8-14-10 Lakes of the Clouds, Mt. Washington

I was just starting up the Ammonoosuc Ravine Trail (the Ammy) on Saturday (8-14-10) morning as old Waumbek was just leaving the Cog Railway Base Station pushing a car load of sightseers bound for the summit and, as always, it was tempting to try and race it to the top. Luckily I had a good excuse not to race as I was carrying all my snorkeling gear up to the hut.

This photo's an invitation to get on the trail and let it take you to the highest peaks and that enchanted land of rocks and clouds where you can look out and see beyond the farthest ranges.

There were lots and lots of people, families it seemed, on the trail heading for the summit.

I'm fond of this ladder. It's very cool. It's stood here on the upper part of the Ammy for as long as I can remember. I've climbed up and down it a zillion times and each time I've had a warm pang of appreciation for its sturdiness and how well it's placed. It's rock solid. I've even wondered who made it. I guess, I wish I'd made it. It's such a practical, well built ladder.

The Ammy was kind of like the Chilkoot Trail with everyone rushing to get to the summit.

Sheep Dog! It actually looks like a dog from this angle.

Alpine Goldenrod. There was goldenrod blooming everywhere last week, in the valley and up and down the mountain. There were probably five or six different varieties. There are probably goldenrod seeds embedded in the ice and snow on the summit of Mt. Everest.

Mountain Sandwort and Haircap Moss

Three toothed cinquefoil (Potentilla tridentata)

Arran Dinsdorf, Birthday Boy. It really was Arran's birthday! He was over by the lake when I arrived with all my gear and we talked while I slowly got ready to get in the water. It had been brightly sunny when I first got to the ridge but the longer we talked the darker and colder it got. A wind picked up from the east and thick, dark clouds hung over the lake.

Arran, "You're not going to go hypothermic on me are you?"
Me, "Naw. I'll be fine."
Arran, "Well, I'm going to run down to the hut and put lots of hot water on just in case."

As he left I slid into the water which I have to say was painfully cold. The nights have been in the 30's (F) and it had snowed on the ridge a few nights prior to my swim. Still, it was the dark clouds and cold wind that made it so miserable last Saturday.

From my entry point this was what the bottom looked like. At first there were huge boulders ringing the outside edge of the lake that I brushed against as I swam and towards the middle, flat, smaller stones.


Twenty-five feet out from the shore the boulders thinned and the bottom consisted of a sterile sediment that looked and felt a lot like like cinders from the cog railway engines. It was gritty and there was thin layer of it covering the rocks.

Towards the north shore of the lake the bottom was was covered with these large flat stones. They were four feet below the surface. I could stand on them easily. They weren't slippery as most subaerial rocks are.

Even under the water I could hear people talking over by the outlet. Their voices carried easily over the water and seemed like they were standing right next to me.

It was in this area along the north side of the lake and all the away around towards the estern shore straight ahead where we found dense vegetation on the bottom of the lake 45 years ago (1965).

This is what the bottom looks like in that area now. The general feeling of swimming, other than the cold, was that I was in a large swimming pool. The water was remarkably clear and with the occasional sun making these undulating rivulets of light there was even a sense of warmth.

The plants, and I don't know the name of them yet, were arranged in phalanxes.

Each of the plants was encased in algae. The sediments here resembled a soil medium that the plants can grow prolifically in and I wish I had taken a small sample. It will be interesting to find out what role the algae plays in the plants' life, if it's symbiotic, or not.

Here I was moving down and across the eastern end of the lake and the deepest part at 9 feet deep. I went down to look at this plant only because it looker surreal andresembled a large green sponge.

The southeast bottom area with a what looks like a green shag carpet.

I got a chance to dive down and put my hands in the sediments at the bottom where I wouldn't disturb any vegetation and it felt exactly like loam. The texture surprised me as it was soft and I could stick my hand down into it (not like the gritty feeling of the sediments in the northwest area of the lake).

When I kicked at the soil with my swim fin, causing a slight turbulence, the material lifted lightly up into the clear water but only took a few minutes to settle (unlike Eagle Lake).

At this point I'd been in the water just over 30 minutes and I couldn't take the cold any longer, so, with my legs badly cramped, I swam like an eggbeater back to the rocks where my towel and warm clothes were.

I passed over massive bits of Littleton Schist like this one lying in 5 feet of water half way to the west shore. When I got out of the water I began to shiver uncontrollably. I dried off as much as I could, but was shaking so hard I couldn't change out of my wet gear and I made a B-line for the hut. I shivered for 45 minutes, even while drinking several bowls of hot soup.

This is probably the best way to say good bye to the 2010 Summer season with Arran and Johaness futzing around getting ready to pack out their personal belongings as they leave Lakes after an "awesome summer." Arran is heading back to college, Johaness will be hutmaster at Zealand until mid-October. They arrived on skis in late May but now, alas, have to carry them back to the summit.

Berg Heil!

8-7-10 Eagle Lake, Mt. Lafayette

I decided implusively, while the summer was still warm and after my snorkeling experinces at Lonesome Lake, I decided to explore the other "Alpine Lakes": Eagle Lake on Mt. Lafayette, Lakes of the Clouds on Mt. Washington, and Carter Lake in Carter Notch (and, if I have time, possibly Zealand Pond, near Zealand Notch). So, last Saturday (8-8-10) I was once again hiking the Bridle Path heading for Greenleaf Hut and Eagle Lake.This is a photo of "Agony" Ridge that leads to the summit of Lafayette taken from the trail head parking area on route I- 93.






