After driving through heavy fog before 6 AM, the last mile of the drive up to the parking lot for Mount Cardigan was through clear, crisp air. All the fog was below in the valleys.
Years ago I nicknamed the Winslow Trail up Mount Kearsage that I hiked a few days previously, the “Roots and Rocks Trail”. The lower parts of the hike up Mount Cardigan were similar.
I had borrowed the car my wife, Jann, normally drives because she didn’t need it and it is a little more gas efficient than mine. That worked great except when I reached in the back for my trekking poles and found they were in the other car. Ever since Stephen introduced me to trekking poles when we did a training hike before my second trip to Nepal, I have come to depend on them. So I felt somewhat lost hiking without them.
Not very far up the trail I met a half a dozen hikers in several groups coming down. They had obviously been at the summit for sunrise.
I took a right, leaving the more traveled West Ridge Trail to take my favorite way up, the South Ridge Trail. The photo at the top of this blog was taken at the junction of the two trails. Although this trail is longer and has some tricky spots, it affords a great long range view of the summit for almost the last mile of the trail. The next three photos show a few of the somewhat tricky spots.
Partway up the South Ridge Trail I found a short stick which I used as a trekking pole.
I found more boletus mushrooms.
After using the short stick as a hiking pole for a while, I found a much longer one. The pair served me well for the rest of the climb. In fact, I actually got fond of them and still have them, although I doubt I will ever use them again. They were rough on my hands, and they didn’t come with wrist straps. That meant I had to either drop them or lean them against my body whenever I wanted to take a photo. That was a nuisance.
At Rimrock I got my first long range view. I set down my sticks to make a twelve-photo panorama.
Here are the two sticks that I used for trekking poles. Interestingly the Sherpas in Nepal called my trekking poles, “sticks”.
The backpack in the photo above came from REI. It is my favorite for low-elevation hikes in good weather. It is very light weight and folds up very small. It has excellent straps and is quite comfortable.
I took a photo of Mount Kearsarge and, to its right, Black Mountain from a bit above Rimrock.
I reached South Peak with its disorganized pile of rocks. They serve as a wind break as well as a cairn.
From South Peak I made a ten-photo panorama.
Climbing a bit higher, I took another photo of Mount Kearsarge and Black Mountain with Ragged Mountain and its ski trails on the left in the photo below. You might be able to make out the pile of rocks on South Peak at the left below Ragged.
There is an abandoned ranger cabin at the junction of South Ridge and Clark Trails.
Above the cabin I took another photo of Ragged, Kearsarge, and Black with South Peak just to the right of the center of the photo.
As I climbed to the summit I saw a hiker who had taken the West Ridge Trail. You can see one of the huge cairns in front of him.
Sitting out of the slight breeze just below the summit, I ate a few nuts. Cardigan can get very windy, but this day was relatively calm. A young couple from Ohio asked me to use their camera to take a photo of them. Then I photographed the distant Presidentials. Can you name the peaks?
Here is a closer view with some of the main peaks labelled.
When I started down the West Ridge Trail around 8:30 there was still fog visible in some of the valleys. The cairns along the exposed upper part of Cardigan are impressive.
I took a pair of photos that I might use in a future photo class on Perspective. One definition of Perspective is the size relationship of objects in a photo. So, can you change Perspective by standing in one place and zooming your lens? Will simply zooming out make near objects look larger and far objects smaller? Will zooming in make near and far object look similar in size? Think about it.
The answer to the Perspective question is no. All you do is “crop” the photo by expanding or magnifying the scene. The only way to change Perspective is to zoom out or in and move your feet.
This first photo below was taken with a long focal length (600 mm equivalent) from far away. For the second photo I moved very close to the cairn and used a much wider focal length (24 mm equivalent). You can see how dramatically the apparent distance between the two cairns changes (you can barely see the second cairn) and how wider the background is in the second photo. Magic without using Photoshop.
I found a pretty spot part way down with a small waterfall.
Here is a closer view of the waterfall that I took at a slow shutter speed while bracing my camera on a rock.
When I drove out of the parking lot around 9:45 there was only one spot available — the one I had just vacated. Driving down the nearly one mile access road I passed a dozen cars heading up. That lot was sure going to be full and then some.
I wandered southeast along back roads in Orange, NH. A hawk flew up from the road into the trees. I stopped in the middle of the road and took a few photos of this cooperative bird on several perches with my trusty hiking camera, a Sony RX10 IV. Not one I would normally use for birds, but the best camera is the one you have with you.
It was a Broad-winged Hawk, a great flyer through woods with its short, broad wings. From the Cornell Lab site, “One of the greatest spectacles of migration is a swirling flock of Broad-winged Hawks on their way to South America. Also known as “kettles,” flocks can contain thousands of circling birds that evoke a vast cauldron being stirred with an invisible spoon. A small, stocky raptor with black-and-white bands on the tail, the Broad-winged Hawk is a bird of the forest interior and can be hard to see during the nesting season. Its call is a piercing, two-parted whistle.”
The Sony RX10 IV is a great camera to have at hand when conditions or timing do not call for a DSLR or Mirrorless camera with a big lens. Here is a blog of FLYING THINGS, that was shot entirely with the RX10 IV: pine warblers, red-shouldered hawk, butterflies, and hummingbird moths. Even a loon.
A very nice morning and a great hike that I have done many times. If you would like to see three panoramas from Mount Cardigan that you can zoom into and pan around, please CLICK HERE. The first panorama has many of the mountains of NH and VT labelled.
If you miss the fantastic halo around the sun, you can see it if you CLICK HERE.