filled with gravel and sand, but he said at one point on Sunday afternoon the volume of water must have been a once in a century occurrence. He reported that Rt. 302 is still closed, Rt. 16 in Pinkham Notch has a lot of washed out edges, the Zealand Road is closed, Dolly Copp B road is closed, and the Jefferson Notch Road is also closed. He didn't know about the Base Station Road but we were both wondering what the Ammy looks like from the Cog Station up to the top of the Ravine.

9-8-11 Ellis River Photos

Jim Hamilton sent in these photos showing the Ellis River in Jackson close to peak level during the storm, and, below, for comparison, taken after the water subsided a bit. The difference between them appears to be 15 feet. Jim, thanks. The comparison helps.

The Ellis River from the same spot as above a day after the surge.

9-17-2011-I haven't been North of Northampton for 2 months now. It seems like ages, but I'm churning to get up and look at the ravines around the Presidentials, and Walker Ravine on Lafayette, etc. Updates regarding Hurricane Irene have dropped off but the storm hasn't been forgotten. Even though Hurricane Irene, in its fury, didn't come close to the White Mountains the intense storm system it pushed North will always be associated with the name Irene and considered an epic event in the White Mountains. The amount of "precip" the storm system unleashed was profound. It "flushed" the entire WMNF system of brooks, streams and rivers, pushing these water courses to record (or near-record) hydraulic tolerances. In the process the storm was responsible, probably, for moving millions (and millions) of tons of detritus including logs, sand, gravel and rocks of all sizes miles downstream closer to the ocean. It was a "mass wasting spectacular", you might say, moving the mountains a little closer to the sea.

8-26-11 As I was driving home from work tonight a message from Ari alerted me to this astonishing event:

2011-08-26T18:12:00.001-07:00

The U.S Forest Service has announced the closure of the entire White Mountain National Forest for two days due to the unprecedented danger posed by Hurricane Irene. This includes all AMC and RMC (Randolph Mountain Club) huts and shelters, all U.S.F.S. shelters, all trails, and all campsites. The White Mountain National Forest will be closed from 6 pm Saturday night, August 27th, until midnight Monday night, August 29th.

The warning has several implications the most obvious one being that the Mount Washington Weather Observatory has issued a warning of intense flooding in some areas and with the amount of rain that's predicted (possibly 4-5 inches) this would pose an extreme danger for hikers and campers almost anywhere within the WMNF. High winds, including some above 100 mph, or even higher, may occur and will exponentially increase danger to hikers and campers.

From all the predictions being aired tonight (8-26-11) this storm is truly a major event, one we allude to as a major "disturbance" (like the 1938, 1954 and 1958 hurricanes) or a Century Storm (sometimes referred to as a "100 Year Storm" which means that you only see one this intense, or memorable, in a 100 years). At any rate it seems we're about to witness a storm of great intensity that may cause intense damage to areas in the WMNF. We can expect some landslides, a lot of flooding of all streams and rivers in the forest with resulting damage, and possibly long term changes in some areas including disappearance of roads and trails due to wash outs (as in the great storm of 1826 that destroyed the road in Pinkham Notch). It's a terrible thought but this storm could cause major damage to any of the AMC and RMC huts and shelters. Closing the WMNF is a first for me. I don't remember any other time in the past 60 years, at least, that it has been officially closed like this (which isn't saying that it hasn't been closed at some point possibly due to forest fire hazards at one time or another).

I have a copy of a letter written by Carl Blanchard to a friend describing his experience riding out the 1938 hurricane at Lakes of the Clouds Hut. It was quite an adventure. He described how the whole hut "quivered" in the wind and how the heavy front door of the hut kept blowing open violently and repeatedly no matter how well the croo tried to secure it. At one point Carl tried to pull is shut just as the door blew off its hinges and nearly took him with it down the Ammy as it sailed out of sight in the storm. The door was later recovered.

I have to say I'm one of those people who wishes I could be up at Lakes or Galehead, or any of the huts, to ride out Hurricane Irene. It would be a great adventure. I'm also frustrated that I won't be able to be in the mountains the days following the storm to document the damage it does. Ah well, maybe next time.

This Just In: All hut croos are to stay in their respective huts for the duration of the hurricane (unless they decide to go and raid another hut). Nifty!

8-23-11 Convalescing and Waiting for Irene

2011-08-26T18:01:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of Mt. Adams from Sam Adams taken at 6 pm August 30, 2010. I'm republishing these photos (below) that first appeared in a story about Madison Spring Hut exactly a year ago. I've done a little more work on them, tweaking them in Photoshop, while I recover from major surgery that occurred on August 1st. It's been a long haul, but an adventure, too. Three or four days on morphine was kinda fun. When I arrived at the hospital the morning of the surgery I was confident that I was going to hop up off the operating table after the operation, thank the doctors, and drive back to work but it didn't work out that way, alas. Instead it was a week in the hospital and another week pretty much on my back at home with strange tubes sticking out of me. Anyway, that's all behind me and I now have the added confidence that I'm in excellent health.

In the meantime, my daughters were here taking care of me, and Liz spent some of the time going through my iPhoto albums and picked out photos she particularly liked including these from the Madison overnight last August. I agree with her. I took them in a swirl and printed them right after the trip. Looking at them now I see some that are indeed lovely but needed more work. They include the following series of the sunrise from Mt. Madison looking over at the clouds on Mt. Adams and the sun coming up over Madison (all happening simultaneously) the morning of August 31st (2010). The light is astonishing.

7-2-11 Big Trees on the Lowe's Path & brief visit to King Ravine (completed)

2011-07-03T18:57:00.001-07:00

By 9 am last Saturday (7-2-11) close to a hundred cars filled the parking area off Route 2 in Randolph at the base of the Valley Way Trail up Mt. Madison. Several dozen more cars lined the side of the highway for a quarter mile in both direction. This meant that the trail, on the perfect mountain day that Saturday was, would be a traffic jam as well, so I drove west another 2 miles to park at Lowe's Store and use the Lowe's Path to head up Mt. Adams. The above photo is the entrance to the Lowe's Path just off Route 2 in Randolph and across the highway from Lowe's Store, a gas station/general store. You can park your car in the large lot to the right of the store for $1.00 (one dollar) a day and not worry about it being broken in to.
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The Lowe's Path was a good choice for a couple of reasons. The first is that this year, 2011, is the 100th anniversary of the Weeks Act that created the U.S. National Forests and the Lowe family, the Lowe's Path and a lot of people who used the path from 1875 until 1911 were instrumental in getting the Weeks Act written and passed through both houses of Congress quickly. It was done with the urgency of wanting to save what was left of the forests in the White Mountains from further destruction by the lumber industry.

It was a good choice, too, because I had the trails and the mountain to myself. I met only three other hikers, a group heading down from Crag Camp, the entire day. One of my goals was to spend a few hours along the Cold River just at the base of the King Ravine head wall looking for a rare flower, the Alpine Brook Saxifrage, which I wasn't very confident I would find--it being extremely rare. But I wanted to look around King Ravine anyway as it's been years since I've passed through and it's an astonishing, wild, and beautiful place worth vast expenditures of time in exploring.

Lowe's Path begins gently enough but then climbs at a good grade for a mile until it reaches the top of a nub, part of Norwell Ridge, and levels off a bit. I found the beginning section to be quite wet, probably from recent rains (not a permanent feature). This photo is a nearly perfect picture of plant succession in the northern forest. You can make out several generations of forest trees: maple, beech, birch, and balsam fir. The oldest trees have already been culled by weather and disease and lay horizontal on the ground, decomposing; cornucopias of rich humus and all kinds of chemical nutrients most of which go back into the soil. The next oldest generation has a high canopy that shades the youngest trees. The ground cover of ferns and wild sasparilla, etc. are helping stabilize the soil and soil moisture. The entire "system" is putting nutrient back into the soil in roughly equal levels to what is taken out each year. The large vertical tree is a sugar maple (Acer saccharum). Sugar maples are well suited to the damp, cool northern flank of the Presidential ridge and are well represented here.

