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Gunpowder Flooding: A Day Later
Well, it’s a day later and the water is still stupid high. The waters peaked sometime in the pre-dawn hours this morning, with around ~3,600 cfs (!!) and at about 11.6 ft !! For those of you not familiar with the river, it’s normally running around 50-120 cfs and somewhere between ½ and 2 ft. So, needless to say, there’s roughly a metric shit-ton of water in the river right now.
I drove around again this afternoon to take another good look to see how things were shaking out. However, I didn’t really take any photos today. For something a little different, I was playing with my fathers D7000 and took some video. I’m no videographer, but I’m fairly pleased with how it came out.
Have a look:
I’m glad to see the waters coming down, and relatively quickly, but it will be a long while before things are settled down enough to fish on the Gunpowder again. Oh well, guess I won’t be hitting the tricos again around these parts…
Gunpowder Flooding
Well, it’s rained here in MD. A lot. Like nearly 5 inches in the past day! With 5 inches of rain, the flooding has been pretty nuts. I took a drive this afternoon/evening to see just how big the Gunpowder was, and hot damn, it’s enormous!!
UPDATE: If you’re interested in the flooding situation, I’ve posted a video from some of the river accesses from the day after these pictures were shot. And trust me, there’s still an impressive amount of water in the river. Check it out here.
First, I headed towards the Falls road access. Along Evna road, it was clear that this little brook had been raging much stronger not long before I’d been there.
Based on this log, the waters were at least a good foot higher.
Lots of mud was left on the road.
Even as the water was clearly lower than it had been, it was still running high and dirty.
Already impressed, I continued down towards the Falls Rd. bridge. As I approached the bridge, my jaw dropped.
Looking upstream from the bridge.
And downstream along the trail.
There are supposed to be a bunch of rocks there…
The trail was totally flooded out. Wow.
A final look downstream from the Falls Rd bridge. This is unbelievable.
I wanted to check out Masemore, one of my more frequented accesses to the river and trails. However I didn’t want to drive back out along Falls and Evna roads, so I took the back way.
I thought I’d be able to make it across the bridge… Guess not.
I thought that there was a parking lot here.
And a foot bridge here… Wow.
The river fully co-opted the parking lot for its own purposes.
And finally, looking upstream from the Masemore road bridge. I don’t even recognize the river, jeez…
Since I didn’t really feel like testing the capabilities of the car in the 12-15+ inches of water on the road, I turned around and headed up to check out the dam. I’d heard from a few folks that it was quite the site.
Yup, quite the site indeed. So much water flowing over.
That’s a tremendous amount of water!
It’s scary, really.
Already thoroughly amazed by what I’d seen, I wanted to check out one more spot: the access at Big Falls road. Although I don’t fish here too often, I use the trails here a lot.
Guess I won’t be parking, let alone hiking here today.
The water was barely making it under the bridge. Normally, there is about 10 feet (give or take) of clearance between the water and the bridge. Wow.
Yup, that’s a whole lot of water.
A final look upstream from the Big Falls bridge. Just as the view up from Masemore road, this is totally unrecognizable.
What I’ve seen today has been simply stunning. What’s worse is knowing that it’s supposed to rain another 1-3″ overnight and seemingly continue raining again tomorrow. If you’re out and about the rivers, stay safe – the power of water is simply stunning.
Bears, Thunderstorms and Even Some Fishing: I’m Back Out West!
After a long and troublesome day of flying yesterday, I just barely made it out to Jackson. Summer in VT and back at home home in MD has been very good to me, but man I love coming out to Jackson. Everything just moves at a totally different wavelength out west and it’s a welcome change of pace from the humid and warm east coast.
This morning, we finally left the house after a late start, heading on our way towards our normal first day hike up to Taggart and Bradley lakes.
Driving across the Moose-Wilson road, we came across this cinnamon black bear cub. While everyone was stopping to take photos, he was just doing his thing, not caring in the slightest bit about the hordes of camera-wielding tourons.
After a short stop in Moose (we needed some of those amazing butterscotch cookies), we realized that our hike today wasn’t going to happen: the skies were clouding up and darkening rather quickly. Instead, we opted to just take a drive through the park. Just as we had suspected, it wasn’t long before the deluge began.
