4-22-10 Close to Home, Earth Day

Since it's Earth Day and the light this morning was exquisite I thought I'd pop in a few photos from my (sometimes) routine hike up nearby Mt. Skinner in the Holyoke Range. To get to Mt. Skinner, also called Mt. Holyoke, I have to cross the Connecticut River via the recently rennovated Coolidge Bridge. Those specks on the river, off in the distance, are Smith College rowing crews practicing.

Then I drive down Route 47 through lovely farm country with old farm houses and freshly plowed fields.

This part of Hadley, adjacent and parallel to the river has a world famous soil, Hadley Loam, which is quickly getting a cover crop of houses, Home Depots, Lowe's, every other box store imaginable, and trophy houses which is a tragedy of huge proportions. It's that whole idea that our real wealth, the soil, is but an after thought to our economy's engine which is to sell junk. That International tractor gains in value every year. It's probably worth twice as much now as what the owner paid for it. How many things made today gain in value?

In only ten minutes of driving I arrive at the small parking lot at the base of the Notch Trail that is my preferred route up the mountain. The round trip from my kitchen to the summit of Skinner and back to my kitchen is about one hour but early in the morning with light traffic I can do it in 45 minutes.

This morning, as I started up the trail the sun was just clearing the ridge and reaching the forest floor.

The low morning sun backlights a tide of false Lilly of the Valley (Maianthemum canadensis) which has emerged above the dry leaf blanket in the past 24 hours.

Today is is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. I remember the first one well because I was invited to give a short talk at the University of South Dakota's Earth Day celebration forty years ago today. Then I was the editor of a weekly newspaper in Spearfish, South Dakota, called The Queen City Mail, and had been running a news and editorial campaign against Homestake Goldmining Corporations attempt to fool the public and take a huge area of productive cropland by the corporations 'right of eminent domain' to construct a "tailings dam" to store cyanide and mercury laden tailings from the gold extraction process related to their mine. Homestake's ruthless attempt was in keeping with the company's history and an attempt to circumnavigate a court order brought against them by the newly established Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). At any rate, my hard work in exposing the enormous environmental and social damage that would certainly ensue if Homestake won the suit won me an invitation from the University to be a quest speaker at the university's first Earth Day celebration.

The beech leaves were the first to emerge and they're a few days ahead of the maple leaves maybe because of the unusually warm temperatures.

Brand, spandy new beech leaves. Isn't it remarkable that out of a tiny seed something as spectacularly beautiful and intriguingly complex as a leaf can come and offer us the diverse miracles leaves of every kind provide us and almost every other living thing on this planet?

Last year's beech leaves also getting some early morning sunlight. With the warm temperatures it's likely that myriad tiny organisms are working just below the leaf carpet to continue breaking down the compostable leaf mulch into soil.

Two things that I remember from my foray to the University of South Dakota that first Earth Day was that there were a dozen or so "hostile" members of the audience, sent by Homestake, who kept interrupting my talk until several Minniconjou Sioux who were students at the university and also representatives of the Sioux Bear Clan, filed into the auditorim in regalia and stood, arms folded across their chests, in front of the podium until I finished my talk which was my attempt to explain the imminent danger of the proposed tailings dam to the Black Hills and the area around the Black Hills, which the Sioux refer to as Paha Sapa, sacred ground; the burial grounds of their chiefs.

On the lower slopes on the northwest side of Mt. Skinner the forest is a healthy mix of hardwoods and softwoods with maples, oaks, hemlocks and beech predominating. The micro climate is damp, but not wet. I often see deer feeding in this area at twilight hours, both morning and evening.

On the upper slope on the northwest side of Mt. Skinner, where it's damp most of the year and where there's a high incursion of wind and snow, eastern hemlocks (Tsuga canadensis) predominate.

On the southeastern side of Mt. Skinner, red oaks (Quercus rubra) predominate.

The other poignant memory I have of that first Earth Day in South Dakota was the flight back to Spearfish from Brookings, the city in the southeast corner of the state where the university is located. The university owned a twin engine Beechcraft airplane and their pilot had flown out in the morning to pick up both myself and a colleague, a rancher by the name of Hank Frawley, who was also speaking at the Earth Day ceremonies. That evening, after the ceremonies, the same pilot flew us back, a 400 mile, 2 1/2 hour trip, to Spearfish's Black Hills Airport. Hank was feeling air sick and went to sleep in the back seat but I was wide awake. We flew at a fairly low altitude and I could look down into the streets and backyards of towns we flew over. From Brookings to the Missouri River there were myriad lights from horizon to horizon. Beginning on the west side of the Missouri they thinned dramatically until the only lights were the stars and an occasional "pal light", one of those mercury vapor lights installed in barn yards, that indicated a ranch. Since I had experience flying planes the pilot asked if I would take the controls while he slept the last hour of the flight and all of a sudden there I was flying the Beechcraft through the night above that dark land passing under me like a dark sea in swell while the pilot and Hank slept. The plane flew over the Badlands, the beautiful wide western high prairie, the White and Little Missouri Rivers with the Black Hills to the south, and just to the north the path of Lewis and Clark. We flew under an astonishingly dense canopy of stars that provided the only light! And they were bright, brighter than I had ever seen them and as I craned my neck to look up at them I felt they must be alive. They certainly felt close enough to touch! I was in awe. In those spare minutes I was aware of the entire human race as it once had been, around the globe, fused to the dark of a million nights, gaping upwards in utter wonder at the vast, beautiful, intricate, webs of stars. I'll never forget that solitary hour.

