noise pollution..low flying jets etc

[griffin]

Actually, DO they post where they'll be holding exercises?

Just curious - I was in the moors in the UK years ago walking through an area that they'd used for training, and there were signs all over the place warning us "not to touch anything, it may explode and kill you"

Not that flight drills in the Whites are going to cause that kind of hazard, but it's the kind of thing the neighbors might want to know in advance.

 

[David Metsky]

Hiking during motorcycle week is always a slightly noisy experience. Franconia Ridge is never out of earshot of Harleys, plus they're going up and down the Auto Road.

Just one of the fun aspects of hiking in NH. It's not like the area has been very wilderness-y for a long time.

-dave-

 

[Bobby]

In October, Sapblatt and I saw two A-10's in a refueling exercise over the Northern Presi's. It lasted all of a few minutes and was cool to watch. Yeah, it was a little noisy, but it ended soon enough. I was fortunate enough to get a couple of pictures. I think if you're looking for a noise free hiking environment, maybe the Whites aren't the best place to be.

mid air refueling over northern presi's #1

mid air refueling over northern presi's #2

 

[Enapai]

Schedules for ANG trainings and other ramblings...

It is my understanding that there is a significant swath of airspace above the NEK in VT and North Country of NH that is considered semi-restricted for military training use. Based upon my interaction with ANG pilots, I do believe there is a minimum height that is supposed to be maintained unless there is a specific excercise that requires differently. Of course since I am not an ANG pilot, I cannot verify this in any manner.

I know the VT ANG flies F-16s and usually hear (sometimes see them) over the area. I do believe the A-10s come from southern NE. The VT ANG anounces when they do night flights (a certain percentage of their training is at night) and when they are doing an extended period of training. In general I see this on the news on WCAX out of Burlington. I do not know if it is posted on some sort of web site somewhere where other people can access it (obviously the people nearest the airport in Burlington are the most affected). Outside of the concentrated "2 week training period a year" most of the time I never hear the planes more than once a month.

I grew up going to the ADKs for much of the summer and found it quite exciting to watch the A-10s doing their trainings from the air base in Plattsburgh. Obviously since the base has closed, there is not as much air traffic.

Considering I always wanted to be a pilot, I guess I find the planes more facinating than annoying. My experience has been that they depart almost as quickly as they arrive and off hand I cannot remember seeing the planes more than 3 times in a day. I find the motor vehicle traffic through the Whites to be just a disrupting (though a way of life) and have come to accept that when I hike in Franconia Notch and to some extent Pinkham Notch, the last half to three quarters of a mile to the road will be surrounded with road noise. I do avoid NH during "bike week" like the plague (enough of them come through where I live as it is). Of course the beauty of the area would never allow me to consider "avoiding" an entire section.

Just my 2 cents, Enapai

 

[Pig Pen]

Um, are there really people who spend alot of time worrying about whether they will hear planes or snowmobiles on a hike, or is this an early April Fool's Joke?

 

[forestgnome]

I consider noise when planning, but I don't always try to avoid it. A typical hike for me includes a long bushwack for the decent, so I know I'll have plenty of quiet time in the forest.

Noise is quite predictable in the White Mtns. Certain places are noisey at certain times. All places have quiet times. Many places are always quiet.

Happy Trails

 

[jrichard]

like 'em

The higher-pitch whine of the warthogs aren't that bad. I have fond memories of looking down at them running between the ridges as they flew though Franconia notch. I haven't seen them do that in the last 15 years. I do see them practicing with their new toys (flares).

What's really annoying is the commercial aircraft. They aren't bad around the Whites, but in southern NH, there are some (marginally) rural areas where you practically need to shout to be heard every twenty minutes or so.

Edit: Oh yeah, with the right conditions motorcycle engines with straight pipes are probably the loudest thing around. Sometimes I could swear they are audible from the Bond Cliffs and Isolation. Or maybe that's just the echos still ringing in my ears.