On our way back towards Jackson we stopped at this classic photo spot.
Later in the evening, after the weather had cleared up a bit, we spent some time fishing on the Gros Ventre. I knew that it had been a banner snow year and the runoff had likewise been enormous this year, but it didn’t really hit me until we got to the river. It was huge and fast! It took us a few minutes to convince my father that this was the same spot that we had been fishing as last year, as the river was so changed. With the water moving as fast as it was, it was no wonder that I didn’t catch anything. Oh well, we’ve got plenty more time to fish out here.
Overlooking the Gros Ventre river in the evening.
Man I’m so glad to finally be back out west. Although the weather today was a bit off, the rest of the week looks roughly about perfect. Let’s just hope the fishing falls into place soon.
Maine Day 4: A Little More Rangeley, Grafton and Out
Ah, our last day in Maine (although this isn’t really day 4 of this trip, but again, who’s counting?). After waking up to another beautiful day, we packed up our tent, got some quick breakfast at the local bagel shop in Rangeley, and went out to spend a few hours fishing on the Magalloway River. Of course, things are never as easy as they ought to be. After making the ~45min drive from Rangeley, we drove up to the river to find it looking very full of water, and frankly not at all wadable. We bumped into someone else who had been fishing and he told us that they had just raised the flow to about three times what it had been at, bringing it to nearly 1000cf/s. Well, with the Magalloway a washout (literally!), we decided to drive back to Rangeley and try our luck again on the Kennebago. We had spent a few hours last night out on the Kennebago, with little to no real success, so it was nice to get another shot at catching some fish there, even if we were going to be getting onto the water entirely to late into the day.
Upon gearing up and wading out into the river, we realized that our chances of catching fish that day were not too great, as it was just too warm. The water was roughly piss-warm. Roughly. (A thermometer reading had it around 74°, which is entirely too warm for trout). We were geared up already, so we decided to try our luck by throwing some streamers, hoping that this strategy might turn a few fish. As predicted though, we ended up getting skunked. Still, it’s a beautiful river and more generally a beautiful place to be.
It’s a pretty river, nonetheless.
My father trying to find some fish in the deep waters of the Kennebago.
After a few hours on the water, it was unfortunately time to leave northern Maine. We headed south from Rangeley and along the way we got a great view of Mooselookmeguntic Lake (man, that’s a mouthful).
And a nice panorama of the whole scene. Click to make it big!
Further south on our way out, we drove past Coos Canyon, a random roadside stop next to a very neat looking canyon.
There were lots of people hanging around (ok, I guess it was July 4th weekend), but it’s still a very neat place.
The rock is just so cool with all the striations.
After that quick stop, we continued southward, deviating slightly from the quickest path so that we could drive through Grafton Notch State Park. Interestingly enough, this notch is the geologic end of White Mountains. We took a quick hike to check out Moose Cave, a deep canyon of sorts. The light (vis-à-vis photography) in there was awful, but hopefully this single pic will help to give you an idea of what it’s like.
This short hike also had a sweet “moss forest.”
After the short walk, we continued down the notch and stopped at the main (maine?) attraction for us – Screw Auger Falls, a serious of truly beautiful cascades that Bear River has carved out over the eons.
I told you it was pretty.
We hung out there for a bit (it was hard to get any good photos without people in the frame), so we had some time to play around in some of the smaller cascades about the actual big drop. Moose was greatly pleased by this. On the other hand, my brother and mother, who were sitting in the back of the car with Moose, were not.
Here’s my folks with Moose above one of higher cascades.
Marc’s a bit of a photographer too, but he doesn’t do much with the photos… yet.
And that’s that – the end of the Maine trip. We continued south to our resting point for the night, N. Conway, and we ate yet another great meal at Moat (highly recommended). The next day we had the pleasure of being stuck in traffic all over the east coast on the way back to MD. From a parade in Lincoln to the standard summer traffic in the dirty Jerz, we hit it all… I guess that’s what you get for traveling during the 4th of July weekend.
