Beats a Hurricane - Fall Weather Transition

[peakbagger]

Just when I thought I had the fall weather shift figured out, this September is lined up with September's from 20 years ago. It was pretty predictable in the past that the fall weather patterns would be summer like until mid September and then there would be a fairly noticeable switch to wet cool fall weather and then usually switching back to nice weather into October although the duration of the warm stretches shorten up. The last few falls, the nice weather usually stretched into mid October before the fall rains and snow on the summits appeared. This year looks to be return to the old weather pattern. Snow is predicted on the summits in the next few days and the extra cold weather gear is recommended for the summits.

 

[Mac]

"Beats a Hurricane" I hear ya. Still without power 5 days after Fiona, and I live in an urban area of Nova Scotia.

 

[CaptCaper]

Just when I thought I had the fall weather shift figured out, this September is lined up with September's from 20 years ago. It was pretty predictable in the past that the fall weather patterns would be summer like until mid September and then there would be a fairly noticeable switch to wet cool fall weather and then usually switching back to nice weather into October although the duration of the warm stretches shorten up. The last few falls, the nice weather usually stretched into mid October before the fall rains and snow on the summits appeared. This year looks to be return to the old weather pattern. Snow is predicted on the summits in the next few days and the extra cold weather gear is recommended for the summits.

Glacier Nat Park has had a new Glacier formed. First one in many years So much for earth warming.

 

[peakbagger]

"Beats a Hurricane" I hear ya. Still without power 5 days after Fiona, and I live in an urban area of Nova Scotia.

My friends daughter has new home on the north short looking at PEI, They initially were told three weeks for power restoration but were lucky and its now three day. They had a sandy beach that is now gone with only rocks in its place. An adjacent rocky area now has a beech. Its new home so no damage. The front yard is up well above the high water mark but they still found rocks all over it.

 

[peakbagger]

Glacier Nat Park has had a new Glacier formed. First one in many years So much for earth warming.

Sad to say you really need to do some research on things before you post such a broad statement. Worldwide glaciers are receding, yes some new ones may be forming due to changes in weather patterns but overall the trend is very startling decline worldwide.

 

[ChrisB]

Glacier Nat Park has had a new Glacier formed. First one in many years So much for earth warming.

No trolling allowed!

 

[sierra]

No trolling allowed!

I really don't think he is trolling. Some people do not think global warming is occurring.

 

[skiguy]

That is an invalid opinion, it is factually incorrect. It is as invalid as saying the Earth is flat, the Sun circles around the Earth, that the Holocaust didn't happen, that September 11 was fake, that Tom Hanks runs a pedophile ring, or that Trump won the 2020 presidential election. These are factually incorrect and are not up for debate. If you make an invalid statement you are either a troll or you are ignorant. End of story. It's long past time that we call people out for their BS claims. At best they are quackery, but more often they pose a real threat.

Do you still think we are going to need Snow Shoes in 50 years?

 

[TEO]

Do you still think we are going to need Snow Shoes in 50 years?

Depends on where you are. The northern Whites, probably, though for a shorter amount of time. You can play around on the Climate Explorer and see what what some of the modeling predicts given two scenarios. But, that's modeling the future. (The majority of past climate models have been accurate, including those over 50 years old.) Anthropogenic Climate Change has and already is occurring and that's a fact.

 

[MikePS]

I can state as a definitive fact that I will not need snowshoes in 50 years

 

[dave.m]

Thank you Evil One.

If anybody here is old enough to have spent time on rec.backcountry and rec.skiing.backcountry back in the day [1], there was a regular poster named Pete Hickey[2] who worked in Ontario but was passionate about hiking in the Daks. As a demonstration of what is possible, he bike toured from Ontario to the Daks along with his trail maintenance tools, hiked in to the trail that he did volunteer work on, and then rode back home.

The discussion here calls to mind the discussion of cars in "Forest and Crag" and "From Skisport to Skiing", both of which noted how the advent of the car and later improved roads changed the patterns of recreational hiking and skiing. In the late 1800s, hiking was centered around townships with guest houses. In the early 1900s, hikers and skiers traveled by trains to the area. By the 40s, cars dominated and roads where straightening. My grandfather noted that the drive from Stowe VT to Boston (where he went to college) was a 2 day drive. They usually cowboy camped overnight in the woods near Concord, NH. He was still taking the train to go hunting in the 40s and shot a deer on the Underhill line while wearing his Sunday suit. A similar transition took place in Europe with bikes. In the early 1900s, British cyclists rode on Clubman style bikes to escape the cities to the country side and in France, early randonneuring bikes were used in the same way.