As I hiked up towards the last ridge below the summit this morning three Canada Geese startled me as they flew north and passed just 15 feet above my head. As I stopped to watch and listen to them "barking" I could hear the familiar sounds of the traffic on Interstate 91 a few miles away.

It would be a startling if Earth Day could bring about the magnitude and kind of change that's necessary to offset the harm being done to the Earth every second of every day. I see more and more corporations claiming to be "Green" or "Earth Friendly" in their advertising and it makes me cry that we, as consumers, can be that naive. A startlingly vast number of us are startingly disconnected from Nature, from that essential part of ourselves. We no longer let it in. It's filtered out to us on screens, mere depictions, and it just bounces off of us. We glance at it as we indulge spectacular, expensively produced TV shows and movies that depict the drama in Nature, but it's only a cursory look. We admire it, pet it, groom it, train it, anthropomorphize it, then go back to what we were doing that is essentially killing it. It isn't our pet, our cute fuzzy "thing", or even a monster that's out to kill us as Nature is often portrayed. It would be startling to me if people stopped to watch the geese with awe and respect, but it would also be startling if people knew it was geese they were looking at and felt connected to them in some way. Even if they licked their lips and though of them as food.

4-3-10 Revisiting the avalanche track in Ammonoosuc Ravine

I arrived at the base station of the Cog Railway a few minutes before 9 am on Saturday (4-3-10) to find the parking lot full and literally hundreds of skiers making ready to hike and/or "skin" up the west side of Mt. Washington. It was astonishing just to see the sheer numbers of people spilling up the mountain. In part it was due to the weather which had been forecast to be perfect with clear skies, lots of sun, and near-record breaking for warmth. The other parts, though, are the growing interest in Alpine Touring/"backcountry-telemark" skiing as in getting away from crowds, expensive ski lifts, etc, and the accessibility of the west side of Mt. Washington in the winter and spring now that the Base Station Road is plowed and open all year.

Seeing the crowd on Saturday was reminiscent of past decades at Pinkham Notch (this photo was taken in the 1930s by my dad) when, on weekend afternoons from early March to late May (or sometimes 'til early June), the front yard of the Trading Post would be crowded with sunburned skiers just down from Tuckerman's Ravine, the Upper Snowfields, or the Gulf of Slides. The number of automobiles in the parking lot added to those parked up and down both sides of Rt. 16 for miles was and still is astronomical every weekend of the spring skiing season without fail. I made my debut in this ritual in 1950 and still have intense nostalgia (that probably borders on psychosis!) and a strong sense of camaraderie with all those seasoned generations of skiers who for decades rarely missed a spring weekend in "Tucks" and think of the "Ravine" as a truly magical, majestic place. Each generation that comes along seems to discover it anew and adds its own character to that long tradition. I think my earliest memories of hiking into the ravine with my friends, accompanied by assorted fathers, was the blue sky against the rocks and snow, how the sun reflected so brightly from that world of snow and could turn you to toast in an instant, all the other characters hiking up with their skis over their shoulders, the camaraderie, and. best of all, the wonderful smell of the balsam firs along the trail.

Seeing so many skiers on the west side of the mountain attests to a new generation looking for it's own niche, but it really underlines the intense over-crowding on the east side of the mountain. The west side seems to attract skiers who use Alpine Touring (AT) ski equipment that's designed for back country skiing in steep mountain terrain. A lot of skiers on Saturday were walking up in their boots right on the cog tracks or "skinning" up on their AT skis using the right-of-way next to the tracks. Others, like this couple, were packing their skis as they headed up the Jewel Trail, the most direct root to the Great Gulf where they were planning to ski for the day. The Great Gulf has become a popular destination for extreme skiers during the past 20 years.

This knot of skiers was just a small sample of the vast number that paraded up the mountain as I got my own equipment ready.

Anyway, it felt good to get back on the Ammy and head uphill and fight gravity. It was relatively hot and at 9:10 am was already 50 degrees (F) at the base station and promising to be that hot up on the ridge. The snow in the woods, with the deep wells around the base of the trees, attests to warm temperatures over the past few days.

The river was still deeply covered by snow pack, for the most part, and made hiking a little easier. This is looking straight into Ammonoosuc Ravine and up at the summit of Mt. Washington.

