9 August 06: Mount Cardigan
Cardigan is just about my favorite mountain in New Hampshire, but I
haven't been there for a couple years. Here are some earlier Cardigan
hikes:
I brought Rehmi, Kit, and Ted out along the Vistamont Trail, same
route as I took in 2001 and spring 2003. We all had a fine day and a
great hike, though at different speeds.
For the record, Rehmi and Kit are long distance bicycle racers and
marathon runners, so it was no surprise when they quickly outdistanced
me and Ted, who plodded along behind like Hannibal's elephants. Kit,
especially, is like a gazelle on the trail, except that gazelle butts
don't look that good in black spandex.
The downside for them, I thought, was that they zoomed past so
much of the biota and geology that I think makes hikes like this fun.
So I kept dragging them back to look at things. The upside was that
they had plenty of energy to backtrack and check out whatever I was
showing them, and then keep bouncing forward, no problem.
Click on the thumbnails for the full size picture.
Cute little white flowers that I haven't seen before.
This is Indian Pipe, a ghostly white plant, which is very distinctive
and very rare ... it's a flowering plant (not a fungus) but it's a
saprophyte (no chlorophyll, lives off decaying vegetation) that
cultivates fungus in its root system. This is only the third time,
maybe, that I've ever seen one in the wild. Read more about this
plant at the
Connecticut Botanical Society.
As this is Lammastide, we're starting to see berries and fruits.
There were many dark blue berries on ground wildflowers, that I
couldn't identify, but this red berry is clearly trillium. First time
I've seen a trillium berry, actually.
This is the biggest shelf fungus I've ever seen, bigger than a dinner
serving platter.
More shelf fungus, elfin and enchanting.
A rather nice piece of rusty marble, amid lichens and moss and scrub pine.
Once we get up on the ridge, Ted and Rehmi are psyched and start
taking lots of pictures ... so I took pictures of them taking
pictures. That's Kit in the black Asian hat, in the background of the
second picture, trying to get us to go faster.
Massive marble inclusion, like a dike that cuts right across the trail.
Unfortunately my camera ran out of battery at this point, so no more
pictures. But we had a great time hiking along the ridge to South
Peak for lunch, then up the sheer rock face to the Cardigan summit.
The weather was glorious, lots of sun with a sweet breeze, and we
lingered on the summit for a while -- until the screaming kids came
along, and then we took the Mowglis Trail to Firescrew, and then the
Manning trail back to the lodge. It got a bit wearing towards the
end, but we did stop at the Marble Frog and enjoyed many nice views on
the way down. Finally, when we made it back to the car, there was
beer and hard cider on ice waiting for us, and we lazed by the pond
(many little brown newts in the water), a fine end to the day.
Rehmi's photography will get links here when available.
This page maintained by
Wil Howitt
Last updated 17 August 2006
