Adventure blog with a real job
It took a long time this winter, but finally the White Mountains lived up to their name.
On Friday 18 inches of snow fell in the White Mountains. It was cold during the storm and stayed that way through the weekend, which meant that the snow stayed dry and fluffy- a rare condition in the northeast!
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My favorite hike in Joshua Tree this trip was to Lost Palms Oasis which heads 3.6 miles out across the desert to reach a permanent spring that nourishes a thriving colony of fan palms.
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I think that I shall never see a more improbable charismatic megaflora than Yucca breviflora, affectionately known as the Joshua Tree.
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After the fourth heat wave of the summer, it was a great relief when the weather broke, sending cool though still humid air over the White Mountains. It was finally a nice day for a hike!
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I took this week as vacation, and even though I didn’t travel far I got off the grid for a few days of backpacking along the Appalachian Trail. My plan was to go solo, but as it turned out I had plenty of company: a multitude of mosquitos and black flies joined me for every step. Nonetheless it was a great trip— the terrain is beautiful, it was quiet, the weather was good enough, and I feel so accomplished for having done it!
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And no, I don’t have pictures of myself decked out for a 13 mile hike on a warm day with every inch of skin covered. The annual crop of mosquitos and black flies were out in force, but I was ready for them!
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I was looking for something mellow and relatively short, so I set out on Cascade Path leading out of Waterville Valley.
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One day this week I took the opportunity of a gap between my US workday and my Asia workday to get out for a late afternoon weekday hike up Three Ponds Trail.
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Heavy rain over the past couple of days inspired me to make the most of the drier but colder day of the weekend. Rain on Spring trails makes mud, and when you add hikers to that mix you end up with accelerated trail erosion, so I decided to keep to the old logging road that doubles as a winter cross country ski highway and a 3-season hiking trail.
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I’ll get this out of the way upfront: I’m not a big fan of snowshoes. They’re awkward to wear, cumbersome to carry, and my natural gait places one foot in front of the other, so the side by side snowshoe waddle feels particularly awkward and trip-prone. Nonetheless, I set out with my snowshoes for a hike up Smart’s Brook, and was glad to have them!
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