Last year was a busy and exciting year for us. Mara graduated from Crossroads and began 9th grade at Hanover High School (HHS), while Andy entered 7th grade at Crossroads and John entered 11th grade at HHS. David continued as Associate Dean at Dartmouth and Pam took a year off from medicine. We traveled quite a bit: we began the year in Bangalore, India, spent a February week along the continental divide in Costa Rica (photo above), and spent lots of time outdoors in both New Hampshire and South Carolina. I hope you enjoy the year-end slideshow of highlights, including some of my favorite photos from 2013.
Regards and best wishes for the new year,
David Kotz
I awoke early Sunday morning to an uneven dripping sound on the roof, with the steady burble of Eliza Brook reminding me that we were spending this cool October night in a beautiful new AMC shelter high on the shoulder of the Kinsman Range. The peaks of North and South Kinsman, and Cannon Mountain, form the western wall of Franconia Notch, whose valley would later today be filled bumper-to-bumper with leaf-peeping visitors this Columbus Day weekend. It turns out they would see nothing, while we would spend the day facing spectacular views over their heads. Continue reading “Franconia undercast”
That Disney classic song, Just around the river bend, seemed to be stuck in my head as we paddled for four days on the meandering Connecticut River (check out the photos and videos). Continuing what I hope to be a new tradition, begun last year at the spot where the river springs out of the ridgeline forming the New Hampshire–Canada border, Pam and the kids and I put our boats into the river at the very spot we ended our trip last year, and pushed off into the current. Continue reading “Just around the river bend…”
Last summer had a wonderful opportunity to complete 6 hikes in 4 days. I was fortunate again this week to have the same opportunity, completing 6 hikes in 6 days (Sunday through Saturday with a day off on Monday). It was the same time of the summer – the waning days of July and the first of August. The kick-off hike was once again with my friend Lelia, tackling a long hike that I had long desired to try. Last year, it was Mount Ellen, allowing me to complete my 4000′ Vermont mountains. This year, it was Tunnel Brook Ravine, a legendary bushwhack on the backside of Mount Moosilauke. I wrote about that epic trip last week.
After a much-needed rest day on Monday, I headed for Crawford Notch in the White Mountains. As before, I was fortunate to be staying at the Mount Washington Hotel for a few days, which is an excellent base for beautiful hikes both short and long. I revisited two favorites from last year – Mount Willard and the two Sugarloafs – with another friend Jon. For the first time I climbed Mount Martha, which has an astoundingly beautiful view of the Presidential Range. After the meeting concluded on Friday I bopped up Crawford Cliff, dodging a thunderstorm, and on Saturday at home I revisited the local Lyme Pinnacle for a quick overview of the Upper Valley. I snapped a few photos along the way (SmugMug).
Good weather, beautiful mountains, and wonderful friends. A great week!
For nearly thirty years I’ve wanted to climb Moosilauke via Tunnel Brook Ravine, a classic bushwhacking route through a deep ravine on the west side of the mountain. I have fond memories of a solo bushwhack up Gorge Brook, past Last Water and the Pleiades, following the brook until it petered out and I was crashing through krummholz. As I sat on the summit, surprisingly alone on a sunny summer weekend afternoon, I watched with curiosity as a single hiker strode up the west slope of the summit cone, crossing the fragile alpine vegetation as if he was unaware of any trail. It turned out to be my Dartmouth classmate Alex, who had just bushwhacked up Tunnel Brook Ravine.
When I was climbing Moosilauke on a steamy summer day last year, I tried to estimate how many times I’ve been up this mountain since my first climb in September 1982. I’m sure I’ve climbed it more than 50 times. Certainly once a year and usually twice a year, once in winter and once in summer or fall. It never gets boring or old, because I see something new on every trip, enjoy conversation with friends old and new, and enjoy seeing how the mountain and the view will appear in today’s weather. Winter weather is often most exciting; I’ve been on the summit in 50mph horizontal snowstorms with rime ice building up on my balaclava and in which I wasn’t sure whether I could find my way back to the trail. Today was not one of those days.
Although our departure from Costa Rica was not until noon on Saturday, I decided it was risky to make the 3-hour drive from Monteverde to the airport on Saturday morning itself. There are few roads from Monteverde, all dirt, and only one that is realistically passable. (On our trip in 2004 we took a back road down from Monteverde and it was an unbelievably hairy trip.) Any sort of snag or snafu could happen to the road or the vehicle. So we called up Sergio and scheduled a return taxi for Friday afternoon. That left just the morning to capture one last exploration of Monteverde.
Panorama of the riding tripBlack Guan, high in the canopy
Kathy had also won – at the Friends School fundraising auction – a horseback-riding tour for two. So Pam, Mara and John headed off with Jim and Laurie and their two girls for a horseback outing through the pastural hills on the west side of Santa Elena, while Andy and I walked back to Bajo del Tigre in hopes that we might visit those trails again, this time in the daylight. It was another beautiful sunny day, and we had kilometers of trail all to ourselves. We followed the numbered self-guided nature trail, with the guidebook explaining the plant and animal life, history, and ecology of this non-profit forest reserve originally founded by Swedish schoolchildren (really!). Andy’s good eyes spotted a pair of black guan, huge turkey-sized birds up in the canopy.
