Winter?

This is one of those years where human-caused global warming really is especially horrible. We had no autumn weather of cool days and chilly evenings. The trees are all confused, budding and blooming here at the beginning of winter. We're screwed.

I was looking at photos I shot years ago in Maine. One trip I took there was exclusively for the purpose of climbing Katahdin, the highest peak in that state. There's nothing like that peak (in my experience) on the east coast. It has a lot of territory high above treeline and it has been carved in relatively recent history by glaciers. The signs of glaciation are everywhere you look on that summit.

Yesterday I saw this image on a webcam that I check frequently. From this vantage point one should see the mountain covered in deep snow. The lake in the foreground should have been solidly frozen for at least a month. There should be people walking across that lake, or driving snowmobiles on it with no thought at all of falling through the ice.

Yesterday was the first time that lake had even the slightest skim of ice upon its surface, and the summit that should have been solidly cloaked in deep snow for many weeks is barely frosted.

Katahdin. Touched (finally) by light snow. The lakes around it showing (at last) some ice.

Localized Glaciers in the Eastern US

Here in the eastern USA there are some signs of localized glaciation, mainly in New England. Of course almost everyone is aware of the huge continental glaciers that once covered much of North America and which is now isolated in Greenland on our continent.

Katahdin, Maine's highest summit.

What has always intrigued me are the smaller local glaciers that were left behind when the huge ice sheets retreated. As the higher elevations of New England were revealed from beneath the melting ice, there were still some areas just high enough and just far enough north to have localized glaciers that spilled off of some few peaks, creating glacial cirques and leaving behind glacial moraines and making tarns on some of the high ridges.

The first place I ever went that had obvious signs of local glaciers was Mount Katahdin. The rivers of ice that carved out the enormous gulfs and soaring cliff faces are long gone, but if you know what you're looking at, it's obvious what forces created these features.

I've now hiked in several eastern glacial cirques, including some on Katahdin in Maine and two on Mount Washington in New Hampshire. These peaks stand 5,268 feet and 6,288 feet respectively, and so were able to retain local glaciers for a long time after the retreat of the continental ice sheets that had covered the north.

Here in the South there is almost no sign of localized glaciation. But although the enormous ice sheets never reached this far toward the equator, some of the peaks should have been able to spawn some local glaciers. After all, there are many peaks here in Tennessee and North Carolina and southern Virginia where elevations approach or exceed 6,000 feet above sea level. Surely conditions should have been right for local glaciers on some of these peaks.

Arrows indicating the two most obvious glacial cirques on Katahdin (from this perspective). Known locally these days as 'Gulfs'.

However, in my reading and research I have found that only one spot has enough evidence for such a local glacier. And that spot is on Grandfather Mountain (aka Tanawha) here in North Carolina. Grandfather/Tanawha is considered the highest peak in the Blue Ridge Mountains. At 5,964 feet above sea level, it's not even in the top 20 highest peaks in the east. However, it just misses being an official "sixer" and looks more like a peak in the Sierras than one on the Blue Ridge. If any southern peak could have spawned glaciers, it seems that this would be it.

Today, there is a formation on the mountain called "the Boone Bowl". This bowl was likely carved out of the mountain by a small river of ice that formed below the summit and etched its way down the slopes, creating the enormous natural amphitheater the locals call "the Boone Bowl". I hope to be able to go there and scout it out in the next few weeks, and produce some photos that indicate some similarities with the glacial cirques I've hiked on Mount Washington and Katahdin.

We'll see.

Possible view of the "Boone Bowl" (Photo copyright by grouchomark)

Web Cams

One thing that I really dig about the Internet are web cams. You can find all kinds of them online. Some of my favorites feature views of parks and wilderness areas. Here, then, are a few screen captures I've saved of some of my favorite online views.

The Katahdin masif in Maine.

The view from Look Rock, Smoky Mountains National Park.

Purchase Knob, Smoky Mountains National Park.

There are a number of Mount Washington web cams. This one is classic.

View from the summit looking north from Mount Washington.

Another view of Mount Washington.

Climbing Katahdin

Some years back, after I got my job with USPS and actually found myself with some leisure time on my hands and some money in my pocket, I decided that it was time that I visited Maine to climb Katahdin.

Katahdin is the highest peak in Maine. It's not the highest mountain on the east coast, and it's not even the highest peak in New England. But at just a few feet shy of one mile above sea level, it's still an impressive peak by the standards of the east coast of North America. In addition, it was raked so thoroughly by glaciers in recent geological history that it more resembles a western mountain than our typical eastern ones.

I'd wanted to climb it since I first read of it as a teenager. So I flew up to Boston, met up with my nephew Chuck who works for Defense Intelligence, and we drove on up to Millinocket Maine to climb Katahdin.

Unfortunately, this was in the days before digital cameras, so all of my photos were made on film and I haven't transferred them to my hard drive. The weather, also, did not cooperate so we hiked largely under dark clouds and--once we reached the summit--rain.

But we did it. Almost thirty years after I'd first read about that mountain, I climbed it. It was an amazing experience--maybe the highlight of my hiking days. But I want to go back and do it again, this time in better weather.

Katahdin, the East's unlikeliest peak.