This is looking into Ammonoosuc Ravine from the large opening created by the recent avalanche. Enough snow has melted over the past month to uncover some of what must be a massive amount of debris that came down the mountain with the avalanche.

This is what the same view looked like on 3-4-10, exactly a month ago.

If you look carefully you can make out skiers, tiny dots, on the upper areas above these gullies. For clarity I'm going to name the gullies "Central", the one straight ahead, and "Right" for the partially hidden gully one the right. I climbed 2/3 of the way up central gully to try and get an idea where the avalanche started and whether it replicated the route taken by a large avalanche that occurred here in the winter of 1969-1970. I hiked up and over the ridge via the right gully thinking of going to the summit. It was in the mid-50 degree range on the ridge and the sun was scorching. Someone I passed commented that they thought it was about 70 degrees over by Lakes of the Clouds which would easily have been a record. Later I read that the Observatory's high for the day was 50 degrees (F).

Skiers and snow boarders were everywhere starting early in the morning. They were streaming down all the gullies and, for that matter, the areas between the gullies. Everyone was excited by the quantity and the quality of the snow at least in the first half of the day. By noon the texture had gone from "corn" to something resembling mashed potatoes.

A group from Canada skiing and snow boarding on Mt. Washington for the first time. For Canadians coming south through Vermont the west side of the range is an hour closer (less driving) then the east side. For as long as I can remember Canadians have been some of the most dedicated denizens of Tuckerman's Ravine each spring. They've been at the forefront, as well, of opening up new areas and skiing the more extreme "lines" all over the mountain.

The January 2010 avalanche probably started a little ways above this bowl, probably just above the crevasse that's opened up and just below the chute where the gully is at least a 50 degree incline and where there was a high downward pressure from gravity, less friction and lowered cohesion at the lowest layers of snow. This bowl is about 2/3 of the way up the central gully. The vegetation in the center of the photo is undamaged while the alpine birch in the vicinity of where the photo was taken is scarred from the movement of the snow.

In the right-hand gully the avalanche began below these birch trees near the top of the gully

and probably close to this spot located about 2/3 of the way up the gully.

Looking down from where the above photo was taken the slide track is clearly laid out along with the extent of damage it did as it hooked right and then left down the valley, sweeping high up on the lower, opposite ridge. The massive volume of snow and it's speed is indicated by the large swath . It's likely that the avalanche was comprised of dense, wet snow with the consistency of a slurry due to excessive rain that fell during the 2-day period just prior to the slide.

Two skiers on the slide track at the confluence of the right and central gullies. Two separate avalanches, one from each of the two gullies, must have joined here. The avalanche was a form of "mass wasting" in that many tons of material were moved away from the side of the mountain and carried downstream where it was dumped in the main channel of the Ammonoosuc River. By volume most of the material was snow and ice. It won't be possible to assess how much rock and gravel was moved until after the snow has melted, but it is obvious that thousands of trees, mostly birch and balsam fir, were destroyed and a large open area created in place of the forest.

A better look at the avalanche track just below the confluence of the central and right gullies. This form of mass wasting, like landslides, is dramatic evidence that, although we think of the White Mountains as hundreds of millions of years old, they are still young in some ways, still moving and still feeling gravity pulling them down to be, at some point, a level plain. The avalanche, to the mountain, is like the beat of a pulse; a sign of life . The devastation, too, is just a blink of an eye, an "aufblick", in the long, long life of these rocks and forests.

This is the corner, seen for above, where the avalanche turned sharply to head down the valley. Like a bobsled in a chute the avalanche, with all of its weight and momentum, slid up on the ridge in the background mowing everything down in its path. It must have made a lot of noise although the snow may have muffled a lot of the sound.

I heard from skiers back at the parking lot in the afternoon that they had seen similar avalanche tracks in Burts Ravine, located just north of Ammonoosuc Ravine, and in old avalanche track that descends from the col between Mt. Monroe and Mt. Franklin just to the south of Lakes of the Clouds. It seems probable, then, that Ravine of the Castles and Kings Ravine also had big avalanches as they also face northwest and the storm that dumped all snow came in from the southeast.

Once the snow has melted we'll be able to assess the full amount of damage done and the extent of the debris that's still under the snow. In another month or two, with most of the snow melted, it will probably look even more impressive.