It's a green world. Another objective of my hike was to record some of the "giant" sugar maples growing here as they represent the iconic "big trees" of my generation; the "old forest", and a reminder of the forest that once grew here. The trees I was measuring on Saturday are roughly equal in size to the trees that were here before the logging in the late 1800s and early 1900s (according to newspaper accounts and other sources from pre-1880). Lowe's Path traverses an area home to what remains of some of the last big trees in the White Mountain National Forest (WMNF). On Saturday I measured the girth of more than 50 of the larger trees and kept a tally of the largest sugar maples and white birches that I passed that were within 100 feet of the trail on either side. The average diameter at breast height (DBH) was roughly 30 inches. The largest one, a sugar maple, was 121 inches in circumference (38.5 inches in diameter). A few white birches (Betula cordifolia) were also more than 3 feet in diameter. The tree in the photo is a sugar maple growing near the trail and only a half mile from the highway. It measured 85.5 inches in circumference, or 27.2 inches in diameter.

This sugar maple is 31 inches in diameter and.....

....this group of sugar maples averaged the same; 31 inches in diameter. In newspaper accounts from the 1870s there are descriptions of the forests at that time consisting of spruce, fir, and birch trees (probably B. cordifolia) 2-3 feet in diameter. I interpret those accounts to be fairly accurate and the forest they described, the old wilderness (that we all yearn for), consisted of trees that averaged 3 feet in diameter, or perhaps a little larger.

This maple is just 3 feet in diameter. As you look at these trees imagine a forest made up of trees this

This ancient white birch is 37.2 inches in diameter. It's in decline and hosting a number of shelf fungi, a Ganoderma, possibly applanatum sometimes referred to as "artist's conk" because the smooth white underside of the conk is fun to write and draw pictures on using a small stick.

This is what I mean by an "iconic tree". It's huge; three plus feet in diameter, and perhaps 100 feet tall (next photo). It takes your breath away to stand beside it and take in it's enormity and its presence here. A few white pine trees 4 feet in diameter have been reported in several places in northern New England, but their pine trees. To have a hard wood, a maple or birch, this large in the wild is rare today. A few miles from where I am writing this, in Hadley, MA. the town common is lined with sugar maples some of which are 4' DBH planted in the open in front of house built in the 1700s. Another likely place to find larger sugar maples would be on old farms in Vermont and locations across the northeast where the trees grew in open pastures. Thinking about the age of the tree in the photo you can guess it contains a lot of history. It could be 400 years old, or older, and contain detailed information (for instance) about the impact of acid rain here during the last 150 years, going back to the time before acid rain.

The survival of these large trees depends on a number of things and not least is luck. We often point to the 1938 Hurricane as a yardstick for the enormous destruction that occurs in large forest systems from high category storms because the '38 Hurricane was so well documented. Photos I've recently published in this blog I took while hiking up Mt. Deception document intense storm damage that occurs in certain types of terrain, ridge tops being a prime example. Most of the damage seen on Mt. Deception was recent, occurring possibly in the large storm of January 2010. The legendary ice storm of January 7-9, 1998 was on the scale of the 1938 Hurricane in terms of extent of destruction to forest trees in northern New Hampshire, particularly the hardwoods: beech, birch and sugar maples. That rogue storm devastated the Randolph area.

Evidence of the severity of the recent January 2010 storm is easy to find in a broad pattern across the White Mountain National Forest. Massive damage occurred due to several large avalanches on the steeper slopes that destroyed hundreds of acres of forest, along with snow loading during the phase of the storm that produced heavy, wet snow, and damage from ice and high winds throughout the storm. Damage from that storm can be recognized from the direction the blow downs are pointing. The storm came in from the southeast during it's most intense phase so trees downed point in a northwesterly direction, like a compass needle. Trail crews had a hard time clearing the damage. This photo shows a balsam (Abies balsamea) that came down across the Lowe's Path in a unsheltered site on Norwell ridge, but not particularly high on the mountain.

Storm damage in an example of the entropy in forest systems as in the flow of energy from a storm to the trees to soil and water which is circular and a continuum over time. This massive root structure (it's looks a lot like an ancient shaman performing a tribal ritual. The photo below makes it look like a bear) belongs to the wind-killed balsam that fell across the Lowe's Path and is a good example of that entropy. The energy from the storm 18 months ago is still moving through the forest on myriad levels. This tree and thousands of other blow downs from the storm throughout the WMNF , as they decay, will add carbon to the immediate area which will stimulate other mineral nutrients that, in turn, will move into and through the soil. The loss of the tree in this space will cause several things to happen. In addition to increasing soil carbon it will increase the temperature of this micro-environment a bit, at least until the canopy fills in the opening it left and decay slows. It will also raise levels (in micro-amounts) of soluble chemicals freed by decomposition of wood tissue, that will infiltrate the soil and the run-off from rain and snow melt around the site. An increase in soluble nitrogen will also occur providing important benefits to plants.

As the tree toppled in the storm the tree's roots broke a short distance from the tree and were pried up by the lever of the tree falling exposing the underlying soil. It offers us an opportunity to look more closely at the soil. On Carter Dome and the upper reaches of the Gale River along the Gale River Trail we've seen the layers humus (containing organic matter), clay , and a layer of fine sand just above the bed rock. The clay formed by feldspars occuring in local granites that were subjected to chemical decomposition. Clay is also made up of plate-like micas that being flaky have large surface areas. The unique structure of clay accounts for it's plasticity and ability to absorb water.

Some clays with high cohesion coefficients become impermeable to water and will act like a plastic sheet to keep water from being absorbed into the soil. The clay acts as a partial barrier for water absorption and as a vehicle for moving water down hill. Forest soils in the White Mountains are acidic. The pH value averages 4.5 but soil pH tends to vary from station to station so configuring an "average" is tricky.

Just below the clay is a layer of sand. The features in the clay and the sand layers are identical to what we've seen on the Gale River Trail. The sand horizon, or layer, here is only five inches deep where it hits bedrock. On Mt. Deception and here, the bed rock is very close to the surface and it obviously plays a role in why we are more likely to find blow downs in these sites. The roots of the tree (in the photos) tore up the top soil and like the top soil we've seen elsewhere in the mountains it's a thin layer of sandy-loam with a "mat" of organic matter on top; very similar to the samples at the Gale River research site.

A sugar maple 3 feet in diameter some way off the trail.

Where luck has played a role in the the longevity of these maples their successful aging is also due to tree and root system productivity. Moving water from below ground to the high crowns of these large trees involves tremendous energy, most, or all, supplied by the sun. The productivity can be expressed, generally, as the health of the individual trees relative to the environment they're growing in. One reason it's so exciting (for me, at least) to see these large trees here is they represent positive evidence of the excellent (general) health of the forest here.

In the pre-1880 forest that existed here and from which these maples started out there were different standards of health and productivity. Two factors influenced the health of the earlier forest here. One was the long-term stability of the forest system over a major period of time. The sizes of tree was more uniform as were their ages. This would translate to an image of a forest with moderate productivity that used to be referred to as a"climax", or mature forest. Those pre-1880 forests were a carbon "sinks" with enormous amounts of carbon stored in the trees and soil, but other nutrients as well.

The second factor regarding the health of the pre-1880 forest was the levels of key nutrients in the forest soils on these slopes at that time that would have been higher than they are today. Logging, by removing every tree, stripped off the nutrients normally being cycled through the system. The logging practices of the late 1800s destroyed the integrity of the soils in the logged areas. Erosion followed and continued until plant succession resumed after a decade, but not before slides on steeper slopes and increased water run-off (from precipitation) in all logged areas leached out remaining nutrients (This, again, is similar to the course of events on the Gale River slide track.). In specific areas, like the Zealand Valley, huge fires that occurred at the cessation of logging destroyed the soils on a whole other level along with any remaining nutrients.

This is the trunk of the same tree in the photo above that's 38 inches in diameter and one of the largest hardwoods I measured on Saturday.

