arghman
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Well my week off this year wasn't as spectacular as last years', but I definitely did have a good vacation with lots of botanical stuff, over a dozen new species for my photo collection, and a few rare plant reports to send off to NH Natural Heritage Bureau (NHB). Highlights:
A perfect weather day on Mt Washington, Jul 1. Those of you who were also up in the area know what I mean. NWS forecast was for about 5% chance of precip + 0% chance of thunderstorms. Fairly gusty winds most of the day, nice in the morning but overcast after noon; there was some thunder around 3-4pm, and my hiking companion and I got caught in a 10-minute hailstorm between Lakes Hut and Mt Washington shortly thereafter, with thick fog above 5000ft persisting after the hail came through. This was a plant survey for one of those obscure alpine plants in an obscure area that was a bit off of an obscure trail.
Due to my foot trouble & time constraints, she drove us up the auto road to hike down. She and I had "hiking incompatibilities" in pace and preparedness, which I won't go into -- we had very little time to survey once we got to the spot in question. Found some plants but not in bloom so a bit disappointing. We did run across an occurrence of a completely different plant species that probably wasn't in NHNHB's database, so that made my day, despite the frustration of being very rushed the whole day and arriving at the camp where I stayed about 2 hrs later than I had wanted. This sort of thing (the serendipity, not the lateness) seems to happen a lot; I have more finds by accident than by design.
Most of the week I stuck to fairly easy hikes (whether purely for recreation or for recreational botany or for a formal plant survey).
Blueberry Mountain (Evans Notch) -- probably the biggest reward for the effort in the Caribou / Speckled Mountain area. I do wish they had left this one out of the Wilderness area; our camp has group hikes and it's a real dilemma when there's a hard hike somewhere and the easy/moderate hike that day is to Blueberry in the Wilderness Area -- lots of people then sign up for Blueberry and someone has to make the tough call for which are the 10 people that get to go, and the rest have to find their own easy hike. I went there on my own a different day and met enough different groups heading around the trails over the summit that, to me, it just seems like a cruel joke to put Wilderness restrictions in place here. Little chance of solitude because of the popularity, but moderately-sized groups get shut out. OK, end rant. Anyway it's a very nice ledgy summit, more open than I'd remembered from a few years ago, and well-named. Vaccinium angustifolium is abundant. Some occasional V. uliginosum (alpine bilberry) but no sign of fruit. Access by the easier approach (White Cairn / Stone House Tr) is through private land where the landowner thankfully allows people to traverse his property. Some of the local beaver are less courteous and have flooded a few hundred feet of the lower end of the White Cairn trail, though.
Found two species of tearthumb by nearby Shell Pond. These sound nasty in the guidebooks, but they don't have thorns, just some teeth on the stems, which I read somewhere helps them climb up over other plants (like a ratchet preventing back-slipping).
Polygonum sagittatum (arrow-leaved tearthumb) and P. arifolium (halberd-leaved tearthumb)
Mt Cabot in Shelburne -- I can't rate it very highly but it was a decent short hike with limited views. The area of Shelburne between the Androscoggin and the Mahoosuc Range seems to have a mosquito and black fly training camp every summer, however, more so than other areas in the Whites, so that takes a bit of the fun out of it. The trailhead starts at the end of one of the driveways at the Philbrook Farm Inn. I took the Blue Trail up (lots of graffiti-laced beech trees towards the top) and the Red Trail down, intending to take the Scudder Trail over to Mt Ingalls from Mt Cabot. It should have been renamed the Skidder Trail, however; timber cuts in the last 5-10 years have started some thick spruce growth & seem to have erased the trail and the blazes just sort of disappeared. I could have got my wilderness experience here but was not really in the mood.
Another find (somewhere else) just east of the Maine border was this nominee for Ugliest Plant, which is actually on the rare list in NH but not in ME, so if it had been a mile further west I could have added another rare plant occurrence. drat.
Conopholis americana (squawroot)
I was trying to take it easy & save up my pain tolerance for Friday to hike up Shelburne Moriah, but wasn't feeling quite up to an 11-mile hike on a trail with little probability of seeing anyone else. So instead last Friday I drove over to Pinkham Notch, planning on hiking partway up Boott Spur (up Tuckerman Ravine Trail then the Boott Spur Link, then down the Boott Spur Trail). When I got to the Hermit Lake area near the main building, there was a moose standing there.
I could just picture the wheels turning slowly in its head. Eventually it walked around the building, nibbled on some leaves by the big avalanche warning signs, and then headed off in another direction.
Boott Spur Link was very windy (30-40 mi/hr?) in its upper section, though unlike the previous Saturday the day was very clear and sunny. Despite the steepness this is a nice trail, lots of diapensia / bearberry willow / alpine bilberry / mountain cranberry covering the rocky terrain with a very low cover of vegetation that can withstand the winds. I felt fairly good and went further up to Boott Spur and a few meanderings beyond, heading back down Tuckerman Ravine Trail where I encountered some of the Catholic seminary groups from CT in their white shirts and slacks.
I hate the lower section of Tuckerman Ravine Trail (between Pinkham and Hermit Lake) because it's so @#%@#% rocky, but made it back to my car without too much foot pain. 9 miles and 3800+ ft, not bad, probably more than I should have but the day was too good to just sit and watch the clouds or something (not to mention there weren't clouds to watch).