4-06-10 Percy Quadrangle; the surficial & bedrock geology of the Percy Peaks 4-4-10 (in progress)

(Map 1.) This is the geologic map of the Percy quadrangle in northwestern New Hampshire which accompanies Randolph W. Chapman's Petrology and Structure of the Percy Quadrangle, New Hampshire that was his doctoral thesis at Harvard and published in 1946. I'm including it in the blog because I was just up on the Percy Peaks (see below). They're rather striking mountains and on this map are located in the kidney-shaped, pink area in the upper center of the above map. I'm also including this piece in the blog because it's well written and explains clearly the complex White Mountain geology. The map is intriguing. It looks like an abstract painting. It's difficult to read because the print is so small so I've included other maps below. I'll refer to as the "Chapman Map" from now on. And I'm only going to quote bits of Chapman's narrative, enough so you can grasp the complexity of the geology itself and understand how challenging it was for Chapman (with lots of help from colleagues) to figure out the truly ancient, complicated history of New Hampshire geology and explain it to the rest of us.

(Map 2.) This is the 1996 series Percy Peaks U.S. topographical map with the same scale and area as Chapman's colored 1946 geologic map. I drew the black line here to represent a portion of the pink, kidney shaped area surrounding Percy Peaks on the colored map.

(Map 3.) This section of the 1996 topographical map details the terrain just north of the Percys and it is marked at the top left corner with a black line to show the bright orange area in the upper left corner of Chapman's Map. In the center, upper right half of the map there is a dark shape made up of closely crowded contour lines that represent the small 'nub' with the dark green, coniferous cap (consisting of balsam fir and spruce trees) that's in the next photo and located just north of the Percys .

The photo was taken from the summit of North Percy looking due North. You can identify this small peak with the dark green, coniferous "cap" on the topographical map by its shape and "feel" . This small peak is the western terminus of Whitcomb Mountain that is a long ridge running east-west. Keep in mind that the balsam-spruce zone starts at roughly 2100 feet and the highest summit is 2827. We can use this peak as a reference to understand how Chapman gathered and organized his data. We can also use it to build a better sense of the relationship between bedrock and surficial geology and local soils, plants, and fauna in a remote forest area like the Percy quadrangle.

This is the view north from North Percy using a normal lens and the small peak with the dark green cap we were looking at is now at the correct position and scale in the middle distance on the right. The long, high ridge on the left side of the photo conforms to the half circle drawn with a black line on the topographical map (above) and represents a large 'ring dike complex' which will be explained in Chapman's narrative.

These are the Percy Peaks with the North Peak in the background as seen from the southwest side, near Groveton, NH. You can see how intriguing they are and why Chapman was drawn to this area and be the first to study the geology. The steep ledges are on North Percy's west and soutwest face. They're safe to climb when dry. The north summit is a riot of blueberries in late July-early August.

(Map 4.) This is a geologic map copied from Marland Billings' 1949 Paper "Mechanics of Igneous Intrusion in NH" which is long but brilliant. This map and legend will help us see what igneous intrusions look like in several areas of the state. Billings writes in this paper, "In fact, it seems probable that new Hampshire contains a greater variety of large intrusive forms than any area of equal size in the world."

The legend for the Billing's map shows numerous granites around the state. Billing's doctoral thesis was the North Conway quadrangle and half way down the list you see the symbols for the Moat Volcanics. Billing's research on this particular volcanic intrusion is one of his brilliant contribution to our understanding of the geology of the White Mountains.

The Percy Quadrangle is at the very top in the A4 slot and if you click on the map to make it larger you can see the features designated on the Chapman Map with colors. For instance, the area around the Percy Peaks is now kidney shaped but with coding indicating it as Biotite granite, or Conway granite as it is commonly referred as. The small, half circle at the top of the m map is Syenite.

Probably the most interesting feature of the Percy Quadrangle is the circular pattern of mixed minerals that looks like an near-perfect segment from a Florida orange on the Chapman Map and on Billing's map we see that it, too, is Syenite. This is a large ring dike complex that underlies the Kilkenny Wilderness area and Mt. Cabot in particular. If you look at the whole New Hampshire map you see the Syenite in numerous "Ring Dike" configurations. The most dramatic is the almost perfect circle underlying the Ossipee Mountains split between the Winnepesaukee and Mt. Chocorua quadrangles.

I'm going to quote from Chapman's narrative starting with his Abstract:

"The Percy Quadrangle in northern New Hampshire embraces an area of rugged topography maturely developed by stream action and subsequently modified by continental glaciation. The region is drained chiefly by the Upper Ammonoosuc River which flows generally westward into the Connecticut River.

"Strongly folded and metamorphosed micaceous quartzites and schists of the Albee formation and somewhat younger amphibolites of the Ammonoosuc volcanics constitute the oldest (upper Ordovician?) rocks of the region. These have been intruded by silicic plutonics representing four distinct magma series: (1) Lost nation group of the Highlandcroft magma series (upper Ordovician?), (2) Oliverian magma series (middle Devonian?), (3) New Hampshire magma series (upper Devonian?), and (4) White Mountain magma series (Mississippian?).

"Ring dikes and stocks, composed of syenite and granite of the White Mountain magma series, form features of particular interest in the quadrangle and are believed to have been emplaced by right-fracture stoping or cauldron subsidence. In some cases the process appears to have involved wholesale intrusions of magma along clean-cut, ring-shaped or arcuate fractures; in other instance arcuate shatter zones apparrently developed and these were intruded by multitudinous small dikes which gradually replaced the country rock."