The forest is gorgeous. It's a treat to thread one's way upwards while the morning is still cool surrounded by elegant stillness. Can you imagine, instead of these trees in the photo, a vast forest of 3-foot diameter sugar maples and birches covering the skirts of these mountains? I like to visualize them growing yards apart, almost like a park, towering 120 feet above the forest floor like a diminutive version of a coast redwood grove in northern California. It may actually have looked like that 400 years ago.

One of the most awe inspiring trees of the morning was this maple serving as sign bearer at the junction of Lowe's Path and the Link. The Link runs between Appalachia (the place on Route 2 where all the cars were parked and the trail heads are for the Valley Way, Air Line, Brookside, etc., with connection to the Randolph Path as well.) The tree is a bit under 3 feet in diameter.....

.....and around 100 feet tall. It's stunning! I want to emphasize that calling these trees "giants" is a relative term. They could be categorized as normal in terms of the species itself throughout its range. At a lower altitude and in better soil sugar maples grown much larger than these. I'm taking liberties in exclaiming their size relative to each other and conditions of the site: the altitude, harshness of the weather, and thin soil conditions. A question to pose is whether these trees are at the limit of growth? Will they grow larger in the foreseeable future if given the opportunity and good luck, or, are they already in their decline? There are ways we could find out, for instance, by identifying individual trees by their GPS coordinates, taking precise measurements of the sample trees, and mapping them. Then, have someone check up on them and remeasure them every 5 or 10 years.

These are the three Quebecois hikers from Montreal who had spent the night at Crag Camp. They were the only other people I saw all day (until I was back down the mountain in mid-afternoon) which is a testament to how unspoiled this part of the Presidential Range is
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It's appropriate that I explain that I'm wrestling with a serious though not life threatening medical issue that will require surgery in August and will require a month of convalescing (no hiking). For the moment I'm behaving normally but with a "stent", a surgical tube, from my right kidney to my bladder. It's annoying as it chaffs a lot. Two weeks ago I hiked into Zealand, a relatively easy hike, to determine if I can hike, or not, in July and how strenuously. Hiking to King Ravine, a little more rugged than Zealand, was, likewise, a test. I took it easy on the ascent and had no problems. I did curb an urge to run up Chemin des Dames trail to get up on the ridge and to (the new) Madison Hut to say "Hi" to George, Miles, Johanness and the rest of the stellar Madison croo. It was good that I didn't because I was dismally uncomfortable coming down. I recovered quickly drinking a lot of water but the message was that I need to go slow (a good thing). The frustration will come after surgery when I'll have to take August off. It's bothersome as I had some great trips planned for the summer that will have to wait 'til September. One point I'm making is there may be a paucity of articles for the blog.

In the above photo the King Ravine trail leveled off suddenly after a rather steep climb from the junction with the Lowe's Path. I had temporarily left the land of the giant sugar maples. The trees in this particular area were not very mature. Succession was occurring but it looked as though there had been a disturbance of some kind, an avalanche or storm perhaps 20 years ago, that caused a die-off and this was the next generation.

On this north facing slope next to the trail the lack of ground cover and the over population and thin boles of the trees indicate that succession was botched, perhaps by over crowding of the dominant species. This is similar to the Gale River landslide track right after the slide in 1954 when a large area on one side of the slide was colonized quickly by overcrowding stands of fir and spruce that even today are immature.

The trail kept ascending up towards the "floor" of the ravine, actually the lower floor as there are two levels. This is the lower one. There's a stunning amount of diversity within this relatively small transitional area. This tract is on a north facing ridge and following a normal pattern of succession, but it looks and feels like it's early succession, again, due to a local disturbance. King Ravine is a glacial cirque similar to others, including Tuckerman Ravine, in the Presidential Range. It's an area where mass wasting is constant in all seasons and we would expect snow and rock avalanches as well as intense storms with high winds and deep snow that create wear and tear on local vegetation.

Not much farther up the trail I found this stand that contrasted markedly with the one in the photo above this one. It's populated by large birches and sugar maples with younger, competing firs and red spruce. This is at close to 3,000' asl and may represent the original forest "mix" that's been growing here for a long time; even thousands of years.

On its way towards the upper part of the ravine the trail climbs over a low ridge and then descends steeply for 3/10th of a mile through a balsam fir-spruce-white birch forest that's shady and moist. I was whining to myself about the loss of elevation when I heard that lovely sound of rushing water below me that turned out to be Cold Brook.

Cold brook cascades down from the headwall of the ravine in scenes like this that's a theme of King Ravine along with the older trees and the relaxing sense of timelessness that's exuded by the water and the forest. However, it was a bit disconcerting to find wads of wet, used kleenex lying in the trail. I see these omissions by other hikers: wrappers, bits of foil, and kleenex, more frequently and I don't like to judge others because I make my own mistakes, but, still, it irks me. I feel ambivalent about packing the trash out because I feel I'm colluding (like picking up after my kids when I should tell them to do it), but I do it anyway (like I do for my kids: to get it done).

The sunlight coming off the water was dazzling. It was tempting to stay and clean the dead trees from the pool and have a quick soak, but I knew there would be more pools above. Hopping across the brook here the trail climbs steadily again as it reaches the ravine proper and I could feel the presence of the steep walls, the "bowl", beginning to enclose me.

Wildness, when we try to explore it purely from our senses, finds synonyms like "timeless", "lovely", but what it best conjures up is a sense of "otherness"; a difficult concept for most of us because it describes how the arc of our personal lives moves us further and further away from wildness, from nature itself (despite the avalanche of media served to us daily). It's here, though, in places like King Ravine, sometimes as a stubborn reminder that we find inconvenient (as we keep killing ourselves in the pursuit of more "convenience") or, at other times, a brilliant flash of insight telling us that it's true; we can't exist without this very thing (wildness) and it's shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.

I laughed when I came upon this "vintage", log bridge built in the early 1960s (out of things at hand) to provide hikers the option of having dry feet (maybe) but that often provided the opposite. The logs are smooth and when they're wet can (not always) surprise the unwary hiker with a ride similar to being on a skate board that often leaves them standing ankle deep in the ooze anway.

Climbing higher into the ravine and the solitude is like a glass of cool, spring water.

Mountain wood sorrel (Oxalis montana).

At this altitude a transition is occuring in both the terrain (it is looking more alpine) and the plants (also looking more alpine.)

And in this photo there is a strong hint (all the boulders that are strewn about) of the trail approaching the steep, high headwall of the the ravine. From time to time, through the tree canopy I can glimpse the crests of the ravine walls on the left and right but no sign of the headwall yet.

Another cascade, and then another, and finally I'm at

famous Mossy Falls, not far from the head wall. Looking straight up to my right through the dense birch leaves I can just see the Randolph Mountain Club's Crag Camp a thousand feet directly above me.

The water coming down the falls is beautifully clear and the rocks under the falls host a rich cover of aquatic plants.

(Not sure about this one. I'm still working on it. Don't tell me! I want to key it out.)

Climbing higher above Mossy Falls the trail becomes quite steep and enters the boulder field on the left hand-side rampart leading up to the Chemin Des Dame Trail and the head wall itself.

This sign marks the approximate 4,000' asl elevation. I continued climbing for another 1/4 mile to the junction of the Chemin Des Dame Trail up a steep "ladder" of rocks, some the size of automobiles, in which a few elementary rock climbing maneuvers were required that I found satisfying only because they increased the level of difficulty making it feel more alpine. Unfortunately the hand over hand stuff increased the pain in my mid-section so I began my descent.

Just below Mossy Falls the Short Line Trail branches off the King Ravine Trail (KRT) and it's a direct line to the road, a bit shorter than the KRT, so I gladly took it.

Very quickly I was back among the large trees which was an added pleasure to the trip down. The sun had moved to mid-afternoon. I had not climbed high enough for a clear view of the high walls of the ravine which would have been exciting but something I can save for another time. In the meantime the hike down was summery and quiet and the light in the forest was (as always) stunning.

It was certainly green. Summer was outdoing itself. The ground cover on both sides of the trail was dense

.......and the sugar maples along the Short Line were as big as those I'd measured in the morning.

