The White Mountains are so much like the Smokies it’s like
being home except for the crowds and not having the comforts of the house. The
mountains are spectacular but the roads and hiking trails are seriously
over-crowded during the summer (and in leaf season). No, we haven’t been
hiking, but every trailhead parking lot is stuffed and vehicles line the roads
leading to and from the parking lots for quite a distance. We’re within 3
hours of Boston and 2 hours of the heavily populated NH/MA coast so there are a
lot of people close enough to get here for a weekend or even a day. They
are loving the place to death.
Granite face of the mountain looming over Franconia Notch.
Saturday afternoon and Sunday we drove two loops around the
area. On Saturday we did the loop around Mount Washington which took in a
number of small towns including Jackson and Gorham. For those who are
fans of “Following Atticus” and author Tom Ryan, Jackson is where they
live. (Atticus is his now-12-year-old miniature schnauzer companion who
has hiked all 48 of New Hampshire’s 4000-footers several times over along with
most of the lower mountains.) Tom does a wonderful blog about their lives
here in the White Mountains and also has a very good “Following Atticus”
Facebook page. We can see why he doesn’t hike on weekends in the summer
or during leaf season. There is no “peace and quiet and solitude” here
now.
Mount Washington from the east side. Enough clouds on
top that the weather towers aren’t visible. The cog train is on the west
side.
About 20 miles into the 80-mile loop we realized we’d
forgotten to get milk when we were grocery shopping on Friday. I knew
we’d be going through a number of little towns and thought it would be no
problem. We drove and drove and drove and never passed anything that
looked like it had groceries. Finally ended up going off our route into
Berlin where we found a Save-A-Lot and milk. We either passed places we
didn’t recognize as having groceries or people have to drive a very long way to
get food.
Sunday we drove a loop which included the Kancamagus
Highway, the first road designated as a scenic byway in the Northeast.
It’s a lot like the Blue Ridge Parkway but is only 34 miles long and has only
four scenic view overlooks. Again, traffic and people everywhere.
View of Green’s Cliff, Mount Tremont and Owl Cliff from the
best of the four Kancamagus Highway overlooks.
We
stopped at Rocky Gorge which the map said was a picnic area but it was only
sort of one. Apparently people just pick a rock and use it for their
picnic site. Nearly every rock was taken by swimmers, waders and
what-have-yous. Masses of people swimming under the “NO SWIMMING” signs.
People jumping off the rocks at the “NO JUMPING OFF THE ROCKS” signs. We
continued on the route and every possible pull-off and parking place was
crammed with cars. Every spot of river we could see had people in
it. After 2 ½ hours of looking, and being tied up in traffic in the
Conway/North Conway corridor, we finally found a parking area with spaces in it
and no people visible. (They must have been hiking.) Couldn’t
believe it also had two unoccupied picnic tables, one of which was in the
shade! We could see a small piece of river so it turned out to be a
pleasant place to eat. Just as we were leaving a horde of children
arrived. Timing is everything.
Swift River through Rocky Gorge. A person on nearly
every rock.
We stopped at the Russell-Colbath Homestead historic site
which is the still-standing home of one of the early settlers. Their
lives were very hard, much like those of the early settlers of the WNC
mountains, but they had much harsher winters to deal with.
180-year-old Russell-Colbath Homestead on Kancamagus
Highway. The plants climbing up the house at the left end and to the left
of the door are hops which were planted over 100 years ago. The plants
with purple flowers under the windows are a type of thistle which were planted
80 years ago. It’s amazing they’re still coming up every year. Mrs.
Colbath didn’t grow the hops for beer……she made tea from them to treat a
stomach ailment. The historical interpreter at the house said the tea
tasted absolutely horrible but worked as a medical treatment. The patient
probably got better so he wouldn’t have to drink the tea again.
Ruth Priscilla Russell Colbath was the middle of five
daughters of Amzi and Eliza Russell. She lived her entire 80 years on
this farm. When she was 41 her husband went out one night, saying he’d
“be back in a while.” She put a light in the window for him when he
wasn’t home by dark. She continued to put a light in the window every
night for the remaining 39 years of her life. He finally came home three
years after she died. He was said to have visited California, Panama and
Cuba during his years away. Ruth continued to work the farm for the rest
of her life with the help of a hired hand, refusing her sisters’ offers of a
place to live, saying the farm was her home and that’s where she would stay.
Kitchen in the Russell-Colbath Homestead. The house
was extremely well built. The interior has been restored and is kept in
beautiful condition by the Forest Service which has owned it since 1961.
The large cabinet between the windows is a baking center which Ruth bought for
herself. The upper left compartment has a container to hold 20 pounds of
flour with a sifter built in underneath the container. Just turn the
handle and sifted flour falls into the bowl underneath. Next to the
cabinet is the earliest model of a ringer washing machine we’ve ever
seen. It would not have been kept in the kitchen but out in a shed with a
dirt floor because it was emptied by pulling a plug underneath. Ruth must
have been the talk of the neighborhood with her modern conveniences.