Chapman, at the time he wrote this dissertation, was a graduate student at Harvard studying with Billings who visited him in the field and assisted in the data collection for this study. Billings has been mentioned in this blog a number of times and, along with myriad generations of Goldthwaits, his name is legendary in the arenas of glacial geology, bedrock geology and the surficial geology of New Hampshire and the White Mountains. Katherine Fowler-Billings, his wife, has equal status in these arenas. She, too, helped Chapman on the the Percy and Rumney (NH) quadrangles, and completed mapping her own quadrangles including the Monadnock Quadrangle located in the southwest corner of NH. In 1996 she published a moving reminiscence of her career in geology called Stepping-Stones: The Reminiscences of a Woman Geologist in the Twentieth Century. One gets the impression from her autobiography, all of the existing literature, that this community of geologist/scientists was a collaborative, closely knit group.

To be continued......

3-27-10 Percy Peaks

It felt good to be driving North to the mountains again after a 3 week hiatus and to enjoy the wonderful but simple pleasure of sunrise as it fanned out in salmon and orange behind Smarts Mt. and Mt. Cube just north of Hanover, NH. By Hanover I still hadn't decided where I was going to hike for the day (Saturday 3-26-10) and I didn't decide until I got to St. Johnsbury. On the way up Interstate 91 there were glimpses of Moosilauke, Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge all lathered with snow that looked like fluffy, white Betty Crocker frosting and that beckoned to me but in the end I decided on the Percy Peaks. I last ventured that far north above the Whites to climb North Percy in 2006. The last time I made a winter-like ascent was back in 1967. A problem with a winter (or early spring in this case) ascent is that Nash Stream Road (photo above) is closed until May and to get from the end of the paved road to the trail head is a 3 mile-long slog. All the same, a brisk walk on a cold spring morning is a gift in itself. It was 12 degrees (F) in Groveton at 8 am and probably the same along Nash Stream and it would be close to 5 or 6 degrees (F) on the summit of N. Percy which, for me, is ideal for hiking.

I've always thought that Nash Stream Road, at one time, had been the bed of a logging railroad but from from the research I've done I've never been able to find definitive information that a railroad went into the Nash Stream watershed. The road certainly has the feelingit was a railroad bed. In the 1890s The Upper Ammonoosuc Lumber Company built a railroad into the Kilkenny basin to harvest the last big black spruces in what's now the Kilkenny Wilderness and that's near Nash Stream. That company also did a lot of harvesting between Stark and Groveton, also in the late 1890s, but there's no record of that outfit building a railroad up Nash Stream. Fran Belcher in his "Logging Rail Roads of the White Mountains" (AMC 1980) makes no mention of one, either.

Nash Stream drains out a huge area in the northern part of New Hampshire. It's a great trout river if you happen to fish and in high water, like this, is navigable by kayak. Last Saturday it was singing with that full, loud voice you hear during spring thaw or after heavy rains in summer and fall.

Something worth noting is the high banks, this one on the west side of the river, that are nearly 100 feet high and that consist of glacial till. At this point we're about 25 miles northwest of the Presidential Range and Mt. Washington, and these high sand and gravel banks are probably what was once the bottom of a glacial lake. The Connecticut River, once a formative part of Glacial Lake Hitchcock, is just five miles west of Nash Stream at this point. Nash Stream dumps into the Connecticut River at Groveton, NH.

This guy's name is Ray. I was surprised to see him coming towards me when I was two miles up the road and pretty far from the main road. He said he walks his dogs up along the river every morning. During our conversation he raised his hands in dismay over a massive clear cutting operation he said is currently happening on state owned forest land near his home. He called it a tragedy and said he's been writing letters to the local newspapers and trying to talk to the forestry commission but no one returns his phone calls. We talked for a quite a while. He's a passionate, knowledgeable guy, who sees himself as an environmentalist and admits being frustrated but certainly not shy or afraid to speak his mind.

With the road behind me there's that deeply satisfying moment of finally being on the trail!

I first heard about the Percys from Casey Hodgson who I already introduced in this blog. Casey worked at the "Obs" (Mt. Washington Weather Observatory) in the early 1960s along with Guy Gosselin, Willie Harris, and others and I've told the story of how one afternoon a passenger who had just come up to the summit on the cog railway passenger raced over to the observatory and in great excitement asked Casey where all the rocks on top of Mt. Washington came from. Casey in a matter of fact tone quickly replied, "The glacier brought 'em." The city slicker, to his credit, walked around the summit for a bit and, scratching his head, looked all around the summit and down the steep summit cone towards the valleys. Finally he came running back to Casey to ask, "Well, where's the glacier now?" Without so much as an intake of breath or the slightest pause Casey replied, "Gone back for another load."

