ms doody and i got the ap chem lab ready and i grabbed some supplies to use with the third graders. on the way from the high school to the grade school i passed through a couple of silvery tunnels. tree limbs were covered with a heavy coat of ice. in one of the third grades we did an exciting demo on air pressure, crushing aluminum cans by heating and rapidly cooling the air inside them. amid the bubble of excitement watching such instant, dramatic change, there were all sorts of observations offered as to why and i left everybody thinking. on the way back home, the ice was starting to melt and fall like hail. i thought, wow, what a good time to go up and catch the action on cardigan.
i packed a quick bag and headed out. no cars were in the winter parking lot, but as i started up the gated road, i noticed boot tracks in the half inch of very wet snow--two sets going up and two coming down. i wished i had been up here earlier--maybe even as the wintery mix (this is the second time i have linked this site--it is that good!) was falling. rounding the first corner and heading up the second steep section the ice in the trees grew thicker, cool, things had not started falling yet. i was pumped with the possibility of what i would see up higher and even imagined the sun coming out and sparkling things up! what i was to find was much less dramatic, and definitely more mysterious. like the third graders this morning i was left wondering what was going on...and why?
basically, what i was seeing was a ton of the ice load--all on the ground now--but only in certain sections. where i saw the majority of ice was on the steeper sections of trail. on the flatter areas, there was nearly no fallen ice. crazily, this transition could be within yards of each other. the following four pictures are within a hundred yard section, alternating between flatter and steeper, and again flatter and steeper. weird stuff.
was there some kind of air current factor? did elevation play any part? did the increasing pools of melt indicate that there was ice but now it was gone? i had plenty of time to think about it as i hiked--the problem was as i got higher and higher, the changes kept adding new questions. it seemed like it was getting warmer and the evidence of ice was definitely disappearing. i was enjoying trying to figure out what was going on and before i knew it i was up on the slabs.
once at tree line, the only ice left was tucked deep into the thick, dark sections of the dense scrubby spruce off the trail. as those 'forested' bits gave way to nearly all rock, the wind swirled the cloud covering the mtn., lifting and dropping it, like shaking out a blanket atop a bed. up at the top, the sun seemed to be right behind that cloud, at times so bright i wondered why i left my darkglasses at home. i stopped at the trail marker right below the summit, braced myself against a steady wind--my guess was 20mph with gusts to 30--and took a series of pictures, counting to twenty between each one. the clouds whipped around me and the tower came into and out of view.
i suppose it doesn't look like much changes in the pictures, but i was fascinated by what i could see and what i couldn't. hannah, sawyer, colin roebuck, and i have talked about 'series photos'--over both space and time--for a while now. when i started today's hike i revisited the notion of pictures going up the mountain and then coming back down spread out over a year. these four, out of eight total, or about three minutes worth of trying to hold things steady, connected me back to that idea. as my hands got colder and colder, i finally tucked the camera away and went up and stood out of the wind on the lee side of the actually solid tower.
when i headed down i could feel it getting colder. that was a bit odd as most of the snow and ice i had seen going up, had melted. i started to think that the ice that was more present at lower elevations was due to the inversion that brought the freezing rain in the first place. cold sinks and pools which helped me make some sense of the conditions i was seeing today. like my last post noted, it is always interesting, weather-wise, to live in new england.