All in all, it was a great trip. I’d never been up to northern Maine, or at least not the Rangeley Lakes region, but I was pleasantly surprised with what we found up there. Now I just can’t wait to get back.
Maine Day 3: Rangeley
After dawdling a bit too much as we were leaving the seacoast yeseterday, we finally made it in to Rangely fairly late in the evening. After setting up our tent and driving though the small town, I only had the chance to take this one shot of these neat clouds just as it was getting dark.
When we woke up today, we looked up into the sky to find another day of perfect weather. After the scattered showers that we passed through yesterday on the drive to Rangeley, we really couldn’t have asked for more. Clearly, another great day to take a hike.
We decided on the short hike up to Bald Mountain, a small hill sitting in between Rangeley and Mooselookmeguntic Lakes. The hike is less than 2 miles (one-way), and goes through a beautiful bit of northern boreal forest. I didn’t find anything great to photograph in there, so this first view is already from the top of the hike. We’re looking over at Rangeley Lake with Saddleback Mountain in the distance.
My father at the true top of the hike, a fire tower on top of Bald Mt.
The enormous Mooselookmeguntic Lake.
It was still early in the day after we finished up the hike, so we decided to check out the interesting sounding Angel Falls. According to what we read about it, the falls is one of the highest in all of Maine, coming in at 90 feet tall. This isn’t the actual falls, but another cool spot just before we got to the falls.
And the real show-stealer, Angel Falls. Even though the access requires one to go though some deep lumber country (granted, just about everything this far north and further north is owned by the lumber companies), it’s more than worth the journey to see this sight.
Although we didn’t really have any idea what we were getting ourselves into by coming up to the Rangeley Lakes region, I’m glad we did. It’s a remote and beautiful place which certainly deserves more exploration in the future. Unfortunately, for now we’ve only got some time left in the morning tomorrow before we have to begin the trek home.
Maine Day 2: Pemetic Mtn And More
On our second day of our Maine adventure (ok, so it’s actually the third, or even fourth, if you want to count a day’s worth of driving… but who’s keeping track anyways?), we woke up to find clear and sunny skies – clearly, a great day for a hike. So after a quick breakfast at Café This Way, we decided to go hike up and over Pemetic Mountain, one of the higher mountains on Mt. Desert Island.
And up we go.
The trail isn’t terribly long, and shortly after starting, we already found ourselves through most of the woods and on the rocky section of the trail, making the final push towards the summit.
Over Bubble Pond and across the way is Cadillac Mountain. And yes, you can drive your Cadillac to the summit of Cadillac Mountain, if you were so inclined.
Like I said earlier, most of the top of the trail follows on the somewhat reddish bedrock.
My brother Marc and Moose area about as high up as you can get on Pemetic Mt.
Just a beautiful day.
I’m not sure why they have such odd cairns up there (I’ve always been a fan of the straight up rock piles), but I appreciate them for their aesthetic value, if nothing else.
After hanging out on top for a bit and searching out some wild blueberries, we began our descent of the other side of the mountain. It was a bit rocky in spots, and Moose had some difficult with that, but we all made it down fine. And just like that, we were back by Bubble Pond.
With lots of time still left in the day, we drove down to the Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse, the most southerly point on Mt. Desert Island. There are more islands to the south (I believe these are the Cranberry Islands), across this notoriously choppy section of water.
Sure is a good thing they have the lighthouse here – it would suck to crash into this with a boat.
As the light was waning, we went out towards Pretty Marsh Harbor to just walk around a bit and take some photos.
Moose enjoyed getting into the water a bit.
Luckily he’s already learned as a pup that drinking saltwater doesn’t work out so well.
What a handsome dog!
The barnacles covering everything are surprisingly sharp and will cut you up a surprising amount, if you let them (ie: don’t walk barefoot here!).
With a lovely two days of Mt. Desert and Acadia Natl Park done and over, it is unfortunately time to leave. On the plus side we’re driving out towards the Rangeley Lakes region tomorrow, somewhere that none of us have ever been to. I can’t wait to see what awaits us in this (semi-) remote part of Maine.