 

[snowbird22]

Hopefully the link works and the map comes up in the position over the white mountains where I left it. If not you can scroll over there. It is an aeronautical map. It shows Yankee 1 and 2 MOA's (Military Operations Area) In fact MOA's are everywhere around country. That MOA I believe is good from the sfc to 9000' MSL. Just posted it to give anyone who cares an idea of how it is mapped out.

http://skyvector.com/

 

[dentonfabrics]

I agree with what seems to be the concensus here - that a little noise, in exchange for the thrill of seeing the jets, is okay.

But a couple of years ago I was hiking around Flat Mountain the day after the London subway bombs went off and I kept hearing the jets buzzing around all afternoon. I kept thinking to myself "what's the commotion about? Have we been attacked? Did they get Boston? Are my loved ones okay?"

In that case, the constant buzzing of the overhead fighters did not make for a nice afternoon in the woods.


bob

 

[spider solo]

Um, are there really people who spend alot of time worrying about whether they will hear planes or snowmobiles on a hike, or is this an early April Fool's Joke?

Well of course that is the question that is being asked (not the part about April fools).

Off hand it doesn't seem that people spend alot of time "worrying" about it but as we can tell here some people do take that it into consideration and plan their hikes around it to some extent.

The article I read (which mercifully somebody might know how to link to it) was a preliminary about jets flying over head at 500' instead of the 2,000 or 3,000 ft that they currently do in that area.

to paraphrase dave M, in realtion to noise, (I don't know how to do multiple
quotes) it's all part of hiking NH .

I tend to look at it this way.. after countless thousands of years before motorized transportation was invented or omnipresent we give up with hardly a thought the quiteness and natural sounds that were accepted as a normal part of being alive.
Now it is the rarity that people would even notice that it has happened.
To ask for a day of no traffic ..or even a 1/2 day would seem outlandish and beyound all reasonable requests by the vast majority of people.

Motorcyles get mentioned a lot.
Last year we went to a beautiful lake in VT.300 ft deep crystal clear beautiful water with some of the states largest fish. Mountains & cliffs you could climb if so inclined.
As we paddled the beautiful waters you could hear the approaching bikes miles in advance before you even saw them ..then for miles after they passed.
Beautiful as it was we will never expect to return to it ..to us it has lost the charm that people only a few generations ago would have enjoyed enormously.

Some folks don't mind jets over head, some enjoy it, some don't like it.
but
I bet I know one sound that would get lots of people all "riled up".
Yet in reality it only affects a few people who might be close enough to hear it.

The sound of someones cell phone ringing while your on some mountain top!!
a much more subtle form of noise pollution that somehow cuts right to the core of many people.


( i also didn't know how to put the thread into both the ny forum and the new engand forum for a wider idea of what people thought)

 

[Andrew]

A friend of mine hikes with the large type noise excluding headphones due to his annoyance with humanly sounds (for him it's almost everything since he lives on a lake and the jet skiis and leaf blowers pushed him over the edge), but I would think that my thoughts would become too noisy!

I don't think I would ever want to have to resort to this since it would exclude the wind in the trees, babbling brooks, bird songs/ calls, a rustle of leaves from a short tailed weasel, or the snap of a branch which precludes a moose sighting. Some times I thought it would be nice to listen to some tunes through headphones, but the above opportunities ALWAYS outweigh this.

 

[jrichard]

A friend of mine hikes with the large type noise excluding headphones due to his annoyance with humanly sounds .

Do those headphones really work? I thought they only filtered the white noise? I imagine that they wouldn't be able to filter voices or inconsistent noise. Would it work for highway traffic?

I used to hike Monadnock quite a bit. I've been tempted to use earplugs, especially on the ridge and the summit. I just haven't thought though the tradeoffs.

Speaking of warthogs, I just saw three of them about 500' over Nashua. No flares and nothing visible on the pylons, but they were doing sharp banking maneuvers. I assume they were at, or close to, full throttle. The noise was noticeable, but certainly bearable given that they were only overhead for a minute or two. For comparison, a prop plane flew over a bit later. It wasn't quite as loud, but the slow drone seemed more annoying somehow. My wife commented that the A-10s were cooler. Maybe we're willing to cut something we consider to be more interesting more slack.

Edit: Oh yeah, great photos of the midair refueling. While hiking the Cohos trail, just about at Panoramic Shelter, we saw what appeared to be two KC-130s flying in refueling position. One just about under the other. It was dusk and they were directly overhead so it was hard to tell what was going on. I suppose it could have just been close-formation flying. FWIW: I could barely hear them.