Monday we went up Mount Washington on the Cog Railway.
It’s the oldest cog railway in the world, operating continuously since
1869. It took three years to build (1866-1869) and was done strictly to
give people easier access to the mountain. It was built by a man who had
grown up here but left to make his fortune in Chicago. He retired young
and the combination of being bored with retirement along with suffering health
problems brought him back to the mountains for the clean air and water.
He and a friend hiked Mount Washington one day and got caught in a sudden
storm. They got lost but managed to find the summit where they were able
to ride out the weather in Tip Top House. (It was the first hotel built
on the summit and was done before either the railway or the road was
built.) He wanted to make the mountain more accessible so people could
enjoy it so he invented the cog railway which made it possible. The 3 ¼
mile railway route is so steep ordinary train engines cannot handle it, but
with cogs under the engine which engage in a center chain-like track the train
cannot slip backwards. The steepest part of the grade is 37.41%.
Our train coming to get us. Each passenger car is
pushed by an engine.
The old-fashioned steam engine with its passenger car.
We chose not to ride in it because of the cinders and smoke which blow into the
car on the way down when the engine is in front. Passengers either deal
with the cinders and smoke or the windows are shut and the car can be hot and
stuffy. Either way isn’t appealing unless you’re a big steam engine fan.
It’s a good thing the steam engine runs only once a day
because it makes an awful lot of smoke. It uses 2 tons of coal and 1000
gallons of water. There’s no mistaking where it is on the track with the
billows of black smoke it sends up.
The Cog (name of the company) runs both the old-fashioned
steam engine and up to three new biodiesel engines every hour. The
biodiesels are very efficient and use only 16 to 18 gallons per round
trip. They’re not using much at all coming down, so that’s about 5 to 6
gallons per mile for the ascent. The engines push a single passenger car
up to the top and take people back down with the engine in front. There’s
no place to turn the trains around and it isn’t necessary anyway. The
seats are built so they can be reversed with the turn of a knob, so the seat
surface going up becomes the back going down. By this time next year
they’ll have a second track completed so they’ll be able to run twice as many
trains. It certainly appears that business is booming from the crowds at
the top……the museum was full and the summit area was crawling with
people. There’s a sign saying “Mount Washington Summit” where people were
lining up to have their pictures taken. I’m glad we didn’t care about
doing it because we couldn’t get near it.
Jim going up to Tip Top House. It was built around
1860 and has withstood a tremendous beating from storms.
The view from the top wasn’t perfect……we couldn’t see the
Atlantic coast of Maine or west to New York which is possible on really good
days……but the clouds passing over the summit were intermittent so we did get
excellent views of the Presidential Range to the north and south of Mount
Washington. This range of mountains was named for several presidents and
other notables including Daniel Webster, Benjamin Franklin and geologist
Charles Thomas Jackson (so, no, Mount Jackson is not for President Andrew
Jackson as I thought). Mount Clay was named for Henry Clay who ran for
president six times and was obviously expected to win at some point. New
Hampshire changed the name to Mount Reagan but the original name is still the
one recognized by the federal government. Mount Washington was named for
George Washington in 1784 when he was a general. Whoever started this
naming business wasn’t looking ahead to these mountains becoming known as the
Presidential Range.
The northern section of the Presidential Range with Mounts
Clay, Jefferson, Adams and Madison. The Appalachian Trail crosses the
tops of all of these peaks. The light-colored rectangle in the center is
a heli-pad. The first helicopter was brought up here by the military and
was blown to pieces by the wind.
Sherman Adams Building on the summit of Mount Washington
with the tallest weather tower. The whole summit is covered in
pre-glacial boulders. They were frozen solid before the glaciers arrived
and stayed where they were. These mountains were once as high as the
Rockies so the boulders are the left-overs from the 9000 feet of mountains that
have eroded away.
Mount Washington has the worst weather in the world.
Part of the reason for this is the north-south orientation of the Presidential
Range which increases wind speed from storms coming from the west. The
weather is highly unpredictable with extremely high wind speeds and whiteout
conditions all along the range. Because of this the area is used for
mountaineering training for people who go on to climb Everest and K-2.
The highest wind gust ever recorded was 231 mph on Mount Washington in
1934.
All this equipment has to withstand 230+ mph winds.
View to the east, 2000 feet down to the Wildcat Ski Area.
Mount Washington is 6288 feet, about 400 feet lower than Mount Mitchell.
The reason its weather is so much worse than Mount Mitchell’s, apart from being
about 1100 miles further north, is being in the direct path of storm systems
coming from four directions. It can even get hit by hurricanes coming up
the coast. It makes for a fascinating study for meteorologists.
It’s now Tuesday and we’re in Pemaquid Point, Maine.
I’ll report on our stay here on Thursday or Friday.
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