The forest floor near the bottom of the trail. Do you recognize any of the dry leaves? I can see beech, maple, cherry, poplar and birch. The fern is evergreen woodfern, or mountain woodfern (Dryopteris spinulosa var. americana), that's pretty much everywhere in the Whites.

One summer day in 1961 Casey asked me if I wanted to go up and check out the Percys and, of course, I said yes. We agreed that the next time we had days-off at the same time we'd hop in his car and go climb the Percys. Well it turned out that when I had a day off he didn't, or vice versa, until just before a Saturday in mid-July when I asked him if he wanted to go "do the Percys?" His face lit right up and he said "Yeah, I've got Saturday off! We can go up Saturday morning." Everything was settled when he suddenly exclaimed, "Wait a minute, I'm getting married Saturday morning." There was a slight moment of confusion but then his face lit up again and he said, "but we could go Saturday afternoon!"

The trail climbs steeply to a flat shelf above the level of the river where the vegetation is mixed hardwoods and mostly birch (B. cordifolia) beech (F. grandifolia) ("folia" means leaf by the way so grandifolia just means 'big leaves'), and sugar maple (A. saccharum).

The snow pattern and how it lingers in some places and not others is interesting. There could be myriad reasons for this beginning with the wind direction, temperature, etc. when the snow was initially falling. The 'pit and mound' contour of the ground plays a role. This contouring is created by the soil, by seasonal flowing of rain water and snow melt, by logging in some cases, and by thousands of years of trees getting blown over in storms and decaying where they fall. The roots of the decaying trees and/or stumps of trees taken out by logging make the mounds and the pits are holes where the tree's roots were torn from the ground. Shading or exposure from direct sunlight also plays a role in these snow patterns.

After climbing gently for a mile and a half the trail comes to these ledges that slant upwards at a pretty good pitch, about 45 degrees, and provide a long ramp right to the summit. When Robert and Miriam Underhill first blazed a trail up the Percys they took the most direct route so the ledges here were once part of the main trail to the top of North Percy. The ice would make it tricky to navigate the ledges without crampons or similar forms of traction.

A little ways above the icy section the ledges were smooth and dry. like a sidewalk, and certainly serviceable as a trail. The question was how much ice would there be even further up. Looking at North Percy from Groveton it was pretty well capped with snow and ice.

In the 1980s a new trail was cut that parallels the ledges for 1/2 mile and then veers away from the ledges and heads in a southeasterly direction up to the col between South and North Percy. Since I was alone and no one knew where I was and the main road was miles away I decided to be safe and take the trail rather than head up the ice crusted ledges as I am used to doing. If I fell and broke something I'd have a pretty long limp back to the car.

The southwest flank of the Percys has some superb large, older-growth trees that apparently were out of reach of loggers. These red spruce (P. rubens) towered above me. If you look closely you can see a lot of die-back on the upper and lower limbs. I don't know the cause in this instance but will try and find out.

Here's another of what I call a rogue white pine (P. strobus) growing close to 2850' just like the 3 or 4 specimens I found on the Gale River slide track. This tree is much larger then any on the Gale River site and quite a beauty. Its growing in a well drained, warm site, with some protection from northwesterly winds but, due to its extraordinary height, is still quite exposed. You can see the "flagging" of the upper branches that form that way, all pointing in the same direction, from the constant wind.

At the height of land in the col between north and south Percy the slope leveled off and the trees formed a nice glade where I found recently made ski tracks.

Sorry! I know I torture everyone with all the photos I include of sunlight on snow. It's just that in some quaint way I find this ephemera evocative of something.

This was an old and fairly largewhite birch (B. cordifolia) with heart-shaped leaves. It's dead and has been for some time. As in other places in the White Mountains that I've written about the birch and its competitive struggle with conifers like spruce and balsam fir here in the col it's also been edged out by the spruce and fir which are more efficient at competing for available sunlight.

South Percy from the col.

Ascending a little way up North Percy and out of the col this view appeared. I was barely out of the trees here and starting up the ledges. That's Mt. Washington on the left at a distance of about 25 miles. The interesting thing is that from this angle Mt. Jefferson is directly in front of Mt. Washington so they are seen as one mountain. The line of sight is directly into Castle Ravine of on Jefferson's northwest side. You can even see the castles. Mt. Monroe is to the right of Mt. Washington. The forested area between the Percys and the Presidentials comprises most of the Kilkenny Wilderness with Mt. Cabot (4170') to the right of center. The sharp peak in the center is The Horn (3905').

Looking a little to the right of Mt. Washington on the skyline is the distinctive form of Carter Notch, often called 'Gun Sight Pass' with the Wildcats to the left of the notch and Carter Dome and South, Middle, and North Carter all to the right of the notch.