Our final Monteverde meal (thanks Laurie!) was beans and rice and fresh salad, wonderful with the Costa Rican Lizano salsa that makes everything taste good – meant the end of a fantastic few days at Casa Hooke and with the our newfound friends, aka Jim & Laurie and their daughters. After a few fond farewells we were off again with Sergio, this time to be guided by his son Ricardo. There was a delay because the main road out this direction was being re-graded, and a couple of hours later another delay because the coastal highway was in use for a women’s bicycle race (circumnavigating Costa Rica). These are the kind of unexpected delays that triggered my instinct to move us close to the airport a day early.
Chapel on the central park in Alajuela
We arrived in Alajuela, a small city next to the San Jose airport, about an hour before sunset, and quickly headed out to explore. The central park was only two blocks from the hotel, and was bustling with people relaxing on this late Friday afternoon. Next to the square was a large Catholic church, preparing for Friday mass. Just down the road was the central market, a large indoor series of stalls selling everything from meat and fish to vegetables and herbal remedies to cell-phone accessories. I always feel these markets are a great place to get a sense of the local culture. This one was busy with customers on their way home from work, buying the necessities for a weekend with family. As the sun set, the market and most other shops started closing, rattling their heavy-duty gates into place. Even our hotel had such a gate across the entrance at all times, making me a bit uneasy about the nature of this town after dark. We found a friendly Tex-mex restaurant nearby and settled in for chimichanga and nachos.
Overall, it was a great week. Costa Rica is a beautiful place filled with friendly people. We learned a little about a tropical ecosystem, sustainable farming, chocolate production, and a different culture; we spent time with old friends and made new friends; we got sunburned and ate good food; and we had a lot of fun.
In Monteverde, the Main Event is always a visit to the Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve. This astonishing place is home to a high-altitude tropical rainforest, well, actually, cloud forest. The forest along the high ridge that forms the continental divide in Costa Rica is almost perpetually bathed in cloud, and all that moisture supports a verdant ecosystem of plants and insects and animals. (The very name monte verde means green mountain in Spanish, well-noted by our friends from Vermont, which of course derives from the French vert mont.) At this time of year, the stiff trade winds blow off the Caribbean sea and over the tropical lowlands of eastern Costa Rica; when they rise to this ridge at 1500m they cool and clouds form. Almost immediately they evaporate within a kilometer of the ridge, so the village of Santa Elena (where all the people live) is nearly always sunny. We were chilly and damp in the cloud forest, then later warm and sunburned down at the house.
Richard Guindon, at right, was our guide for the day.
We caught the morning bus as it passed by the Cheese Factory near the Hooke residence. This being a school day, the bus was packed with children riding up the mountain from town to the Monteverde Friends School (more on that in the next blog post). We walked through the forest for about two hours, stopping frequently while our guide, Ricardo Guindon, told us about the plants, insects, animals, and forest ecosystem, as well as the history of the reserve. This area was largely unsettled before 1950, when a group of Quakers left the U.S. to found a new community in peace-loving Costa Rica. They built dairy farms throughout the town that is now Santa Elena. They recognized the importance of the cloud forest as a source of water, and conserved many pristine areas in the watershed. George Powell, a biologist, recognized the biodiversity value of this region and, working with a local man Wilford Guindon, formed a non-profit and began to acquire land that forms this reserve. Our guide Ricardo is Wilford’s son, and told many stories about his childhood play in the forest, and driving cattle along the trails to the pasture on the eastern slopes. After childhood, he has been leading forest tours for nearly 20 years and is encyclopedic in his knowledge of the place.
Andy and Mara face into the trade winds.
It was chilly and misty, with clouds condensing on the canopy overhead; thus we walked through a steady dripping drizzle all morning. We reached the far side of the reserve, at La Ventana (the window), a platform on a narrow section of the ridge – the continental divide! – that on a clear day allows you to see the Caribbean Sea to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. This being the cloud forest, of course, it is almost never clear. The kids found the stiff breeze of the trade winds to be exhilarating.
Family photo at La Ventana, along the continental divide.A spider monkey in the canopy.
On the way back out we were excited to see Spider Monkeys browsing fruits high in the canopy, and a toucanette bird close enough to see really well. Curiously, the spider monkeys have evolved to lose their thumbs, but have prehensile tails that make them very agile in the treetops.
The sun broke through, as the warming day started to evaporate the clouds closer to the ridgeline.
A violet sabrewing hummingbird.
We enjoyed lunch at a picnic table next to a hummingbird feeder, with its gloriously colorful visitors. I took many dozen photos and got just a few keepers. The violet sabrewing was our favorite.
Waterfall in the cloud forest.