 

[psmart]

News report today from AP & WMUR:

PITTSBURG, N.H. -- The Air National Guard is proposing to allow fighter pilots to fly low-level training flights over New Hampshire's North Country.

http://www.wmur.com/news/11438002/detail.html

When they say "North Country" I think they mean Pittsburg area, rather than the WMNF.

Edit: And here are related articles about "Western Maine":
http://morningsentinel.mainetoday.com/news/local/3758473.html
http://news.mainetoday.com/updates/010475.html

 

[spider solo]

Thanks for the links.
Keeping the issue rather simplistic I would say sure if that came to pass... I would definetley find some place else to hike .
When I think of Monson I think Appalachian Trail.."hundred mile wilderness" things like that.
I would be thankful for the fact that I got to hike it when I did but I would go else where.

Of course the issue is much larger than this small thread in this forum.
It affects lots of people outside the hiking community.
I hope their voices are heard one way or the other when there is a chance for input at the appropriate places.

 

[skiguy]

The ADK use to see alot more traffic when SAC was still there. Onetime on Marcy I saw three of them flying under the level of the summit to the point where we were actually looking down on them. Usually it is so short lived that it never bothers me. It's all been going on for years. When I lived in the Lakes Region of NH we actually had one eject and land up in a neighbor's tree. Now that would be different if one dropped in for dinner while you were at Guyout for the night.

 

[Stan]

I've never found it necessary to go out of my way to avoid noise but am not particularly pleased with low flying aircraft disrupting the natural sounds and peacefulness of such areas as the mountains and ponds of the Whites.

Chaulk it up as the price of national security, I guess, but I hope someone scheduling these trainings has had at least the consideration to inquire of the state's environmental agencies as to where and when they conduct these operations. A concern for me is that at certain times of the year, such flights could discourage nesting or perhaps reproduction of certain species ... for example, loons nesting on a place like Long Pond near Moosilauke might abandon their nests, or the pond entirely, if disturbed too much by any kind of threatening activity and I would expect such flights would be such an activity. Furthermore, I hope no one needs a 5-year $10 million grant to figure that out.

 

[Dr. Dasypodidae]

I heard A-10s make a couple of passes in the morning and then again in the late afternoon during my Twins/Bonds traverse yesterday (Thursday). But, the wind gusts that I encountered between Guyot and Bond Cliff were far nosier, with each series of gusts every 15 to 20 seconds or so prefacing itself with a low roar, much like a subway train approaching an underground station on the Boston Metro. The roars of the wind gusts across Bond Cliff were particularly deafening, and I was relieved to reach the woods out of direct earshot, although I could still hear the subdued roar of the wind gusts all the way out to Lincoln Woods. The wind speeds were not all that extreme, enough to knock me down if not braced, but certainly no higher than 50 or 60 mph.

 

[Andrew]

jrichard-

I assume the headphones work for him as he always wears them. Although I saw him today and he said he saw my post, and that he actually only wore them so he didn't have to listen to me and took them off after he hit the trail.

 

[forestgnome]

A concern for me is that at certain times of the year, such flights could discourage nesting or perhaps reproduction of certain species ... for example, loons nesting on a place like Long Pond near Moosilauke might abandon their nests, or the pond entirely

This is a good point. We humans can deal with disturbing noise, but what about the wildlife?

Like clockwork, on certain weekends tourists fill our neighborhood, which surrounds three lakes where loons live and nest. They celebrate their new freedom ( by being in NH ) with fireworks, speakers on the deck, and screaming "woohoo" (tourist mating call). Many times we have heard the loons make a certain call after a loud round of fireworks. I have learned that this particular call is a stress call. We always worry if the loons will abandon the lakes, but they haven't so far.

 

[DougPaul]

Many times we have heard the loons make a certain call after a loud round of fireworks. I have learned that this particular call is a stress call. We always worry if the loons will abandon the lakes, but they haven't so far.

I have seen loons perform a stress display (rear up and flap their wings) and emit a stress call as two A-10s passed overhead. (Jabes Pond, NY)

Doug