IMO, we are deluded to think that our car-centered transportation infrastructure is a result of the democratic force of consumer demand [3]. The global petroleum industry invested massively to influence public spending on roads instead of passenger rail. A second order effect is suburban sprawl that not only eliminated woods around Concord NH that my grandfather used to sleep in but that has made practically impossible to ride a bike from a major urban center to a place where one could hike (unless you have the grit of Pete Hickie).

Wouldn't it be grand to ride your bike to a local train station, ride the trains to the north country, and then be able to ride to a trailhead? Doing so is not really feasible and making it so would require public investment in a rail infrastructure that was... well... on par with the public investment in a car infrastructure (that the oil companies bought, paid for, and got).

Which is to say, those of who drive our cars to trailhead do so not by choice but because its the only feasible way to get there currently. When we do, the car and oil companies rake in huge profits.[4]

[1] - Hopefully I'll be seeing Eugene Miya next week
[2] - Pete Hickey still has an account here on VFTT
[3] - snarky oxymoron
[4] - Nice discussion of the fallacy of carbon guilt here: https://www.gndmedia.co.uk/podcast-episodes/climate-change-as-class-war-with-matthew-huber

 

[peakbagger]

Thank you Evil One.

If anybody here is old enough to have spent time on rec.backcountry and rec.skiing.backcountry back in the day [1], there was a regular poster named Pete Hickey[2] who worked in Ontario but was passionate about hiking in the Daks. As a demonstration of what is possible, he bike toured from Ontario to the Daks along with his trail maintenance tools, hiked in to the trail that he did volunteer work on, and then rode back home.

The discussion here calls to mind the discussion of cars in "Forest and Crag" and "From Skisport to Skiing", both of which noted how the advent of the car and later improved roads changed the patterns of recreational hiking and skiing. In the late 1800s, hiking was centered around townships with guest houses. In the early 1900s, hikers and skiers traveled by trains to the area. By the 40s, cars dominated and roads where straightening. My grandfather noted that the drive from Stowe VT to Boston (where he went to college) was a 2 day drive. They usually cowboy camped overnight in the woods near Concord, NH. He was still taking the train to go hunting in the 40s and shot a deer on the Underhill line while wearing his Sunday suit. A similar transition took place in Europe with bikes. In the early 1900s, British cyclists rode on Clubman style bikes to escape the cities to the country side and in France, early randonneuring bikes were used in the same way.

IMO, we are deluded to think that our car-centered transportation infrastructure is a result of the democratic force of consumer demand [3]. The global petroleum industry invested massively to influence public spending on roads instead of passenger rail. A second order effect is suburban sprawl that not only eliminated woods around Concord NH that my grandfather used to sleep in but that has made practically impossible to ride a bike from a major urban center to a place where one could hike (unless you have the grit of Pete Hickie).

Wouldn't it be grand to ride your bike to a local train station, ride the trains to the north country, and then be able to ride to a trailhead? Doing so is not really feasible and making it so would require public investment in a rail infrastructure that was... well... on par with the public investment in a car infrastructure (that the oil companies bought, paid for, and got).

Which is to say, those of who drive our cars to trailhead do so not by choice but because its the only feasible way to get there currently. When we do, the car and oil companies rake in huge profits.[4]

[1] - Hopefully I'll be seeing Eugene Miya next week
[2] - Pete Hickey still has an account here on VFTT
[3] - snarky oxymoron
[4] - Nice discussion of the fallacy of carbon guilt here: https://www.gndmedia.co.uk/podcast-episodes/climate-change-as-class-war-with-matthew-huber

The whites had incredibly good rail connections at one point to most of the resorts and even directly to the cog. Most of the right of ways still exist, although some are now part of the national forest but the bureau of trails is ripping out the old rails as soon as they have funding to turn them into bike and snowmachine trails.

 

[ChrisB]

The whites had incredibly good rail connections at one point to most of the resorts and even directly to the cog. Most of the right of ways still exist, although some are now part of the national forest but the bureau of trails is ripping out the old rails as soon as they have funding to turn them into bike and snowmachine trails.

Case in point: Last week Iwas up at the Mobile station on Rt16 just before the junction w the Kanc. The porta Johns were occupied so I walked behind the station into the woods. And bang, 50 feet in there was an old rail line heading to Conway and points north. I wondered how many ski trains from Boston traveled it in the 30s and 40s.

