New England Waterfalls.

Very busy with writing stuff. Also exhausted from work.

Fill-in blog. Here are a couple of videos of waterfalls I saw when Carole and I last visited New England. Both of these are in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Glen Ellis Falls.

Glen Ellis Falls.

Crystal Cascades

Crystal Cascades.

Various Waterfall Videos, 2007

The following are just some short video footage I shot at different places we visited in 2007.

Self-explanatory. Virgin Falls, likely the strangest waterfall I've ever seen. The experience was striking for many reasons--unique topography, solitude, and the amazing temperature inversion as I descended into first the gorge and then the sinkhole.

This is the cave from which Virgin Falls emerges. Notice the clarity of the water. It was very cool and inviting in the mouth of that cave!

The view of Virgin Falls that you get if you hike down into the sinkhole. The water just vanishes into the ground without a trace.

This one is near Mount Washington in Hew Hampshire. I saw it when I went to climb the peak. The colors of the rock in New England are something else. We don't tend to have that pink granite here in the South. (This is a very famous waterfall, but I can't recall the name! Sorry!)

Blackwater Falls in Blackwater Falls State Park in West Virginia. Dig all of those then-healthy Eastern hemlocks! I wonder if they're still doing well!

One Year Ago

One year ago:

We were staying here, at Joe Dodge Lodge in New Hampshire.

At this time one year ago, I was hiking up the Tuckerman Ravine Trail to the summit of Mount Washington, the highest peak in New England, and the highest peak in the Appalachian Mountains north of Roan Mountain (in Tennessee).

Since I've never had the opportunity to hike out west, the nearest I've been able to come to the kind of scenery one expects to see in places like the Rocky Mountains are the peaks and summits of New England. I have never been disappointed in the scenery when I go hiking in Maine and New Hampshire.

I never got tired of looking down into Tuckerman Ravine on my way to the summit of Mount Washington. I look at this and can almost see the glacier that carved this enormous cirque.

The weather was appropriately overcast, cold, and blustery by the time I reached the highest point on the mountain. I really didn't want it to be otherwise.

The views on the way down were no less spectacular than on the trip up. Here I was approaching Lion's Head, one of the more amazing sub-peaks on Mount Washington.

And a double rainbow rewarded me as I hiked along toward Lions Head.

Other hikers passed us going up, toward Lions Head as we headed down to Joe Dodge Lodge and a hearty meal and a hot shower and a soft bed.

Looking back on my adventure of last year only makes me go a bit more stir crazy as Carole and I remain stuck in Charlotte due to her impending surgery. We'll have a wait of several weeks after that before we can head off into the wilds. Until then, I have only my memories of past trips and photographs from some of my amazing hikes to increase my level of utter and complete frustration! ARGH!!!!

With any freaking luck at all, I'll be able to hitch up the trailer, strap on my daypack, and head up into the Black Mountains of North Carolina for views like this one, as I did in the summer of 2007. Wish me just a little bloody fortune.

The Whites!

The first time I was aware of Mount Washington was after I had become an avid backpacker at the age of 15. I’d meet up with folk who were thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail as I section-hiked the AT in my native state of Georgia, and they would tell of the glorious peaks to be found in North Carolina, Tennessee and in New Hampshire. At home, I searched through the vast stacks of National Geographic magazines in my dad’s bookstore until I dug out all of the issues with photos and stories of the Great Smoky Mountains and the White Mountains.

While I early on got to hike the Smokies, the Whites of New England remained out of reach for me as I was generally always too poor to afford to head up there. And on the rare occasions I was able to get to that part of the country, it was either on business or to meet up with family, both of which precluded me from hiking the Presidential Range.




Back in 2000, I realized I’d better get busy hiking the peaks I’d always wanted to see before I got too old to do so. In that year I flew up to Maine and headed to Baxter State Park to climb Katahdin. But it wasn’t until this year that I was able to arrange a hike of Mount Washington, which had become something of a grail for me.

I have to say, straight up, that although I love my native South dearly, and adore our high country, we have nothing like the mountains of New England. While the Whites are not quite as high as our Smokies, or Blacks, they are, without doubt, the most spectacular mountain range I have experienced on the east coast of the USA. Nothing here in the South compares with them, on a purely visual basis, because of the 4,000-foot tree line in New Hampshire, and because of the amazing gulfs, ravines, and cirques gouged into the geography of the Appalachians by glacial activity. It was something, indeed, for this Georgia-boy to behold.




Having now experienced the grandeur and the hospitality of the New Hampshire high country, it’s our intention to return there at the earliest opportunity. I waited 34 years to finally bag Mount Washington. I promise the time between now and my return to that fantastic peak will be brief.

Another Hiking Goal Within Reach.

When I was a kid first starting out in my life-long hobby of hiking and backpacking, one of my goals was to climb Mount Washington in New Hampshire. Years of poverty and family responsibilities kept me from realizing that goal. I was able to hike to the summits of most of the other eastern peaks that were on my to-hike list, but Washington, legendary though it is among east coast peaks, stayed out of reach.

Now, at the age of 50, I’m finally heading to New Hampshire to climb it. Weather permitting (and Mount Washington is world famous for its horrid weather extremes); I’ll hike from base to summit on Saturday, August 25, 2007.

Wish me some luck. Or loan me some good karma.


(Photo copyright by Partick LaFreniere)