Nelson County Rocks

the morning of February 17

The view from our door stoop in the early dawn a few days ago.  Below: my first sighting of an American Woodcock on our property.

We have yet to experience a real snowfall in our valley, but the mountains got a fairly decent one last night.   Above: views of The Priest and Three Ridges.

   
(If you click on the images for larger ones, you can make out the skunk.)

The AT hike in my previous post occurred during archery hunting season, which I’m basically ok with (using a simple economic analysis, I assume that because arrows cost much more than bullets, archers will be more careful about their targets than gun users).  But gun hunting season is now beginning in earnest, and I make it a practice to stay out of the woods during that period.  I don’t particularly like it, but hunting is definitely part of the local culture and fortunately nearby Shenandoah National Park, where hunting is banned, is a safe alternative.

The pictures above actually tell a different story.  Our two neighbors down the hill phoned us one Sunday morning in June and said that a rabid skunk was heading up our way and they were following it with a rifle.  I went out back and found that the skunk had entered our outer chicken run.  However it fairly quickly left it and started into our woods.  Our neighbor Frank started shooting at it, but the skunk quite nonchalantly managed to escape the bullets popping around it.  It ambled down toward the road, where Derek succeeded in killing it.  Just as it was hit, the skunk let out its tell-tale smell, which sent us all running!

Now the fact the skunk seemed so unconcerned about the bullets flying around it seemed to confirm the diagnosis of rabies, and that may have been so.  However, another local friend who knows a lot about these things says that skunks, knowingly armed with their highly effective stink, don’t frighten easily, and so it’s possible that it was simply exhibiting the self-assured nonchalance of the species.  (The frequency of run-over skunks on the road might suggest the downside of that self-assurance.)  Either way, it stinks!

Having hiked the 45 miles of the Appalachian Trail in Nelson County last year, I’m starting on the trail as it goes south into Amherst County.  Today I hiked, with Dave Pfeiffer, an 8.5 mile stretch from Salt Log Gap to Route 60 that includes two cleared summits, Tar Jacket Ridge and Cold Mountain, that offer great views in all directions. Most leaves had fallen at the higher elevations, but there was still nice color below.  A beautiful, if somewhat hazy, fall day for a hike.

    

   

Spy Rock on the Appalachian Trail nearby remains my favorite local walk, with a 360 degree panorama, almost all wilderness and mountains.  Autumn foliage wasn’t quite at its peak, but the colors were still nice.

  

Reminder: all pictures on this blog may be clicked on for a larger one

Biking the Blue Ridge Railway trail along the Piney and Tye Rivers

Meeting my former Harvard roommate Joe Persky (and his son Dan)
at Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park

 

Hiking along the James River Heritage Trail from Lynchburg across Percival Island and over to the Amherst County side of the river and back.

Revisiting outlooks over Rockfish Valley along Blue Ridge Parkway and I-64 that helped convince us to move here.

This box turtle was sauntering along our woodland path this morning, just like me.

August 20, 2012

This post will mix reminiscences about three traverse attempts across the Presidential Range of New Hampshire’s White Mountains: a winter traverse with the Harvard Mountaineering Club way back in January 1963; a planned June 2007 traverse with five family members which an ill-timed accident prevented me from participating in; and the backpacking trip last week with my two sons Nic and Tim and their wives Alison and Megan.  Each of these trips was interrupted by Mt. Washington’s famously bad weather, but with my climb over Mt. Pierce and up Mt. Madison with Nic (pictured above with Mt. Adams in the background), I finally completed the ascent of all the “president” Presidentials.

Origins

It seems almost insane in retrospect, but as a Harvard freshman with some hiking but no real mountaineering experience, I participated in what was then a Harvard Mountaineering Club (HMC) tradition: a winter traverse of the Presidential range at the end of January, in the break between semesters.  My memories are a bit hazy, but I know that we hiked up to a cabin quite high on the side of Mt. Adams on the first day, and then continued, with snowshoes and crampons, the next day over the summits of Adams, Jefferson and Clay to the side of Mt. Washington, where we pitched tents outside the (boarded up) Lake of the Clouds AMC hut.  I believe that we hiked up late that afternoon to the weather observatory on the summit of Mt. Washington, where the meteorologists, unused to visitors that time of year, invited us in for a short visit.  It was a cold night back in our tents!  The next day we continued on over the various summits to what was then called Mt. Pleasant (later renamed Mt. Eisenhower).  Here we ran into a ferocious snow storm with very high winds, and we were literally blown off the mountain, making an unplanned descent of its eastern side.  My main memory of that descent is crossing a field of young conifers on my snowshoes, and falling through the snow into the air pockets created by branches under the snow, getting the snowshoes tangled up in the branches.  But somehow we made it through and out.

The 2007 Expedition

As noted above, I did not get to go on the 2007 hike, but it too was interrupted by bad weather.  Having climbed the Mt. Webster-Jackson trail out of Crawford Notch, going over Mts. Webster and Jackson and staying at Mizpah Hut the first night, the group (Cally, Sylvia, Nic, Alison and Justin, along with Lee Spiller who took the picture above) had beautiful weather for the stretch along the AT onward to Lake of the Clouds Hut.  But the next day (in June!) brought freezing temperatures, snow and sleet, and a decision was made to come down the trail that ends up at the cog railway station, not risking the very exposed route over the northern Presidentials to the Madison Spring Hut.

click here for a YouTube video of their second day

2012: A Detour and a Completion

This past week, our party of five followed the Crawford Path from Crawford Notch up to Mizpah Spring Hut and the AT, where we spent our first night.  The next day, which started in the fog but cleared up nicely, we continued over Mts. Pierce, Eisenhower and Monroe and then on to  Lake of the Clouds Hut, where we spent the night.  Since Alison has led tours at President Monroe’s home, Ashlawn, climbing Mt. Monroe (5372′) was a special moment, and she was pleased that Mt. Monroe, with its two peaks, compares very well to the other southern Presidentials.

The next morning we hiked up to the summit of Mt. Washington, the highest mountain (6288′) in the U.S. northeast.  The weather worsened at the summit, however, and after waiting two hours to see if it would get better (it didn’t), we reluctantly arranged to take a van down to our car at Pinkham Notch.  We then drove around to the Valley Trail up to Madison Spring Hut (seeing a mother moose and her calf along the way).  Coming on top of our climb up Mt. Washington in the morning, the hike up the Valley Trail proved to be an exhausting one (with a 3500 feet elevation increase), but we all made it while dinner at the hut was still in progress.  In the morning, Nic and I climbed Mt. Madison, which along with Mt. Pierce, belatedly completed for me the Presidentials that the Harvard Mountaineering Club traverse had not covered.  The weather partly cleared at the top, giving us beautiful views of the clouds below and the summit of nearby Mt. Adams.  We all hiked out later in the afternoon and headed to my sister Eleanor’s place in the Catskills.  Overall, a great trip, and my thanks to Nic and Tim for conceiving and organizing it.

click here for more pictures of the 2012 trip

click here to learn more about the AMC huts