It's a fairly short, brisk hike up the open ledges to the summit of North Percy. The granite offers good traction and lots of hand and foot holds so is relatively easy to climb. There are a few places where it's a little airy but they're all safe. Lately, in the summer the mountain gets visited by hundred of hikers. There was a time when more bears visited the summit then people. When I worked in the huts I used to spend at least one set of days-off (3 days and 2 nights) camping on the summit to gorge myself on the plush blueberries and would often be in the company of an occasional black bear. You could literally eat berries all day on North Percy and there would still be plenty more, a seemingly infinite supply.

This shows the average grade of the ledges and it also show remnants of trees that grew here that were not successful and brings us back to the discussion about the natural history of the bare, open summits in the White Mountains. We talked about the top of Zeacliff, Mt. Hale, Carter Dome, and now include North Percy.

In the June 1953 Appalachia an article (that I stumbled on recently) I found an article titled "Barren Mountain Tops in Maine and New Hampshire" by Charlie Forbes that takes a look at the question of why some lower altitude summits are barren, like Mts. Cardigan, Moat, and the Percys, while the summits of much higher mountains are forested.

Looking over at South Percy with the Kilkenny Wilderness stretching out in the background towards the south.

To the east the entire Mahoosuc range is stretched across the skyline from Mt. Hayes on the far right to Old Speck on the left. The pointed summt that looks a bit higher than Old Speck is Mt. Goose Eye, another barren summit. The Mahoosucs run north and south along the Maine state line so that we are looking across the entire state of New Hampshire at this point. The white areas on the flanks of the Mahoosucs are areas of clear cutting that were logged off during the last decade. The trees were harvested mainly to be made into pulp for manufacturing toilet paper.

Christine Lake with the Carter-Moriah ridge (right), the Wildcats and the northern Presidentials (left) in the background.

I climbed the Percys the first time in the summer of 1961 without Casey. I borrowed a friend's car and drove over from Pinkham Notch. David Swift, the car's owner, wanted it back by late afternoon leaving me a total of three hours to drive, hike, and drive back. I was in great shape then and made it to the top of North Percy in under 1/2 hour and decided to go down the south side to check out the south summit and I found an old trail that looked interesting. Without paying a lot of attention (any?) I started down the trail and ended up on the shore of Christine Lake. I was three miles away from the car. Panicked I put on all the speed I could and followed logging roads that ran in a westerly direction, leaping over fallen logs like a hurdler. I came out on the Nash Stream Road just a 1/4 mile from the car. I got back to Pinkham in the allotted time and never had to tell anyone that I got lost on the Percys.

Half way up the ledges on the southeast side of North Percy there is ample evidence that fir and spruce have tried to colonize in specific niches where deformities exist in the granite slabs, either cracks or small 'sinks' and level areas. While some of these trees survive they don't ever thrive and most die leaving forlorn stumps and exposed, sun bleached root systems.

I'm going to quote what I think is a fascinating paragraph from Charlie Forbes' Appalachia article: "It is interesting to note that during the years that have intervened since the retreat of the last continental ice sheet, the northward migrating flora has been able to establish itself in its various types all over the northeastern mountains with the possible exception of the summit of Katahdin, parts of the Mt. Washington range, Mt. Mansfield, and Mt. Marcy. Even today the slow process of plants re-establishing themselves on these highest peaks is still in progress, but this struggle is so slow that the ordinary span of a man's life is rather insignificant when considered in this program of Nature.

Because of the gradient soil has a hard time sticking to the smooth granite slabs and it can only develop marginally in the random pockets like these. In these cases the thin, gravelly soil can support some vibernum (e.g. blueberries), lichen and mosses. In some of the pockets there are small balsam fir (A. balsamea) trying to make a start.

CF article continued: "Irving Blake has presented an interesting study in Appalachia, December 1931, entitled "Biotic Succession on Katahdin," where he describes "the dynamic process of ecological succession." From this article may be obtained a clear picture of the biotic communities found on Katahdin and how they are advancing up the mountain. Blake states that "the altitude of Katahdin is not sufficient, in itself, to prevent the establishment of a typical northern coniferous forest biota as a climax." Another ecologist, LeRoy H. Harvey, wrote in 1901, referring to Katahdin, "it is largely the element of time that retards the forestation of the very summit."

As the gradient changes to one less steep just shy of the summit there's more vegetation present. Although a number of dead spars stick up on the horizon there are a host of balsam firs, short and bushy, making an effort to grow in this somewhat hostile environment at 3000 feet.

This is a typical micro-community that consists of balsam fir, vaccinium (blueberry), labarador tea, spirea, reindeer lichen and several mosses that has established itself in on protected site that catches eroding sand and gravel washed down from the ledges above by rain and snow melt. These soil building particles are rich in nutrients and only need a small amount of organic matter to become a soil medium.