Maine Day 1: A Foggy Sea Cost
So with it being summer and everyone here at home and now having some free time, we all decided it was time to get away from Maryland for a bit and head off on a short vacation. After some deliberation, we decided to spend the week in Maine, a familiar destination, but one which we haven’t been back to in a few years.
Unfortunately, the drive from Maryland to Maine can be a long and tedious one, but that tends to be how things go (or at least this is the case when you’re starting out in the mid-Atlantic region). We drove up to Portland, and spent our first night there. As was customary, we went to L.L. Bean (in the closeby town of Freeport) in the middle of that first night, since they are in fact open 24/7. One of the upsides of visiting L.L. Bean in the middle of the night is that you don’t have to deal with all the people and insanity of Freeport during the day, although we were sure to get hit by that during the next day.
The next morning, we woke up and went to get some coffee at the Arabica Coffee Co in Portland, which to our great surprise served up one of the better espressos I’ve had in the US. Afterwards we went to get our shop on in Freeport. Of course we didn’t really shop much, however I am willing to admit that I am a great fan of the Patagonia outlet store there (my biggest draw to the otherwise somewhat obnoxiously busy town of Freeport). Anyways, after spending too much time wondering about in Freeport, we needed to get moving. But before we could really get away, we needed some lunch, so we drove down to the South Freeport waterfront and got lobster rolls at the Harraseeket Lobster pound. It’s always delicious, and hey, when you’re in Maine, you might as well eat some lobster… After the delicious lunch we finally got back on the road, heading towards our first real destination of the trip, Mt Desert Island and Acadia Natl Park. However, instead of staying on the island, as we always have in the past, we decided to camp at Lamoine St Park, right across Frenchman’s Bay. Although I wasn’t expecting much, the campground was actually quite nice and rather quiet.
The next day we woke up to grey skies and foggy seashores, so we dove around a little bit, walked a little bit, and just generally enjoyed the still (?!) somewhat quiet Mt. Desert Island. I guess tourism season doesn’t quite start until July 4th, as late as that may seem. Anyways, I think I’ve written more than enough, so let’s see some pictures.
The foggy, rocky seashore of Acadia.
I think Martha Stewart has a house somewhere on that other side.
After driving around a bit, we walked out onto a small and not terribly well known beach. It’s really beautiful there. Here’s my mother and Moose enjoying the waves crashing onto the shore.
Moose wasn’t too fond of the big waves, and he got off this rock right after I snapped this pic.
The water was cold, as one might expect the Northern Atlantic to be.
I managed to get Moose out on the rock again, once more, when the waves calmed down a bit.
The tannic waters of a small stream running into the ocean.
After hanging out on that beach for a while, we went to take a walk to Wonderland, a place that my brother and I have always loved to walk around. There’s so much cool stuff around there, especially at low tide. On our way we stopped by here.
And saw this beaver swimming around.
And then after a short walk, we were in Wonderland!
Moose wandering about the wonder of Wonderland…
What a nice little path we had to get out there.
Hopefully tomorrow the weather will clear up a bit and we’ll be able to get out on a more extended hike. That being said, there’s something truly wonderful and greatly appealing about these cool and foggy Maine coast days.
Parcel 5 Mountain Biking
I’ve been biking around Hanover a lot these days – it’s a great and quick way to get around, and it’s especially fun since it’s been just so nice out lately. Sometime recently I decided I should take this to the next level and went for a short mountain bike ride. I used to bike a lot when I was much younger, but for any number of reasons I haven’t biked much in the past few years. Well, the first time I recently went, it was a blast. I knew that the place I was biking around, the Parcel 5 trail in Norwich, had some more trails running around and through it, but it was late in the day the first time I was biking through there, so I didn’t have a chance to explore at that time. Upon coming back for another bike ride, I found some really neat spots. Here’s a bit of what I found:
Part of the trail right before the high point.
Quite the sea of ferns.
A beautiful trail.
And a great bench to take a break at. It was a bit buggy though.
And a gorgeous meadow with a narrow single track running through it. Beautiful.
Man, this mountain biking thing is fun! Now I see why all the skiers are big mountain bikers. Now, I’m just curious as to why it’s been so long since I’ve done this.