George Heinrichs, Greenleaf Hutmaster, hamming it up a bit with my encouragement. You may remember George from Zealand Falls Hut last summer. At any rate, it had been nearly a year since we'd last seen each other and there were too many things to talk about on the trail so he invited me to spend the night at the hut which turned out to be propitious for both of us.

At any rate, this is Eagle Lake (I could say: what used to be Eagle Lake). My plan was to snorkel along the basic baseline of three virtual transects, two up and down the lake lengthwise, and one back and forth across the lake. I immediately discovered huge problems in my plan.

The first problem was, after getting decked out in my gear and standing next to the lake I attracted a lot of people, hikers bound for the summit of Lafayette, who were infinitely curious about what I was doing in flippers, face mask and snorkel. It helped push me to get into the water a little faster than I wanted. I tried stepping in to the lake at the south outlet where the water was 2 feet deep but immediately sank up to my chest in some godawful muck that then produced these bubbles that were mostly methane. Not a good sign.

I then tried the traditional belly flop approach and managed to get out into water deep enough to kick my legs, about 2 feet deep, and began my first transect (usually a straight line used to guide a sampling of plants. It can be a few feet long or infinite but is simply a way to do random sampling of one or several species). The photo is looking up at lily pads that were thick as thieves at the south end of the lake.

My first impression was that this is no longer a lake as it was 45 years ago when I assisted a friend and colleague, Larry Collins, in a study of the aquatic plants in Eagle Lake. We used SCUBA then and there was actually water to swim in.

Roughly at the center of the lake. The water is up to my chest. If I move my feet I can stay on top of the deep organic sediments that, like those experienced in Carter Lake a few weeks ago, are loosely differentiated. Again, they, it, is not mud or slimy gook of some kind. It is primarily organic matter that does not have enough oxygen to break down properly and is going about slowly.

A photo of the bottom at lake center showing diverse plants and a lot of algae forming on stems and leaf petioles. The water here is almost 3 feet deep.

A close up of the bottom with a log that is taking ages to decompose.

The same sort of photo with plants, algae and the sediments comprising the lake bottom.

A rather fascinating blob of algae (I think!).

Sundews (D. rotundifolia) (remember? from Lonesome and Zealand?) were thick here and not difficult to find. It was difficult not to sit on them. At any rate they were profuse on the west and south side of the lake but were not observed on the north and east shores.

Seed pods of the water lilies.

This is a very fragile area on the northwest side of the lake which is a sphagnous bog with characteristic flora. It occurs to me that in the early 1960s the lake actually extended into this area that is now grown over just as at the south end of the lake vegetation is also increasing in area as the lake area decreases more.

Mt. Cranberry

Reindeer Lichen

The north end of the lake where there was this small, congenial cove. The lake was only a few feet deep here, and the bottom was strewn with large boulders that made it impossible to swim or walk.

A view of the hut from the east shoreline.

The water was so stirred up by my first passage across it that it became murky and stayed that way for an hour, or so.

This was after one hour.

I climbed out of the lake to warm back up and explored the shoreline.

Looking towards the east shoreline across what could best be described as muskeg. The lake is obviously filling in, eutrophying as we like to say, with soil and resulting plant communities, mainly sedges and rushes with some heaths like the cranberries, blueberries and Labrador Tea that we saw in the sphagnous bog at Lonesome Lake.

Eutrophication is a complex ecological process, part of "succession", a natural evolution, the results of flux in the environment over the continuum of space and time. It happens everywhere at different rates. The term, itself, is getting confused with the phenomenon receiving news stories about fertilizer runoff, the nutrients in fertilizer, making their way into streams and ponds and causing the explosion of aquatic plants which is also "eutrophication", kind of. But, interestingly enough, Greenleaf Hut used to have flush toilets that dumped into a cess pool below the hut and leakage from that may have "pushed" the eutrophication process in Eagle Lake. It's certainly worth researching.

The mountain and the lake. Questions form around what is the source of organic matter that is entering the lake and why more rapidly in the last 50 years so that eutrophication has increased exponentially?

I was still cold from my swim and came back up to the hut to sit for awhile and enjoy the sun and the view. This is my favorite vista from Greenleaf; it's the view towards the north.

Day business was cranking out of control by early afternoon. There was a single line of hikers from the hut to the summit and the hut and front porch were packed with people stopping for water and snacks on their way to and from Lafayette and the Franconia Ridge (in the background of this photo).

I went in to give Phil a hand with OTC (over the counter sales) which were moving briskly, everything from T-shirts to Hershy bars and lemonade. Phil was the day's cook and up to his elbows in bread dough and soup so I was able to be of some use to him.

Dinner, at 6 o'clock, is always a blur for the croo particularly with a full house of 48 guests.

Lichens on the rocks outside the hut which I plan to key out with my brand new lichen guide!

As you hike around the Whites it begins to dawn on you that lichens might represent the largest population of plants in these mountains. They're everywhere you look, it seems.

Remember this from Lonesome? It's ______________. (hint: it's a rose that's sweet)

Alpine glow on Lafayette at 7 pm Saturday night.

Then at 8 pm.

Followed by this sunrise at 5:40 am Sunday morning.

George at 5:20 am beginning the Sunday's breakfast preparations.

The unofficial 2010 Greenleaf Croo Photo (Phil, Brian, George, Hilary, Mary and Ash).