A veteran of the storms. This balsam got nailed by the rain-ice-snow storm of late January and it is proof that the mean temperature since the storm has been below freezing since the storm. When the wind blew, which it did in high gusts on Saturday, the trees creaked from the ice and others sounded like chimes.

The ice is solid and you can see how it 'grew' on the tree's appendages even as the storm raged. As at Lakes of the Clouds a few weeks ago where the south side of Mt. Monroe was varnished with thick water ice these trees indicate that the force of the storm was from the southeast.

The summit.

I included that long quote from Forbes's article because the last sentence by LeRoy Harvey is astonishing. It suggests that eventually forest could cover most of the high mountains of New England and I wonder if perhaps thousands of years ago the summits were all forested with the exception of the Presidential Range and the Franconia ridge. Fire, throughout time, has had a significant impact on forest cover in many locations including the lesser summits that are barren now. Fire alone has long played a major role in the patterns of forestation. The mountains were certainly denuded by the last glacial sheet and the question of how long a period of time it took forests to come back is a question this blog is trying to answer. Definitely, though, the forests are still growing back from that event even though they are subject to set back, some catastrophic, like landslides, fires, avalanches, hurricanes, insect infestations, disease, etc. How fascinating it would be, though, if in a 1000 years trees covered part of Mt. Monroe, or Mt. Lafayette.

Forbes' article goes on at some length and discusses the role of fire in clearing off a lot of the summits that were barren when he wrote the article in 1953. Two years , 1854 and 1903, are mentioned in the historical data as being years of major forest fires in New Hampshire and Maine following several dry years. Moat Mt. near North Conway was burned over in 1854 by a "great fire" that according to newspaper articles at the time destroyed all of the soil on the mountain as well as the vegetation. Mt. Monadnock in southern New Hampshire was similarly burned in 1820. Mt. Chocorua was burned in, or about, 1815. In 1903 fires burned a huge area on the northeast slope of Mt. Madison and the entirety of Pine Mountain, and huge areas of the Pemigewasset valley. The number of forest fires in the White Mountains cited inForbes' article is daunting and indicates that much of the White Mountain National Forest and bordering mountains on all sides have been burned, some areas extensively such as the Zealand valley, since Europeans arrived here in the early 1700s.

Trees as art. If you look way in the background just to the left of this tree you'll see Mt. Lafayette.

On the skyline is the entire eastern range from Mt. Washington to Old Speck.

The entire range to the south from Carter Dome to Moosilaukee.

A lynx sauntered across the summit dome as they often must. I saw lot of snowshoe hare tracks as well indicating a large population this year.

This is what I like best, looking North. This is country I've never stepped foot in and it always fascinates me. I don't even know the names of those mountains. Maybe I'll leave it that way, 'terra incognita', so it will always retain a bit of mystery and beauty in my imagination. The photo represents a big chunk of the Nash Stream watershed. It has no trails, only logging roads, and some fairly high mountains. Most of what is seen in the photo is state owned land.

A close up of two of the mountains on the right side of the above photo. The coniferous caps caught my attention. They are the product of thin soil and minimal moisture. Because of the structure of the mountains and the bedrock the caps are mostly thin soil over ledge which doesn't hold water. The balsam fir-spruce mix which we see everywhere is suited for these kinds of sites. Over time soil has evolved, going through several stages and developing more rapidly on the lower sides of the mountains. Gravity plays a role in insuring that the soils at the bottom of the mountains are deeper and richer and more moisture retentive. These areas are taken over by a succession of hardwoods including poplar, maples, birches, beech, cherry and other deciduous components of the boreal forest.

At full size you can see myriad logging roads like a set of arteries and veins threading everywhere in this picture except into the coniferous caps.

Coming down was a joy, half bounding like a gazelle and half sliding.

I was back at the col in a few seconds and able to see the top of North Percy through the trees in a few places. The area shown is the where the trail blazed by the Underhills traversed the ledges in a direct line from the Nash Stream road to the summit.

This is a "warm" or "dry"site often found on the south slopes of mountains less than 4,000 feet in altitude. The entire south slope of South Moat has this characteristic environment of thin soils, ledge, thin forest cover and very little moisture. It is often designated as 'fire dependent' as they are often ravished by fires and manage to recover quickly. When I encounter these areas I'm reminded of hiking in the Rockies and other western mountains even by the smell of these dry niches. The south slope of North Percy, where it is not shaded by South Percy, is a "warm-dry" niche.

This feature is present all the way down the mountain.

Interested in glacial till? That slate boulder is literally as big as a dump truck. This pit is used by the state for highway sand and is located on the Nash Stream Road.

A parting look back at South and North Percy from the great sandpit.

One more showing the Percys over the old Scott paper mill in Groveton. Timber, wood, and paper were once the mainstay of the economy in northern New England and New York, but the recent economic bust and importation, etc., has wiped out most of the infrastructure of the paper industry in this area. Groveton has the feel and look of a ghost town now.