The temperature is 35 degrees. Mixed rain and snow fall steadily. Weather like this keeps a lot of people indoors.
"There's no bad weather, only bad clothing," says the proverb. The raunchy weather was a selling point for me when I came here to enjoy the way that the low summits simulate the conditions of higher peaks without the inconvenience of traveling far.
It was the outdoor industry's "Blue Period," and the rise of Gore-Tex. You could get parkas and shell pants that weren't blue, but they were probably red. A few of the cool kids sported the black Marmot parka, but blue really dominated the scene. Soft shells would not exist for decades.
Once I scraped together the coin, I got a blue ensemble: a Kelty shell oversized to fit over a duvet in case I had to spend a night out, and some affordable North by Northeast shell sidezips. The parka came first, paired with some basic LL Bean ripstop wind pants with a reinforced seat and knees custom sewn by a friend with more experience in the gear business. The Gore-Tex sidezips were part of upgrades I made when I started ice climbing as part of my brief career as an outdoor writer. I had moved to the mountains to spend as much time as possible on them.
A day like today would have inspired me to suit up and go out, to enjoy the effectiveness of my clothing and the utter indifference of the mountain environment. Love of the mountains is entirely one way. The mountains don't know you're there. They just do their mountain thing.
Late winter and early spring are the most inconvenient time to get around in the higher elevations around here. The winter snow leaves slowly, augmented by spring additions that are always heavy and wet. All that white stuff has to turn into water and soak in or flow down. I would try to find a place that had already melted clear, if I couldn't negotiate a passable route to higher elevations where winter was hanging on with firmer snow. Sooner or later it all turns to deep applesauce.
Due to the Covid-19 crisis, the Forest Service has closed most major trailheads, and even quite a few I would consider minor. I have a perfectly good mountain range out my back door, and I don't have to burn gas to get to it.
Blue clothing stands out against the browns and grays of the landscape during most of the year up here. That never bothered me. But now I have replaced as much as possible with gray and brown clothing so that I don't stand out. On my home mountain, I'm on other people's land whenever I climb very high. The land isn't posted; New Hampshire's tradition is that we all use the land. I just don't want to test anyone's tolerance by letting them see me doing it.
The early tick season has been bad, particularly with deer ticks. They're the small ones that are harder to see and feel. I've already had one attach to me. I am not showing any symptoms of the several nasty diseases they can carry, but I never assume that my luck will hold. Even though nothing has leafed out, the little bloodsuckers are apparently hanging out there, reaching with their front legs for any creature that brushes their perch. A nasty wet day when I can wear shell clothing provides a nice bit of body armor.
Monday, April 27, 2020
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Social distance was the whole point
The people who introduced me to backpacking in 1980 were avid bushwhackers. They had spent their high school years going to the mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, particularly the Dolly Sods. On a pleasant and mild October weekend in Alexandria, Virginia, they enlisted my buddy Jim and me to join them for a trip to the Sods, which they described as weird, remote, and worth visiting.
Lingering summer in the Tidewater gave way to early winter on the heights. The Sods lived up to their description. Artificially treeless over much of its area because of logging, fires, and topsoil loss, much of the plateau is grassland and peat bog. Stunted spruce are flagged by the prevailing wind into a distinctive shape. On that trip, gray skies released occasional showers of snow pellets. Our guides were well dressed and properly equipped. I was cold, poorly fed, and fascinated.
Our guides led us away from the dirt road on a compass heading. Jim and I had no idea where they thought they were headed. It didn't really matter. We wandered through the complete variety of terrain and vegetation, following the two leaders who argued about their compass headings and which way we should go next. I don't know if they ever really knew where we were, but we completed a meandering loop over several hours and returned to the road about a mile from the cars.
The idea that map and compass matter more than a dotted line on a map and a blaze on every other tree stuck with me. Map and compass make you independent. The trail often does follow the most sensible line through a given set of topographical features, but the ability to interpret a map and read a compass gives a hiker a more complete understanding of the area, and the ability to improvise. As time went on, most of my hiking took place on marked routes, but I would look to the sides for interesting possibilities.