After lunch most of us walked back into the forest to visit this stunning two-level waterfall. Along the way we spotted a hummingbird in its nest alongside the trail, and at the same spot, we watched a pair of spotted woodcreepers building a nest right above the trail.
For the photos, see the Monteverde nature gallery, starting on page 2.
Andy helps Chocolate Bob to grind the roasted cocoa beans.
Late afternoon we went to the Chocolate Tour at Café Caburé, close to the Hooke residence. “Chocolate Bob” is a Massachussetts native and former biologist, who lives here with his Argentinian wife. She runs the restaurant (café) and makes wonderful chocolate desserts. He took up chocolate making, and gave us a fascinating tour of how it works. Starting with the cocoa beans, which he buys after they are fermented at the farm, he demonstrated all the steps in producing chocolate. The kids got to help and we all had opportunities to taste it at various stages. Wonderful!
For the photos, see the Monteverde other gallery, starting on page 3.
We awoke Monday to a sunny day and a bright colorful rainbow, after a heavy rain overnight. Rain is unusual – this is the dry season – but very welcome because there was little rain during the wet season. Our main goal for the morning was a tour of a coffee plantation, which Kathy won as part of a fundraising auction at the Friends school. Kathy and Benjamin had the day off school, so she joined us and the DiCarlo family for the tour.
Guillermo explains how they compost coffee husks.
Guillermo, one of several brothers who returned to Monteverde to take over the family farm after pursuing education and other careers, walked us through the plantation and explained its many sustainable organic practices. We learned a bit about how coffee is grown, and a lot about sustainable farming. The family grows its own vegetables and bananas, and keeps chickens, quail, pigs, and goats for eggs, meat, and milk. The coffee husks are composted (by earthworms) to fertilize the fields, and the animal manure is pumped into a biodigester that extracts the methane gas and pumps it to the kitchen for cooking. The kids had a wonderful time exploring the fields, petting the animals, and climbing in a beautiful tree. The tour ended with a lunch prepared by the staff, from their own produce (Mara skipped the main dish when it became understood that it included one of the chickens we had met earlier :-).
After shopping in town for groceries and souvenirs, we headed back to the casita for a little rest and a quick dinner before sunset. It turns out that the Hookes live right next door to Bajo del Tigre, a beautiful section of the Children’s Eternal Rain Forest. Many creatures are active only at night, so night hikes are a popular attraction in Monteverde. As the sun set, we obtained a guide and prepared to follow the trails into the darkness. He gave us stern warnings not to wander off the trail, or to touch the vegetation, and always to allow him to go first, lest you meet one of the local snakes.
Tarantula emerging from nest
Kids love hiking in the dark, of course. The guide had good eyes, and found two sleeping birds – a toucanette and a motmot. Each bright green bird was clinging to a low branch, almost within reach, gripping the branch tightly as it swayed in the persistent Monteverde wind. Astonishingly, the birds were asleep! and did not even notice us. The highlight of the tour, however, was certainly the tarantula shown above. The guide knew of a tarantula nest – a small crevice at the base of a tree – and gently coaxed the tarantula out for us to see. Wow.
For more photos, visit the Monteverde nature and other galleries.
Instant frostbite! That was my concern as we stepped out of the car on Saturday afternoon, stuck in deep snow at the unplowed parking area for the Appalachian Trail on the southwest slopes of Mount Moosilauke. The snows of Winter Storm Nemo had just ended, and were drifting deeply in strong cold winds that followed the storm. Although the New England coast had been hammered by this blizzard, at home in Lyme we received only 6 inches of snow and up here we found perhaps 8–10 inches. Not much, but very welcome replacement for the icy trails and bare brown fields that were here a few days ago.
Great Bear Cabin
By the time I had dug out a parking space and gotten the skis off the roof of the car, my fingers were numb and the kids were complaining about the cold. We strapped on our skis, hoisted our packs, and skied up the trail toward Moosilauke. Fortunately it is not far to Great Bear cabin – perhaps half a mile – and the fresh snow had been tracked earlier in the day by some snowshoers. We reached the cabin after skiing across windswept meadows, and were pleased to find that it was still warm from the prior occupants. Mara quickly had a roaring fire going, while the boys cracked the ice on the stream to bring back a pot of water. We settled in for a warm and cozy evening as the sky cleared, the sun set behind the trees, and the temperatures dropped below zero.
Sunset after the storm blew away
We played a few rounds of various card games, enjoyed a wonderful pasta dinner, and roasted in the sleeping loft as the wood stove cranked away all night. The next morning was lazy as we cooked breakfast, cleaned the cabin, and got ourselves out at the crack of noon. By then it had warmed up into the teens or maybe twenties, with a brilliant blue sky and sunshine, so we took a nice ski tour through the meadows and woods before heading home. We passed numerous hikers who were returning from the summit, who all reported spectacularly clear views and a stiff windchill up there. I was jealous.
A wonderful if brief weekend! Here are some more photos from that trip and also a walk we took near home on the weekend before.
David Kotz 