OUR
COMMENTS - April, 2002
The Winter that Wasn't & the Spring that Was (Winter)
Our last posting in January mentioned the short winter in progress and included an update about winter's return at the end of the month. The update proved to be premature and the additional week of winter weather at the beginning of February quickly disappeared, to be followed by a very warm and dry February and early March. We missed the March 10 Great Glen to Bretton Woods Ski Race, which had to be moved to a loop course entirely on the Bretton Woods resort trail system. A lack of snow on the old woods road system and former rail-bed made the original point to point course around Mount Washington impractical. Even though we weren't keen on skiing a closed loop trail with a crowd of competitors, we prepped our skis at the cottage the night before. We arose at 5:30 AM on race morning and observed the morning fog that had replaced the previous night's steady rain, and also noted that the temperature was 45 degrees. We elected to stay home and had a nice walk on North Road instead of skiing that day.
First Mountain was reduced to a single snow patch nestled in a protected valley just behind the cottage by the middle of March. For all practical purposes winter had departed for the season and the bare, dry ground made one large white snowshoe hare look very out of place in the woods. At the same time last year, we were snowshoeing in a thirty inch plus snowpack. We also had a lot of bent and broken birch saplings then as a result of heavy deer and moose broswsing, something not witnessed this season.
Just as I packed away the skis and began planning spring planting and woods work, snow began to fall on the afternoon of March 18 and continued uninterrupted until the next morning. First Mountain had an overnight snow accumulation of about nine inches while Gorham, some five miles to the west, experienced only a light dusting of snow. Still, the ground was warm and the sun bright and the new snow quickly compacted to only an inch or so in depth within a day's time. The first official day of Spring arrived two days later, accompanied by another storm delivering a foot of new snow and cold wintry temperatures. Winter hung in for the rest of March, with additional snowfalls every few days. The ski resorts that had announced early closures were back in business. While the late snowfalls helped alleviate the extreme drought underway, they came too late to make for a good winter's ski or snowshoe season.
I began working in the woods clearing and thinning brush and dead trees in the woodlands closest to the cottage during the early spring like days in early March. I had already cleared several of the large bent-over white birches on the hillside below the front of the cottage in early February, while winter was still making its pretense. I want to open the view to Mount Washington and Madison from the screened porch and to tidy up the woods on the steep slope just above North Road. I ordered Virginia Creeper and Red Berried Elder plants from the state nursery to introduce into the newly thinned forest. They will aid wildlife and also control erosion along the steeply banked driveway. In Maine, I have already turned the soil in our vegetable garden twice, something I don't usually accomplish until a thaw in May. I expect to be working in First Mountain's woods again as the later snows there clear in the next few days. I also need to take down the bird feeders now, as I am sure the black bears are coming out of their dens much earlier this year.
We volunteered to become maintainers for a section of the Appalachian Trail above First Mountain this year and will begin those duties after an Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) training session at Camp Dodge in May. Our adopted section of trail begins at Trident Col, where an AMC tentsite is maintained, and ends at the far side of Dream Lake. The section also includes Page Pond and a number of ledge outlooks. The AMC maintains the Gentian Pond Shelter along the next section of eastbound trail. This part of the trail with four high elevation small ponds and associated Mahoosuc bogs is perfect for sighting moose in the hot summer months.
Appalachian Trail from Trident Col to Dream Lake (2.7 mi.)
The trails from First Mountain's cottage take us directly to the summit of Middle Mountain, just to the south of Bald Cap Peak seen in the lower right corner of the map above. For more detail, see the map of Mahoosuc Range in New Hampshire . First Mountain and Middle Mountain are subsidiary summits of Bald Cap Peak and those three peaks, with Bald Cap Mountain and North Baldcap (see photo) and their unnamed subsidiary peaks, create a single massif of Bald Cap summits. The combined Appalachian Trail / Mahoosuc Trail passes through the center of this massif. A rugged and challenging side trail existed prior to the 1990's from Middle Mountain's summit to Dream Lake, around the northeast flank of Bald Cap Peak. That trail has been overgrown and abandoned for nearly twenty years, but we will try to identify the old route and use it to access the AT to begin our trail maintenance work at Dream Lake. Another long abandoned trail continued from Middle Mountain summit around Bald Cap Peak's southwest flank and down to the Peabody Brook Trail. We may have to reopen that route if the preferred and shorter route directly to Dream Lake proves too challenging.
Our volunteering as trail maintainers lead to Ginger accepting a temporary part-time job this spring with the AMC as assistant North Country Volunteer Coordinator. She began receiving so many consulting jobs from her former employer that fulfilling the obligation to AMC was becoming very difficult for her. I am now going to job-share the AMC position and one of us will be working out of the Pinkham Notch AMC office at least three days each week through October.
Shelburne finally passed a new zoning ordinance at Town Meeting in March. I have been commenting on that process for some time and outlined last year's rejection of a similar ordinance by the town's voters. The private forest land in our narrow river valley now has significant protection with the new zoning requirements. The First Mountain Forest tract falls equally into two new zoning districts. The more restrictive Forest District, which limits subdivision to fifteen acre lots and allows development above 1,400 feet elevation by special exception only, includes our mountain summit and the northern half of the forest. The new Valley District permits limited residential or agricultural development and includes the southern half of the forest and the cottage site. We retain more development rights than we ever expect to use and will still work on creating a future conservation easement for the forest .
Larry
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