Mud-season eclipse…
We were fortunate to be able to spend the afternoon today visiting some colleagues at a lakeside home in northeastern Vermont – where the skies were clear, the sun was warm, and last week’s snow was quickly thinning. Shortly after 2pm we settled into lawn chairs, pulled out our solar-eclipse safety glasses, and enjoyed watching the moon take over the sun… read on!
A gem of the upper valley.
After another week of snow and cold weather – that allowed the snow to remain soft and powdery – it was time to get out on the trail again. Some friends suggested Wright’s Mountain, outside Bradford VT. It has a lovely network of trails, maintained by local volunteers. It’s not a tall mountain, nor are its trails long, but on a single-digit kind of day it makes for a nice morning outing.
Early winter hike in late-fall conditions.
It was a busy week, and I was eager to get outside. So when some friends suggested a short hike on Saturday – and the forecast looked sunny – I jumped at the chance. We decided to try the diminutive Mount Peg, which is a grassy hilltop just a short walk from the side streets of Woodstock, Vermont. I had never been there, and it took us a while to find the right trailhead. It turns out that the slopes of Mount Peg has a vast network of trails, twisting around and interconnecting (it seemed) every hundred meters. On its south side, the trail network grows even larger and (this time of year) becomes a nordic ski center. Indeed, the first trailhead we located was for skiers, and there were a few skiers braving the warm temperatures and mushy snow on this sunny morning.
We relocated to one of the hiker’s trailheads and headed up into snowless forest. One kilometer later we popped out onto the grassy slopes of the summit, where a thin layer of crusty old snow persisted despite heavy foot traffic. A large, multigenerational family bustled by us at one point, as did a lone, lycra-clad jogger. These trails are popular for both the locals and the tourists, they being easily reached from the downtown hotels and the quiet neighborhoods nearby. We went down by a slightly different route, one of the benefits of a mountain with so many trails!
Hike stats:
Distance: 2.1km
Time: 0h56m
Gain: 88m
It’s hard to pick just twelve.
I enjoyed photography in 2022 and decided to share my pick of favorites. It was not easy! 12 photos for 12 months – not one per month, but just the twelve that I felt were especially beautiful or interesting. See the full gallery – where I recommend clicking the “play” button to see them as a slideshow – and read on for some commentary about each one.
Hot and hazy hike!
Today I climbed Camel’s Hump – the third-highest peak in Vermont, along the Long Trail as it travels over the spine of the Green Mountains – with friends Lelia and Kristin. We spotted a car so we would not be constrained to one of the standard ‘loop’ hikes, getting underway just before 10am near where the Long Trail crosses the Winooski River. The 10km hike to the summit is grueling, with many steep sections and several rocky scrambles over the cracked granite of Vermont’s spine. The hot, humid weather made it even more challenging. (The last time I climbed Camel’s Hump, the conditions were very different!) Check out the photo gallery!
A colorful delight for photographers.
Finally, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, the Post Mills Balloon Festival has returned. This is one of my favorite events every spring, when hot-air balloon enthusiasts gather at the tiny Post Mills Airport for a weekend of ballooning and fellowship. The term ‘airport’ hardly fits, because it is a simple grassy airstrip nestled between a forested wetland and the town cemetery, but the lure of these graceful, vibrantly colorful balloons on a cool spring morning brings me back every year. Read on, and check out the gallery!
A return one year later.
This morning I was looking for a good destination for a winter’s afternoon hike. Morning business meant I could not reach any trailhead until after noon, so I picked Spruce Mountain – an easy 2-mile trail up a short mountain in east-central Vermont. I was here just over a year ago, in deeper snow, but the memories of a lovely hike were shadowed by a sad incident on the drive home that sent my Tesla into the shop for almost two months. So today was an opportunity for redemption. And a beautiful day at that!
Continue reading “Spruce Mountain”Breaking trail in fresh powder can be delightful.
A grand snowstorm ended late last night, dumping 12″ of fresh powder snow on us here at home in the valley. The snow was preceded by a day of rain, so I expect there was vastly more snow at higher altitudes – where the rain would have turned to snow much sooner … or perhaps had been snow from the start. So I was eager to get out hiking today, to enjoy the new snow. There truly is nothing so exhilarating as to snowshoeing through fluffy fresh powder. (It can also be exhausting, if you are breaking trail!) But Mount Moosilauke and other high places were forecasting single-digit temperatures for the morning, dropping into the negative single-digits by afternoon. Add some wind, and those summits were not so appealing. We went out anyway… read on!
Continue reading “Bald Top Mountain”A chance encounter.
October has ended but the fall foliage is still brilliant – at least in certain pockets of our valley, and in valleys further to the south. On Sunday October 31, after photographing Dummerston Falls in southern Vermont, there were spectacular colors along the hillsides lining the interstate highway heading northward. So in Windsor I pulled off the highway to cross the Connecticut River on the iconic Cornish-Windsor covered bridge (the longest wooden covered bridge in North America, dating back to 1866), where I knew there was an opportunity for a view of the river, the bridge, and Mount Ascutney beyond.
I was not disappointed; there is an informal pullout for parking nearby, and a quick dash across the road and a hop over the guardrail gives one access to this spectacular view. As I turned to head back to my car, I noticed a wooden post – rather new looking, with a square board screwed atop as if to form a seat. I looked up to see a man approaching, dressed for the weather, wearing a hunter-orange cap and carrying a camouflage bag. After a short greeting he sat on the wooden post, pulled a Canon camera out of his bag, and we began to chat as he began to photograph the same scene.
Dan lives and works nearby, and stops to sit on this post every day. He has captured a new photograph here pretty much every day for the past ten years, posting them to his blog The Shape of the Year. It’s quite interesting to see, for example, what this scene looked like on November 3, February 3, May 3, and August 3. It was fun to meet another photographer, and to exchange our calling cards. Here’s my shot of the similar scene, October 31.
See a gallery with a few more of my roadside fall-foliage photos from across the month and around the region.
Five for five.
The month of October had five weekends and I visited a different set of cascades each weekend. Here are my favorite images from each; follow the link for a gallery of more photos.
Georgiana Falls (October 2)
Beaver Brook Cascades (October 10)
Grant Brook Cascades (October 17)
White Rocks (Bully Brook) (October 23)
Dummerston Falls (October 31)
David Kotz 