Tuckerman Ravine is not yet in its full glory, probably will be another week or two until the arnica is out in bloom.
I hope next year I can do a little more mileage.
A perfect weather day on Mt Washington, Jul 1. Those of you who were also up in the area know what I mean. NWS forecast was for about 5% chance of precip + 0% chance of thunderstorms. Fairly gusty winds most of the day, nice in the morning but overcast after noon; there was some thunder around 3-4pm, and my hiking companion and I got caught in a 10-minute hailstorm between Lakes Hut and Mt Washington shortly thereafter, with thick fog above 5000ft persisting after the hail came through. This was a plant survey for one of those obscure alpine plants in an obscure area that was a bit off of an obscure trail.
Due to my foot trouble & time constraints, she drove us up the auto road to hike down. She and I had "hiking incompatibilities" in pace and preparedness, which I won't go into -- we had very little time to survey once we got to the spot in question. Found some plants but not in bloom so a bit disappointing. We did run across an occurrence of a completely different plant species that probably wasn't in NHNHB's database, so that made my day, despite the frustration of being very rushed the whole day and arriving at the camp where I stayed about 2 hrs later than I had wanted. This sort of thing (the serendipity, not the lateness) seems to happen a lot; I have more finds by accident than by design.Most of the week I stuck to fairly easy hikes (whether purely for recreation or for recreational botany or for a formal plant survey).
Blueberry Mountain (Evans Notch) -- probably the biggest reward for the effort in the Caribou / Speckled Mountain area. I do wish they had left this one out of the Wilderness area; our camp has group hikes and it's a real dilemma when there's a hard hike somewhere and the easy/moderate hike that day is to Blueberry in the Wilderness Area -- lots of people then sign up for Blueberry and someone has to make the tough call for which are the 10 people that get to go, and the rest have to find their own easy hike. I went there on my own a different day and met enough different groups heading around the trails over the summit that, to me, it just seems like a cruel joke to put Wilderness restrictions in place here. Little chance of solitude because of the popularity, but moderately-sized groups get shut out. OK, end rant. Anyway it's a very nice ledgy summit, more open than I'd remembered from a few years ago, and well-named. Vaccinium angustifolium is abundant. Some occasional V. uliginosum (alpine bilberry) but no sign of fruit. Access by the easier approach (White Cairn / Stone House Tr) is through private land where the landowner thankfully allows people to traverse his property. Some of the local beaver are less courteous and have flooded a few hundred feet of the lower end of the White Cairn trail, though.
Found two species of tearthumb by nearby Shell Pond. These sound nasty in the guidebooks, but they don't have thorns, just some teeth on the stems, which I read somewhere helps them climb up over other plants (like a ratchet preventing back-slipping).
Polygonum sagittatum (arrow-leaved tearthumb) and P. arifolium (halberd-leaved tearthumb)
Mt Cabot in Shelburne -- I can't rate it very highly but it was a decent short hike with limited views. The area of Shelburne between the Androscoggin and the Mahoosuc Range seems to have a mosquito and black fly training camp every summer, however, more so than other areas in the Whites, so that takes a bit of the fun out of it. The trailhead starts at the end of one of the driveways at the Philbrook Farm Inn. I took the Blue Trail up (lots of graffiti-laced beech trees towards the top) and the Red Trail down, intending to take the Scudder Trail over to Mt Ingalls from Mt Cabot. It should have been renamed the Skidder Trail, however; timber cuts in the last 5-10 years have started some thick spruce growth & seem to have erased the trail and the blazes just sort of disappeared. I could have got my wilderness experience here but was not really in the mood.
Another find (somewhere else) just east of the Maine border was this nominee for Ugliest Plant, which is actually on the rare list in NH but not in ME, so if it had been a mile further west I could have added another rare plant occurrence. drat.
Conopholis americana (squawroot)
I was trying to take it easy & save up my pain tolerance for Friday to hike up Shelburne Moriah, but wasn't feeling quite up to an 11-mile hike on a trail with little probability of seeing anyone else. So instead last Friday I drove over to Pinkham Notch, planning on hiking partway up Boott Spur (up Tuckerman Ravine Trail then the Boott Spur Link, then down the Boott Spur Trail). When I got to the Hermit Lake area near the main building, there was a moose standing there.
I could just picture the wheels turning slowly in its head. Eventually it walked around the building, nibbled on some leaves by the big avalanche warning signs, and then headed off in another direction.
Boott Spur Link was very windy (30-40 mi/hr?) in its upper section, though unlike the previous Saturday the day was very clear and sunny. Despite the steepness this is a nice trail, lots of diapensia / bearberry willow / alpine bilberry / mountain cranberry covering the rocky terrain with a very low cover of vegetation that can withstand the winds. I felt fairly good and went further up to Boott Spur and a few meanderings beyond, heading back down Tuckerman Ravine Trail where I encountered some of the Catholic seminary groups from CT in their white shirts and slacks.
I hate the lower section of Tuckerman Ravine Trail (between Pinkham and Hermit Lake) because it's so @#%@#% rocky, but made it back to my car without too much foot pain. 9 miles and 3800+ ft, not bad, probably more than I should have but the day was too good to just sit and watch the clouds or something (not to mention there weren't clouds to watch).
Tuckerman Ravine is not yet in its full glory, probably will be another week or two until the arnica is out in bloom.
I hope next year I can do a little more mileage.