They were between 31" and 37" in diameter. The 37" measurement was on a tree that was dying which may be the indicator for maximum girth in this location.

It was such a "summery" day and a great mountain day, too. Hiking down in the late afternoon light filtering through the trees was lyrical (really cool!), particularly in the company of the large maples.

A few things crossed my mind about the significance of these large trees. One of them was that they're sentient beings and have the knowledge we're looking for in terms of how to preserve the Earth and to insure it will be around for more than just another 100 years or so. What they do, what they have been doing for a long period of time, is collaborate in maintaining "homeostasis" which is a term meaning "equilibrium", "balance", "stability", or "stable state" of the Earth's complex biogeochemical systems including weather systems and soil mechanics.
This was my favorite tree of the day. It measured exactly 3' DBH. In addition to all the history they contain these old, large trees are significant as parents to untold generations of maple trees which is to say the germplasm contained in their seed stocks is of immeasurable value. Germplasm contains the genetic coding of these trees and with their age (and perhaps nobility) their germplasm represents a kind of heirloom quality which is the foundation of the diversity we need to exist.

Hobble bush is one of the dominant plants in this zone of the forest. It's prolific due to it's method of getting seeds distributed. Each one of these berries contains thousands of seed that will be dispersed by water, wind and animals.

The hobble bush almost monopolizes the light at between ground level and the zenith of its height which is about 6 feet, though on average the hobble bush is often between 2-5 feet in
height. It's a great competitor, though.

Throughout the area, the northern slope, the ground cover was tightly interwoven with a variety of herbaceous plants like these violets.

Look at the levels of light that is able to penetrate to the forest floor and how it is used by the plants.

In this photo, too, you can easily see strategies used by various plants to qet there quota of light.

Lucille Lowe at the family store on Rt. 2 in Randolph. Between us there are a lot of years here in the mountains and all the history woven into them. It was fun to talk with her for a while and share news. She's a direct descendant of Charles Lowe (and all the Lowes in Randolph) so she, herself, contains a lot of the history of northern New Hampshire. "It's changed so much. It's not anything like it used to be." she said.

6-30-11 While Out Painting Mt. Chocorua

2011-06-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

This is a well-known view of Mt. Chocorua from Rt. 16 in Tamworth, NH, looking through the white birches and across the two lakes in the foreground. I use to hear boasts that it's the most photographed mountain view in the world but that's probably no longer true. This is a painting done in the late 1950s by a well known artist from North Conway, NH, Dick Packer, who painted this view so many times he used to boast that he could paint it upside down blindfolded. (see Mountains and Art blog post 4-27-10)

Anyway, I got an email today from a Ron Martin in Pennsylvania who came across this photo of Dick taken sometime in the 1950s while he was working on the oil painting above of Chocorua (one of my favorite Packer paintings). Ron wrote, "Attached is a very interesting photo by Everett Clark probably from the 50s. I have a dozen or so pics. Any ideas on who the artist might be?" I do know who he is. I'm proud to say I knew him very well and I used to mow the grass around his house and studio every summer Saturday in exchange for painting lessons and a big bowl of (fluffy) tapioca pudding his wife, Barbara, made for me each week. (I was about 11 years old.) Thanks for sharing the photo, Ron. It's quite a coincidence. I'll send a copy to his daughter, Gale.

6-27-11 Isoetes echinospora var. Braunii (in progress)

2011-06-28T03:06:00.000-07:00

Hikers passing the outlet end of Lakes of the Clouds
looking from the middle of the lake, August 2010.

Last summer (2010) I explored the aquatic plants in several of the small, high lakes in the White Mountains. This included, east to west, Carter Lake (the larger of the two small lakes in Carter Notch), Lakes of the Clouds on Mt. Washington (the larger lake), Zealand Pond (near Zealand Notch and Zealand Falls Hut), Echo Lake on Mt. Lafayette, and Lonesome Lake on Cannon Mountain (near Lonesome Lake Hut).

During the summer of 1965 I assisted my colleague and friend, Larry Collins, in collecting data on the aquatic plants in five lakes including Partridge Lake in Littleton, NH, Profile Lake and Echo Lake in Franconia Notch, Eagle Lake on Mt. Lafayette and Lakes of the Clouds. Larry published the data under the title: "The Effect of Altitude on the Distribution of Aquatic Plants" as his master thesis at Dartmouth College. My cursory explorations in 2010 were designed to see if there have been significant changes in the distribution of these plants over the intervening 45 years. This summer I'll go back to Lakes of the Clouds and Eagle Lake and try to gather more definitive data about the plants in those two lakes than I had time to do last year.

Larry Collins and I identified this Quillwort in Lake of the Clouds as Isoetes echinospora Var. Braunii just as Slim Harris had in his series Plants of the Presidential Range published in Appalachia during the 1940s. This illustration and definition were taken from a reprint of Part V of the series; Ferns, Fern Allies and Conifers in the June 1944 issue of Appalachia:

In his Mountain Flowers of New England, published by the AMC in 1966, Slim changed his identification of the Lakes quillwort to Isoetes muricata with this small reference:

It's an interesting difference in the identification that I missed in 1965 and 1966, I guess I wasn't paying attention. The algae growing around the plants interests me as much as the species indentification. In all the lakes I explored last summer I observed a number of different kinds of plants that seemed to have a symbiotic relationship with algae. I'm not sure if this is the case with the Isoetes, or not.

Slim was a brilliant botanist so I'm curious if he keyed out a specimen or if it was an intelligent "guess". The incredibly extensive range of the muricata may make it a safer bet because it seems to everywhere. The range of the quillworts is another curios addendum to the boreal forest discussion: how did they get so dispersed? When did they disperse? They're a very old genus dating back to the evolution of the conifers so it's interesting to think about.

This summer I'll attempt to clear up the identification of this quillwort that's so plentiful on the bottom of Lake of the Clouds as well as compare Larry's 1965 data with current profiles for the plant communities in the other lakes. One reference point is the number of species found in 1965. At that time 20 species were found in Partridge Lake (the lowest of the lakes studied), 13 in Profile Lake, 9 in Echo Lake, 3 in Eagle Lake, and only 1, the quillwort, in Lake of the Clouds.

6-18-11 Zealand Valley (completed 6-30-11)

2011-06-20T06:25:00.001-07:00

The following is more a photo tour of Zealand Valley in the last gasps of sprig and the arrival of summer. The photos were taken Saturday morning 6-18-11. I started out in a downpour which slackened to a drizzle but with promises of a clearing of sorts later in the morning. For those of you who have ventured here you'll recognize the bottom of the Zealand Trail in this photo with the old logging railroad bed heading straight and the spruce and fir trees, eager for sunlight, crowding the trail on both sides.

I proceeded up the trail to the junction with the winter ski trail and then took a sharp right and began a long bushwhack staying close to the Zealand River as far as I could which was to the series of beaver ponds. I thought of heading east of the ponds and going as far as the A To Z trail to cut back over to the Zealand Trail. The above photo is of an old "cutbank" where the river carved out a steep bank now 100 feet from the present river bed. There were fresh moose tracks in the soft soil here going up and down the bank.

Carrying over the discussion about the boreal forest from the recent blog entry about South Twin (5-28-11), and reiterating the enormous importance of the diversity of plants and animal species comprising this forest in particular and being mindful of the necessity of keeping the forest intact, the "whole system", that's so critical in support and sustaining current levels of diversity and, over time if left untouched, will promote a continuum in which evolution (diversification) will continue without human intervention. It's terrifying, for me at least, to think of what will become of us if we allow the forests to continue to shrink at their current rate, or to think about the prospect of only small "islands" of forest surrounded by metropolis. What would those forests be like?

I walked up the river threading back and forth from one side to the other looking at the trees. There was an almost continuous stand of balsam firs with an average DBH of 14 inches. This part of the White Mountain National Forest was heavily impacted by logging and fires that resulted from the logging as much, or more, as any other area in the WMNF. An interesting side note is that during the heyday of logging in (New) Zealand Valley in the 1890s a tree with a 14 inch DBH was the smallest diameter tree (usually spruce) that would be selected for cutting. That means the largest trees present here now were the smallest in 1890. But that was on the first pass. Over time loggers would come back time and again and take out the smaller diameter trees until every tree was cut.