River Recon Day
I had been planning on finally getting out on the river this weekend. Yesterday, I had been stymied due to the rain/thunderstorms that were passing through all day long. I was hoping to have better luck today, but unfortunately due to the weather (again), spending some time on the water was clearly not in the cards. However, I’d never been out fishing in the central region of Vermont, so I decided that I’d at least take a drive to see what was out there. Maybe, if I was lucky, I’d even get a chance to fish a bit, although I wasn’t too optimistic about the probability of that actually happening.
Although I didn’t get a chance to fish, I ended up wandering all over central Vermont, checking out a few different rivers and finding some really neat spots to hit up in the future. I drove along the White River from very close to its end (when it meets the Connecticut), making my first side trip to check out Locust Creek, a small feeder of the White.
It looks like a fairly standard New England creek…
Until you turn around and see what the bridge is going over.
Looking down at the constriction from the bridge.
I continued upstream towards the headwaters of Locust Creek, and found this scene. It’s nearly too stereotypical Vermont.
After checking out Locust Creek, I drove back and followed the White River a little bit longer until I came another feeder stream, Stoney Brook. I drove along a dirt road for a bit, checking out the water.
So pretty.
After that brief side-trip, I continued along the White River, ended up on VT 100.
Someone’s been busy along the White River.
I stopped briefly in Rochester to get some coffee. While in the shop, these wonderful tea cookies and an awesome cupcake (unfortunately, not pictured) caught my eye. So tasty!
Continuing up 100, I finally made my way to the origins of the White River, Granville Gulf. The lighting there was spectacular, as the sun was peaking through a few clouds and lighting up some of the trees in a very spectacular manner agains the dark and ominous sky. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, it was very hard to accurately capture in my photos.
And of course, how could I go into Granville Gulf without a picture of Moss Glen Falls?
With work awaiting me later on, I had to head home shortly after this. All in all though, I am pretty satisfied with the day. Although it would have been nice to get on the river, I’m not going to complain about my outing. I found some neat spots, and can’t wait to get back to some of them to spend some quality time fishing (especially Locust Creek, once it opens for fishing in June).
Christmas Eve Cross Country Skiing
There’s no better way to get ready for the insanity of family and everything else to do with the holidays than by spending some time out in the woods – even just an hour will do. This time, with the snow still remaining from the epic weekend snowstorm, we went cross country skiing on the Mingo Forks trail of the Gunpowder Falls state park.
The players were me, my brother Marc, our father, and the canine companion, Moose.
Moose, looking handsome as always.
Marc skiing.
Having some fun and getting rowdy.
Dad skiing along.
And myself.
Our tracks in the woods.
Lovin’ it.
Of course, after getting home everything for crazy in order to get everything ready for the night. Even so, it was nice to get out into the woods for an hour or so, especially while there is still snow on the ground (especially given the grim forecast for the 26th).
Snowshoeing On The Gunpowder
After coming home from VT with the imminent snowstorm coming to the mid-atlantic, I woke up to find the snow piling up here in northern MD. Since we got in really late after driving home after a day skiing in VT, we slept in a bit. But after that, it was time to go play in the snow! With not quite enough snow to go ski touring yet (that being the plan for the next day, once the snow had stopped), we decided that the best way to spend a snowy afternoon was to go snowshoeing around the Gunpowder river. The roads were deserted, of course, and barely plowed out, but we made it down to the river, and set out on our journey.
The players were me, my brother Marc, our father, and the canine companion, Moose.
Marc, Dad and Moose out in the woods.
Snow just makes everything prettier.
Hiking along the trail
The Gunpowder river, as the snow piles up. Note the object that’s sticking out of the river, with a huge mound of snow piling up on it.
Moose amongst the snowy bushes
An unplowed Falls road. Glad to see that we were the only ones crazy enough to be out and enjoying this awesome snow storm.
Moose is loving the snow!
There’s a lot of snow out there. And it kept snowing for hours and hours!
Not quite adventurous enough to head out into the water, but still curious.
Although it only snows rarely in MD these days anymore, it’s still quite a treat when it does. We were only out for a bit, but it’s always great to get back out into the snow, especially when it’s so close to home!