North station to North Conway, how sweet.

 

[MikePS]

Of course, I believe, (feel free to correct my assumption) a primary purpose for those trains was shipping lumber off those mountains, they would have been highly deforested in the mid to late 1800s. Not something we would encourage today.

 

[peakbagger]

There were two types of trains in the whites, the passenger railroads were actually here first although the Saint Laurence and Atlantic (Montreal to Portland) was the earliest and was used for both passenger and commercial. The Saint Lawrence river at the time was not open for winter traffic so shipping between Montreal and the ocean went through Portland. Portland was the closest deep water port and at one time had a huge set of grain elevators that dominated the eastern waterfront. Traffic also flowed north. Gorham NH was the site of the major maintenance facility and Gorham at one point was the biggest tourist site in the whites. The claimed biggest attraction in the whites based on tourist numbers was the Alpine Cascade "flume" and the falls on the Androscoggin River. Not so coincidentally the Glen House and the Mt Washington Carraige Road was built soon after. The Portland and Ogdensburg Railroad (Mountain Division through Crawford Notch was built soon after and the got North Conway , the Cog Railroad and the Mt Washington Hotel on the Map The Profile House was a basically a small inn until the rail came by. Soon there were mostly Boston and Maine local tracks to most towns in the northern whites and they carried local traffic. JE Henry didnt start his mountain railroads until later, they were definitely logging railroads with little passenger traffic, most of the logs were processed locally and then the processed boards would be shipped by rail although a large volume of wood was carried down the CT to Mass to be processed.

The Brown Company mills did ship pulp and paper and sawn wood earlier via both the B&M and the SLR with their own inhouse railroad company that also included the Success Pond logging railroad. Brown used the upper Androscoggin Water shed all the way to the Canadian border for its woodbasket so the whites were of not much interest as they were downstream of the mills The big Libby forest operations in Gorham reportedly sold most of their wood locally to support the booming local demand.

Pre passenger auto, the whites were the refuge from the big city, horses were still being used so the streets were loaded with manure, air conditioning was not invented so anyone with the means sent the families away from the cities for the summer, they arrived by rail, stayed the summer and departed by rail with the breadwinner taking the train up north when he could.

I think it came down to logging in the whites was expensive compared to river based logging, much of the "easy" wood was locked up by Brown, Oxford and the Connecticut River Logging company up north so JE Henry figured out a way to make a buck off the hard to get at "old growth" wood in the whites by using shortline logging railroads using the main line tracks already in place.

 

[MikePS]

Thanks for the detailed information, especially interesting that tourism lead the drive for railroads to the Whites first and substantially so. I appreciate the explanation and excellent background information, thanks again!

 

[Mike P.]

Pete H has been on the ADK High Peaks Forum more. One may argue what created the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System, however, we have the ability to anywhere at anytime. I don't have to wait until the train runs from Point A to Point B, I don't have to go to a hub first and then a substation and then figure out how I can get to the middle of nowhere. I know that next weekend, if I want to wake up in Colchester two and a half hours before sunrise, I can drive to Wachusett and see the sunrise behind the Boston skyline. Without roads, I'd have to plan a train ride the evening before, would Wachusett be on the rail line or would I have to get transportation from Worcester or "downtown" Princeton? The automotive economy allows for instant gratification for mobility.

If the world was Willa Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, America would be Veruca Salt, "I want it now Daddy"

 

[Mike P.]

Back on topic, well I avoided Ian by hiking this weekend in the ADK, crisp cool weather is here, overnight in the north country is expected tonight in the 20's. Maybe a little before peak color but not by much and in some spots, it looks amazing. Wore gloves for the first time this season and two layers at the start of a hike.

 

[Rhody Seth]

I hiked Adams/Madison on Saturday and Hale on Sunday. Foliage around Appalachia and Twin Mountain was fantastic. I'm no leaf expert but I'm guessing just shy of peak. Close enough for this guy though. Colors were definitely more muted driving home through Franconia Notch - in another week it'll be splendid. Here's some drone footage from the weekend.

 

[ChrisB]

I hiked Adams/Madison on Saturday and Hale on Sunday. Foliage around Appalachia and Twin Mountain was fantastic. I'm no leaf expert but I'm guessing just shy of peak. Close enough for this guy though. Colors were definitely more muted driving home through Franconia Notch - in another week it'll be splendid. Here's some drone footage from the weekend.

Great drone footage Seth and the music track is perfect. Flying in the mists is a truly unique perspective! Keep on filming !!!!