In his Logging Railroads of the White Mountains (AMC: 1980) Fran Belcher wrote: "Railroads opened the White Mountains to the devouring demands of the lumberman. Up until 105 years ago, a visitor to the White Mountains was greeted on all sides by the sight of rich stand of virgin timber, mostly deep green spruce and fir. But then the iron horse invaded the mountains and for more than 50 years the region experienced large-scale logging operations which we hope will always remain unparalleled in North-Country history for their intensity."(p. 2)

The railroads went everywhere and allowed the logging companies to reach every corner, high and low, of what would later become the White Mountain National Forest, but only after it was left for dead. First the lumbermen stripped the mountain sides of the huge, old trees and left the ground covered with "slash", tree branches and unwanted trees, that often caught fire and burned with incredible intensity. Two huge fires in the Zealand Valley burned out of control in the summer of 1886 and, again, in the spring of 1903. The photo below is an aerial photo taken by Brad Washburn of North and South Hancock Mountains during the logging there. The entire mountain, all the way to the two summits and the ridge between have been stripped clear of trees. This was the case with nearly every peak including Carrigain, Hitchcock, the Bonds, Owls Head, Nancy, Bemis, Paugus, Passaconway, Tripyramid. etc. It's both astonishing and shocking to see the intensity, as Fran called it, of their industry and the logger's determination to not leave a tree uncut.

For the Zealand Valley this meant that more than 10,000 acres of forest as measured from present day Rt. 302, where there was a switch and a rail yard for the Zealand Valley logging railroad, all the way through Zealand Notch south, almost to Sawyer Pond on the south side of Mt. Carrigain, was cut including the Hancocks in this photo. The railroad tracks visible in the right side of this photo are lines emanating in Lincoln, NH, and not part of the Zealand Railroad.

Earlier in the blog I included descriptions of the Zealand Valley and Zealand Notch from newspaper accounts of trips taken into this "wilderness" in the late 1800s by local guides and sportsmen. I'll cite one about a trip taken by two men in August 1879 south from Twin Mountain through Zealand Notch all the way to Ethan Pond and Crawford Notch that describes scenery which is hard to believe. At the time Zealand Notch was referred to as the New Zealand Notch. The article is printed in Fran's book on page 81. As Fran pointed out, there is no mention in these early articles, up until the 1880s-1890s of any logging going on in the Zealand Valley or Pemigewasset drainage..

Red spruce in an even and open stand on the east side of the
Zealand River that may be reminiscent of the forest that was
here 140 years ago. These trees are actually at the size of the
smallest trees initially harvested by the loggers in the 1890s.
The trees cut in the mills then for lumber were much larger.

Instead, these narratives describe "unbroken wilderness" and a route that was "pathless, following old deer trails (and climbing) over fallen stumps" of the "giant trees green with moss that has formed upon them for years." In another instance the author of the newspaper account observes that the forest is made up "mostly of spruce but varied with white and yellow birch."

Cornus canadensis, or bunchberry, forms dense colonies, like
a carpet, throughout these open stands of spruce and balsam

J. E. Henry's famous railroad was built through the Notch a few years after that newspaper account was published. Fran points out on pg. 85 of his book that the first registry of land acquisitions by Henry was on April 20, 1880. His firm bought several thousands of acres for $33,000 acres (about $3 an acre). Soon after that purhcase Henry bought out his two partners and commenced logging unfettered by any sense of responsibility to others. He grabbed everything he could get his hands on. It was even said that he would log over a piece of land before he bought it and then pay the price for devalued property afterwards. His Zealand Rail Road extended from Twin Mountain and the small town of Zealand (near the present campground) all the way to 1.) Shoal Pond (which was originally Howe's Pond); 2.) Ethan Pond; and 3.) a side spur that went along the bottom of the notch next to Whitewall Brook. You can see the main line in the notch now where it cut along a "natural bed" that existed a third of the way up Whitewall Mountain (originally Mt. Hastings).

Fires, already noted, burned extensive areas in the Zealand area in the summer of 1886 and the spring of 1903. It's difficult to determine exactly what areas burned with any accuracy. One account states that the fire in the lower valley started on the afternoon of July 8th and that it was started by one of Henry's locomotives. Henry lost his Zealand railroad, a great amount of cut logs in the fire, and the loss of human lives was also mentioned. A rainstorm on July 15th helped extinguish what was left of the fire. This fire burned up the sides of Mt. Hale to the summit and through the valley on both sides of the Zealand River to the location of this flume in the above photos.

A pink Lady Slipper (Cypridedium acaule) in dry woods on a high bank above the river. My daughter, Liz, and I explored this area last year at this time and found occasional flowering Lady Slippers at several stations.

Last Saturday it appeared there was a population explosion. There were nearly four times the number of flowers at each station along the brook and along the trail. The greater number were this lovely pink-rose color.

A smaller number were this "pearly" white that I like. The white ones have a luster like opal.

Others were half-way in between.

They were literally everywhere and lovely. The increase in their numbers this year might be due to a dry spring as lady slippers prefer dry habitats.

I rejoined the Zealand Trail at the first beaver pond and passed a number of hikers who were heading out to the road from Zealand Falls Hut where they had spent the night. They all exclaimed how good the breakfast was.

The rain stopped by the time I got to the bridge here at the first beaver dam and it looked as though it wanted to clear off. I sat here for quite a while and watched a family of cedar waxwings.

Witherod or Viburnum cassinoides

Familiar places.

This spot, when the sun accentuates the opening, reminds me of a trip here with Fran Belcher in the early 1960s when this whole areas was an open field of several acres that he explained had been one of the "camps" along the Zealand railroad. He told me about digging in the camp area and finding interesting artifacts that he left at Zealand Hut.

The Zealand Trail follows the old railroad bed as far as the turnoff on the Twinway. From there the railroad bed continued south. In 1903, 15 years after the first fire, this area burned all the way through Zealand Notch at which time a Boston journalist referred to it as "Death Valley." Even Fran questioned the length of time it would take the valley to recover from the impact of the fires saying it might take hundreds of years. Whitewall Mountain is one reminder of the intensity of the fire but little else either of the fire, or the railroad and the camps remain today a hundred and ten years after the last fire..

Speckled alder growing in a wet area near the large beaver pond.

White birch (B. cordifolia), red spruce (Picea rubra) and moosewood (Acer pensylvanicum) near Zealand Falls.

Appalachian Trail thru hikers heading north.

Geum pecki, or Mountain avens, on the ledges near Zealand Falls Hut. There were very few flower head showing on the Geum pecki along the ledges. I was wondering if they were a little late this year.

I found one blossom high up along the river.

Osmunda cinnamoea, or Cinnamon fern.

Sorbus americana, or Mountain ash

This is the white pine (P. strobus) growing just off the ledges on White Wall Brook, and a few hundred feet above Zealand Falls hut. I've mentioned this specimen in conjunction with the small community of white pines on the Gale River slide track that I'm studying. This one first caught my attention 50 years ago. It's growing at roughly 3,000' asl which is close, or similar, to the altitude of the Gale River specimens are, as well.

This is the trunk of the White Wall Brook white pine. It's trunk is decaying and vulnerable to insect infestations. It's apparently dying. I've considered all of the white pines mentioned as anomalies as they are at the extreme upper limit for this species.

The two little riffs in the foreground are bath tub-sized potholes that you can sit in comfortably on a hot day and cool off quickly. When the water is a little higher than it is now they're comparable to a jacuzzi.

But if you prefer more space these falls are elegant and well designed for relaxing and cooling off, or a place to read and spend a long mid-summer afternoon.