Bushwhacking is a great way to disappear. This can be true in a very final sense, but also in answer to a temporary need, whether it's a simple need for a minute or two of privacy behind a tree, or a broader need to stay apart from your fellow humans. It's not available to people in more densely populated areas where open space is rationed. Dense population also increases the chances of running into someone whether you are on the trail or off. I have enjoyed hiking with a close friend, when such companionship was available. Other than that I'd rather go unnoticed.
Our guides on that 1980 trip liked the Sods because it was too far for most people to bother driving all the way to it from the population centers around DC. It got discovered during the 1980s, though. As the population inexorably climbed, the small percentage who would make the trip swelled to an appreciable number. And the ATV craze struck the locals out there, desecrating the nearby Roaring Plains. I moved to a place that was relatively undeveloped, but now I have to skirt the dwellings of various neighbors as I climb the slope behind my house. The peace of a natural environment has given way to massive logging and its attendant threat of development to follow, and to the intrusive habits of "normal" people who like to drive around in circles on ATVs, shredding the land and the quiet of a pleasant evening. There isn't social distance enough. It could be worse, I guess. There could be tar sands or natural gas deposits underground, attracting even noisier and more destructive human activity.
People with time on their hands and a need to stretch their legs are rediscovering what's left of natural environments wherever they live. Will it lead to a greater appreciation of them as we move on from this, or will it be dropped and forgotten like a plastic bag, once the trinkets within have been extracted?
Lingering summer in the Tidewater gave way to early winter on the heights. The Sods lived up to their description. Artificially treeless over much of its area because of logging, fires, and topsoil loss, much of the plateau is grassland and peat bog. Stunted spruce are flagged by the prevailing wind into a distinctive shape. On that trip, gray skies released occasional showers of snow pellets. Our guides were well dressed and properly equipped. I was cold, poorly fed, and fascinated.
Our guides led us away from the dirt road on a compass heading. Jim and I had no idea where they thought they were headed. It didn't really matter. We wandered through the complete variety of terrain and vegetation, following the two leaders who argued about their compass headings and which way we should go next. I don't know if they ever really knew where we were, but we completed a meandering loop over several hours and returned to the road about a mile from the cars.
The idea that map and compass matter more than a dotted line on a map and a blaze on every other tree stuck with me. Map and compass make you independent. The trail often does follow the most sensible line through a given set of topographical features, but the ability to interpret a map and read a compass gives a hiker a more complete understanding of the area, and the ability to improvise. As time went on, most of my hiking took place on marked routes, but I would look to the sides for interesting possibilities.
Bushwhacking is a great way to disappear. This can be true in a very final sense, but also in answer to a temporary need, whether it's a simple need for a minute or two of privacy behind a tree, or a broader need to stay apart from your fellow humans. It's not available to people in more densely populated areas where open space is rationed. Dense population also increases the chances of running into someone whether you are on the trail or off. I have enjoyed hiking with a close friend, when such companionship was available. Other than that I'd rather go unnoticed.
Our guides on that 1980 trip liked the Sods because it was too far for most people to bother driving all the way to it from the population centers around DC. It got discovered during the 1980s, though. As the population inexorably climbed, the small percentage who would make the trip swelled to an appreciable number. And the ATV craze struck the locals out there, desecrating the nearby Roaring Plains. I moved to a place that was relatively undeveloped, but now I have to skirt the dwellings of various neighbors as I climb the slope behind my house. The peace of a natural environment has given way to massive logging and its attendant threat of development to follow, and to the intrusive habits of "normal" people who like to drive around in circles on ATVs, shredding the land and the quiet of a pleasant evening. There isn't social distance enough. It could be worse, I guess. There could be tar sands or natural gas deposits underground, attracting even noisier and more destructive human activity.
People with time on their hands and a need to stretch their legs are rediscovering what's left of natural environments wherever they live. Will it lead to a greater appreciation of them as we move on from this, or will it be dropped and forgotten like a plastic bag, once the trinkets within have been extracted?
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