On my way out of Zealand I ran into Saundra and Mike Cohen who I've known for many years but haven't set eyes on for atleast a decade. Saundra is famous in the AMC hut system for being the woman who pushed through a lot of red tape, a lot of duplicity and lip service, legal stalling, political stonewalling, and brusque dismissals when she applied for a hut position in 1970 when most institutions were already going coed (Harvard in 1969). Women have always been in the huts but never as official employees of the AMC. It took three long years before Sandra was finally allowed to work in a hut, Zealand Hut as it turned out. Her perseverance made it possible for women to work in the huts which they've been doing since 1973. Some summers the number of women is greater than the number of men. I wrote a three part history of women in the hut system going back into the 1930s and 1940s that was published (in three installments) beginning in the October 1984 (Vol.50) of AMC's monthly magazine also called Appalachia. The article was supposed to be a "spring board" for a much more comprehensive piece (a book?) that I felt would best be written by a woman writer, but no one's come forward.

Anyway, it was great to see you guys.

6-1-11 Driving in Tornadoes

2011-06-04T15:19:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday afternoon (6-1-11), a little after 4 pm, a series of tornadoes struck Springfield, MA. A funnel cloud first touched down in W. Springfield with enough intensity to pick up an 18 wheeler (tandem trailer truck) and fling it on its side. It completely destroyed several houses and killed two people in West Springfield before crossing the Connecticut River where it churned up the water into a giant, terrifying froth. It crossed Interstate 91 and went on a path of utter destruction across Springfield for a mile or two. It missed the low, one story building housing my agency by a few yards. The building looks incongruous now as most of the homes and buildings in the immediate area were destroyed or sustained major damage. And all the trees are gone. Springfield, for all its wants as one of the poorest and most violent cities in the country, had beautiful trees: huge red oaks, copper beech and towering white pine trees. In its recklessness the tornado, in a few minutes leveled hundreds of acres of trees. It twisted them out of the ground so that they shattered into piece or it merely toppled them on to cars and houses, into the streets and backyards, across several large neighborhoods.

This is a fairly typical street in the neighborhoods across Springfield just outside actual hub of the city's center....

and this is a somewhat larger than average oak you'd see growing in Springfield, but also typical.

I'd had no warning a tornado was crossing the city until clients called me in panic. I found an open area and sat in my car watching the clouds and the wind and listening to descriptions of the storm on my cell phone and then started driving in what appeared to be the safest direction. Hail 3/4 of an inch in diameter was beating on my car roof and windshield. Lightening was striking everywhere with simultaneous thunder ripping the air. The wind felt like it does in the mountains at times. I had gone a mile heading west and a little south when it suddenly became pitch black. There were a few other cars on the road and I wondered what their drivers were thinking, or planning. I looked out the windshield at the sky directly above me and became more frightened each second. I tried not to panic. I thought of places close by where I could shelter and called a client who had a basement. His house was a mile away. As I drove I watched as a funnel cloud formed to my left and touched down. It got much darker and the ground began to shake. The tornado was going east. I stayed on course watching it. I could see the debris circling around in the funnel but was not close enough to feel the horror that people in its path must have been feeling. I got to my client's house and ran to the door just as the sun came out and the rain stopped.

The tornado kept moving in an easterly direction causing immeasurable damage in towns and cities east of Springfield, damage that's impossible to process or come to terms with because it is so far beyond normal experience. Like the horror of war, you can only look in horror; the destruction is beyond belief.

The plight of the trees in these storms, the loss of tens of thousands of trees (300 million trees in Hurricane Katrina), is not what most people think of. In Springfield and other cities decimated by tornadoes in 2011 the billions of dollars in loss of homes, schools, commercial buildings, roadways, vehicles, the loss of businesses, and the loss of human lives takes precedence, surely...

Shattered trees and other debris stacked in a parking lot of
a shattered Springfield College dormitory off Rifle Street in
Springfield. The pile would become a mountain in a few days

......but on Friday (6-3-11) as I drove around the city, through a seemingly hopeless tangle of tree limbs, smashed cars, downed power lines, shattered homes, and impassable streets I couldn't help but cry for all the beautiful trees that were in the process of being cut up by the legions of tree removal workers that have come from all over the country. The sounds of all the chain saws and heavy equipment was deafening and when it is quiet again the trees will be gone. I'll miss them. I think everyone will.

Epilogue

Tornadoes of The Mind: (written at 8 pm on 6-9-11) It's a week after the storm. This afternoon between 4:30 and 6:30 pm, a massive, fast moving front, a copy cat of last Wednesday's storm, tore through the city and toppled more trees. Tornado warnings were broadcast this morning. To have two major storms come through a week apart is against the odds but today people in Springfield had their eyes on the sky. Everyone was jittery. It did not become a tornado, but was so similar to last week's storm it was still traumatizing. I was at a client's home when it hit and the family was in panic. One of the children cried, "I don't want to die" as the fury of the storm lashed the roof and walls of his home.

We've all learned that weather can be lethal. In the mountains it's an elementary fact that weather at its extreme can kill people not suitably prepared. It comes with high predictability. The oaks in Springfield, as old as they are, have experienced a lot of weather. Some of them have been around 300-400 years ( or more) and most were around for the 1938 hurricane and the hurricanes of 1954 and 1958. Hurricanes aren't exactly tornadoes but have a huge impact on people as well as trees. In these events animals seem to have a genetic precedent, as in earthquakes and tsunamis, they seem to know in advance when a potentially destructive, or lethal force storm is approaching. Some humans may have that ability, in fact a lot of us might have that prescience and not realize it, but the culture as a whole does not. Red oaks have adaptations that allow them to warn other red oaks about insect predation and that help them survive wild fires. Our adaptions are somewhat different. There's an example in last week's tornado where a mother used her body to cover her young daughter during the storm and was killed. The daughter survived.

Trees in their foliage are not designed well for wind loading. They must "know" there are tradeoffs. In the eastern US (particularly in the northeast) hurricane season begins at about the same time that the foliage of deciduous trees appears; the period when they are most vulnerable. Loss of some trees is preferable to the loss of most trees, but trees rebound quickly, even after Katrina. Trees may benefit from these calamities.

In Springfield the higher ground sustained the most damage. Trees on elevated areas were the most susceptible. The oaks had a higher mortality rate (informal survey) than the beech which may have something to do with root systems or just a fickle outcome. Tornadoes are extremely fickle; in fact they're bizarre. Driving through Springfield I have seen the most outlandish anomalies as seeing items, like an automobile, completely destroyed sitting next to untouched items: one huge tree left standing while the one beside it wrenched from the ground and tossed on the roof of a house. Tornadoes are relatively rare. They've occurred on the North American continent for millions of years and probably without any regularity. There's no way to know if any ever came through the Springfield area before the one last week. As human culture(s) emerged on this continent tornadoes must have had a high impact on people long before histories were written. Laura Ingalls Wilder offers a breathtaking narrative in one of her Little House on The Prairie books of a tornado in South Dakota in which, among other things, two mules are carried aloft. One dies and the other is delivered safely to the ground. These stories foster fear and awe to such an extent that tornadoes, as a source of terror, are introjected into our imaginations. Our only adaptation so far is the "weather channel" but in Springfield at least, in the storm last week, the warnings came to late

5-28-11 South Twin (complete, finally)

2011-05-30T15:58:00.000-07:00

I was inspired to return to Galehead for three reasons; to continue data collecting at the Slide research site, hang out at the hut with Ari Ofsvet, and, Sunday morning, to climb South Twin. Saturday (5-27-11) was not a great hiking day weatherwise. By the time I got on the trail it was hot and muggy in the valley, a prime incubator for some serious thumpers (thunderstorms). On the other hand the summits were in the clouds. I decided to go anyway. Lots of flowers were out below first crossing that weren't out last week. Above are early blooms of Clintonia borealis peeking out from under striped maple leaves.

After asking a number of colleagues I'm still not sure what
this is. I was sure it's Canadian mayflower, then I wasn't
so sure, then I couldn't decide what it is. It's impossible to
see the leaves in the photo and they're the deciding feature.
I'm going to capitulate and say that it's Canadian mayflower.
Confused? I am.

Speaking of First Crossing, lack of appropriate caution led me to a near disaster on Saturday. As I crossed the river I was showing off a bit by jumping gracefully from rock to rock when, on the very last boulder that was still 4 inches under water, my foot slipped. I spun around, did a half somersault, whacked my head, skinned my knee, totally immersed my digital camera under water, and got completely soaked. I scampered out of the water, wrenching my G10 camera from the wet pocket of my hiking shorts, dried it with a bandana and found that it worked fine. My knee and head seemed okay, too. I was dripping wet but the day was warm. I only wish I had a video of the whole thing. Anyway, don't think I learned anything from this incident or that I'll be ever more cautious next time. That would be most unfitting.

Bunch berries (Cornus canadensis) are back!

Wood anemone, or wind flower (Anemone quinquefolia).

Boy Scouts are back as well. The trail was busy, it being a Saturday. Galehead Hut had reservations for 35 for the night including 27 scouts of which this group is part. Most of the scouts navigated second crossing by removing shoes and socks and wading across. Some pioneered a safe, drier crossing down stream. I was so wet from my "dip" at first crossing I just walked through the river with my hiking shoes on.

This is what second crossing looked like on May 27th. It's still a bit high (and very cold) but with the foliage out and millions of thirsty trees nearby the river has gone down dramatically since last week. It will continue to do so as, in addition to the new foliage, most of the snow higher on the mountain has melted which will cause the river to shrink as well.

Just above second crossing I met Hilary Burt packing sundries up to Galehead which will be "HER" hut as she's the hutmaster (trumpets sounding) for the summer. The hut opens for full service this week.

While I worked at my Slide research site for a bit, measuring and recording more tree girths to achieve more accuracy in the biomass assessment of Study Plots 1, 2 and 3, I met everyone passing on the trail including this couple who were heading to 13 Falls tent sites to camp for the weekend.

This was couple #2 on their way to Galehead for the night.

At about 3,000 feet and uphill from the Slide the trail slabs up the west side of a small ravine between North and South Twin carved out by the Gale River. In the upper portion of the ravine there's a kind of sanctuary of large trees. It's worth an hour of time to bushwhack up the river from the slide, say, a short distance to see them.

This white birch is just a few yards off the trail and measures 100 inches in circumference (about 30 inches in diameter).

It's a giant compared to neighboring trees. I've been perusing old Appalachia trying to find out how extensive the logging was along the Gale River and on the slopes of the Twins and Garfield and to get an accurate time frame when the logging occurred. The girth of some of the trees in the ravine indicate that the logging didn't reach that high, but I don't trust that conclusion. It was rare, for the type of logging practiced 100 years ago, to leave anything behind.

Looking down into the sanctuary. Please be advised that "sanctuary" is my description for this ravine and that it's not any kind of official sanctuary. It's one of several ravines in the Whites with a northwest aspect that present us with a steady-state remnant of, not the original version of the boreal forest that emerged out of the detritus left by the last thick ice sheet to cover the White Mountains, but a more "modern" version of it. That would mean a version conspicuously more diverse in tree species with "newcomers" representing fluctuations in climate over the last 10,000 years, beech and the maples for example.

This is Ari Ofsevit. In this photo he's the intrepid (fill in) hut caretaker at Galehead (Ghoul) for the weekend. I'd met him once, very briefly, before this trip to Galehead. He has a well earned reputation for being a gifted naturalist and his presentations in the huts where he has worked in past summers set high standards. We've conversed on line a bit, but it was a great pleasure to meet him and spend hours swapping stories, a great pastime of which there is no end, that we both enjoy. I'm indebted to Ari, too, for those instances where he's been the "acting editor" of this blog and bringing my attention to mistakes in things like place names and spelling.

I left the hut quietly early Sunday morning to head up South and North Twin before breakfast. The day was gloomy with a strong southerly wind driving thick clouds over the ridge and there was a drizzle. On the other hand it was warm, or warmish, the woods smelled wonderful, and the racing clouds (a dense mist) gave the woods an eerie feeling.

The Twin Way connects Galehead and Zealand huts and has a reputation for being dry and hot during the high summer months but not infrequently it offers mud. This photo provides an example. Ascending South Twin from Ghoul this spot is the low point and from here the trail climbs steeply. South Twin is 4,902' and Galehead is at 3800' (asl=above sea level) so the trail climbs 1100 feet in less than a mile! South Twin is a gorgeous, gorgeous mountain by all standards. It dominates the central White Mountains and is in a class with Carrigain, Carter Dome, Adams, and Bond height, challenging trails, isolation and spectacular views. The 360 degree view from South Twin, on clear days, will literally take your breath away. (I've included some photos taken from the summit in the winter so that you get an idea of the view on a clear day.)

There were no views Sunday morning except of the woods that were dark and rain wet in the mist, and with the mist billowing through the trees on the strong wind the forest had an eerie presence.

The forest primeval. This is a glimpse of an old, old forest, not relative to the ages of these particular trees, but to the forest itself and how long ago it evolved here. The term "Boreal Forest" refers to a vast forest "biome" that once extended from the Canadian arctic (as well as Siberia and northern Europe) south across northern New England, New York, Michigan and Minnisota to the northern limits of the temperate, deciduous forest (once referred to as the oak-chestnut-forest) of mid-America, Europe, and parts of Asia. On occasion I've seen boreal forest refer to the Taiga, which is inaccurate, but also describing the forest growing between 3500' and 5000' in the northern New England mountains and the Adirondacks in New York state. The forest in this photo represents the part of the Boreal Forest at its extreme range (sub-alpine). The true Boreal Forest was once a vast circumglobal forest system growing roughly in the area covered by the last glacial ice sheets. During the past 150-200 years this immense northern forest biome has been severely compromised by fragmentation and is no longer the seamless forest it was at its peak 2-3 thousand years ago; several thousand years after the last ice age that ended 11,000 years ago.

The Twinway exposes underlying bedrock which Charles Williams, in his Geology of the Franconia Region published in the June 1934 Appalachia, identifies as Lafayette Granite Porphyry (LGP). This nomenclature brings us back to the complex geological history of the White Mountains and the White Mountain Batholith with its system of ring dikes in this area. At any rate, Franconia Ridge including Mts. Lafayette and Lincoln, plus the Twins, Guyot, and the Bonds have the Lafayette Granite Porhyry in common as underlayment which, towards the east (towards Zealand Mountain) and west (near Lonesome Lake), is bordered by our familiar Conway Biotite, or Conway Granite.The stone blocks in the photo might be described as felsenmeer, or frost quarried bedrock, the LGP in this case, as they're similar to the large blocks found on Carter Dome and Carrigain that, like South Twin, are forested to the summit. (The blocks are similar to the felsenmeer of Littleton Schist so common on several of the peaks in the Presidential Range and that is often a subject of interest in this blog).

I often use the term "Eastern Boreal Forest" to differentiate the forest in the Northeast portion of North America from its counterpart in the western US.. Boreal simply means 'of the north'. The boreal forest in both regions is a mixed species forest with conifers including the spruces, firs, cedars and larch as the dominant tree species. Here in the east the boreal forest has a broader diversity of deciduous species including maple, beech, birch, ash, cherry, and willow most of which are not found in the west. In addition to a large variety of shrubs like rhododendron, and hundreds of indigenous herbaceous plants. A good question might be whether the term Boreal Forest in New England refers only to the less diverse forest growing at the higher altitudes, or whether it is inclusive of all species growing between, say, 2000' asl and 5200' asl. In my opinion it is the latter.

This photo and the one above were taken "inside" what is commonly called a "fir wave", or an area of dead trees killed, in large part, by extremes in weather and where succession (where new growth of young trees) is taking place. The waves are common in the higher altitude forests of the Northeast and are more common on the windward flanks. They're called "waves" because, from a distance, their form and color resemble waves. They're also referred to as "bands" or "stripes". At any rate their light gray color is due to the the tightly spaced spars of dead trees. The thin, vulnerable mountain soils "draped" over the stone block underlayment might contribute to this pattern of succession by compromising root growth of the dominant trees, balsam fir particularly, in what is interpreted as the forest's vigorous attempt(s) to achieve stability and continuity. The roots of the fir balsam tend to be shallow and also tend to spread out more than, say, spruce, to use the soil and soil moisture more efficiently. When there is extreme wind loading as in winter storm the roots aren't secure enough to stabilize the tree which is ripped from its mooring and tilts away from the wind and eventually dies. On the other hand, I've witnessed the interweaving of tree roots in and around the stone blocks which appears to strengthen the tree's hold on the steep slopes.

A photo of South Twin and Ghoul (aka Galehead Hut) taken from Galehead Mt. in September '09. The Twin Way follows the main West facing ridge in a more-or-less straight line from the hut to the summit. The photo shows the fir waves, or dead tree zones across the entire flank of both South and North Twin (at left). The photo clearly shows the summit of South Twin as a glacially sculpted dome. To the right in this photograph the sides of the mountain all the way south to the Hancocks from just below the summits of South Twin, Guyot, and the Bonds was intensively logged in the late 1800s-early 1900s and then, in the horrific forest fires of 1902, were burned over.

Balsam Fir (Abies balsamea) is the dominant tree specie above 3500' asl in the White Mountains. It's joined in this zone by black spruce (Picea mariana), and red spruce (Picea rubra) in smaller numbers. The understory consists of ferns, fern allies (being the club mosses of which there is a long list), sphagnum and haircapped mosses, many lichens, grasses and sedges in some places, heaths (like the blueberries, mountain cranberries, snowberries), a long list of flowering herbaceous plants including these familiar ones: Clintonia (Clintonia borealis), Star Flower (Trientalis borealis), Bunchberry (Cornus canadensis), Wood Sorrel (Oxalia montana) and Mountain Sorrel (Oxyria digyna, an arctic plant), and Gold Thread (Coptis trifolia) (which is a small sampling) and a number of shrubs like hobble bush, shad bush, and mountain ash.

These are balsams growing at 4100' asl. The boles of these trees are large even at this altitude. The one closest is 9.5 inches DBH. Their altitude places them 500 vertical feet above the large birch with the 30 inch diameter just above the slide and what we think of as the height limit for yellow birch and aspen, and the transition zone from the mixed deciduous and conifer forest to a this predominance of fir and spruce in the sub-alpine zone. Earlier in the blog I showed a photo taken from the December 1936 Appalachia showing a large yellow birch, 13 inches in diameter, growing right behind the Galehead Hut in an exposed location, at 3800 feet. This may hint that the transition zone is more fluid over time. The Boreal, or northern forest is in constant flux. We could easily say it's a "work in progress" and if we step back a bit and consider the dimension of time in a wider perspective, the Boreal Forest appears to be an interconnected-interdependent-ecosystem.

Other balsam firs nearby have DBHs of 12 inches and this one is nearly 60 feet high. In fact, as the altitude increases, at least between 3900' asl and 4400' asl uniformity in tree girth and height is markedly varied. One expects as the altitude increases trees will achieve a more uniform height which, in turn, would make a uniform girth predictable, but it is not the case.

The more important concept to grasp isn't necessarily the accuracy of Boreal Forest as a definition of these forest tracts but the "macro" view of this diverse forest as a once integral, interconnected, cohesive ecosystem of vast proportions that is now fragmented to the point that it's no longer in a "steady state", but in decline. It will in time, like the tropical forests of South and Central America be reduced to small "islands"; small tracts in protected zones.

The Twinway does not ease up no matter how much you hope it will. It seems to go on and on and to be the longest mile ever. A couple of summers ago when I was making what I hoped would be my last (out of four) attempt to complete the West Pemi Loop, a 30 mile-long hike encompassing the entire Franconia Ridge, Garfield, South Twin, Guyot, Bond and Bond Cliff (starting and ending at the Wilderness Trail parking lot just off the Kancamagus Highway) in under 10 hours. (You can go clockwise or counterclockwise) I got to Ghoul in somewhat of a psychotic state brought on by Mt. Garfield and was having trouble leaving the hut because I couldn't bear the thought of going up South Twin ever again in my life. Finally, Erin Robinson, the hutmaster that summer, handed me a gallon pitcher overflowing with gatorade that was deep purple in color. "Drink this and get your (butt) up up that mountain!" she barked, pointing towards the summit of South Twin. It actually worked. You wouldn't think it, really, but I made it up in a little less than an hour, a veritable crawl, but after that the loop was pretty much downhill and I made it back to the "Kanc" in my alotted time.

The steepness is easy to read here and what appears to be a thinning of the tree growth which is an illusion brought on by the light and the fog. South Twin is almost high enough to have a "timberline" effect, a general hunkering down of vegetation and an array of frost hardy plants. This particular location probably experiences weather nearly as extreme as any site in the mountains with the exception of the summit of Mt. Washington. The altitude here is low at 4700 feet compared to altitudes in the Presidential Rane but these trees are up against extremely cold temperatures and high winds even at this height.

The view from the Twinway looking west towards Mt. Garfield and down at the old Galehead Hut. Photo taken July 1967. Iput it here simply to show you what the view would be like from the this stretch of the Twinway on a clear day.

The dome shape of the summit means that you can anticipate the steepness of the trail will gradually slacken before you reach the summit, but here the trail still climbing at a good angle and is not faltering.

Here the forest displays honestly the enormous amount of stress it endures a good deal of the time just from the weather.

Like other areas at or near the tree line there are a high number of downed trees and weather beaten and rotting trees that are still standing.

Even with all the tensions within the "system" caused by the weather the forest, generally, is in good health. It's had a remarkably long time to adapt, and perhaps re-adapt to the limiting factors of wind, temperature and moisture fluctuations, marginal soil, and insect infestations. The major perturbations caused by man: clear cutting, fires, and acid rain have had as large, or larger impact on this forest in the pat 150 years then anything before. Hurricanes, wild fires caused by other than human sources, glaciers, drought, floods, avalanches, landslides, and insects have been around for an impressive amount of time but the forest, much reduced in size, is still striving vigorously towards its own call of equilibrium.

The colors, the forms are compelling. In any mood, in any of the myriad states we are apt to "catch" the forest in, there is always the unifying element of beauty, everywhere we look.

Just below the summit, maybe 4870' asl there's this old balsam trunk, 9" DBH, toughing it out although with about 75 percent mortality.

Then your feet feel the arc lessen and their is a general sense of the "dome" (like St. Paul Catheral) and with that slighting of the angle the trees also hunker down probably because it is within their own wisdom to do so.

The summit rocks appear in the mist and....

the summit, itself, is underfoot. There is something to be said about climbing in the mist; finding a greater sense of isolation along with, perhaps, a meditative state and a deeper appreciation and closeness to the mountain itself.

The summit rocks are Lafayette Granite Prophyry and exhibit...

the same "quarrying" and fracturing from fluctuations in temperature between thawing and freezing over immense periods of time.

Reindeer lichen and Mt. Cranberry crowd in on a small ledge. There are a number of other lichens in this photo as well as the one below..

where I counted seven different types including Cornucopia lichen, target lichen, two species of rock tripe, cinder lichen, map lichen, quill lichen, and gray starburst. I think there are even a few more species two obscured to key.

The balsam's form maps as they do in the alpine zone in what we call Krummholz

At 4,902' asl the summit of South Twin is in the transition zone between sub-alpine and alpine and it's not surprising to find some of the characteristics of the alpine zone, including the krummholz-like adaptations by the balsam fir and black spruce. I'm curious if the balsam will continue to grow and eventually convert the South Twin summit to a forest in the near future.

Sunset from South Twin looking towards Mts. Lafayette, Lincoln, Haystack, Liberty and Flume. South Twin has a lovely and breath taking 360 degree view and this is but one sliver of it and I put the photo here merely to show what the summit is like on a clear day. Photo taken in August 1968.

More photos from early winter 2007:

R to L: Garfield, Lafayette, Lincoln, Little Haystack.

Looking south towards Guyot (center) with Carrigain (highest peak, middle left) behind it, Passaconway behind and just to the left of Bond (on horizon), the Hancocks and Osceola (on horizon) to the right and behind Bond.

Looking east with Mt. Washington behind me.

Garfield framed by balsams.