New Hampshire: The Pemi Wilderness

Fall is nearly here, and from our base in Boston, it’s a fast two-hour drive to any number of beautiful places along the Atlantic Seaboard: the coast of Maine, the beaches of the Cape, the rolling hills and valleys of Western MA, and the mountainous uplands of Vermont and New Hampshire. Just over a month into our new work lives, Jane and I splurge on new backpacks and camping equipment, determined to make the most of our new surroundings. Comfortable as a clean bed and a hot shower might be at the end of a day’s travel, I’ve found car camping and hotel hopping to be severely limiting to my photographic craft, which is best done in the golden hours that bracket each day. I’ve long wanted to wake beneath the stars, miles deep within the wilderness, with pristine, picturesque landscapes a few feet outside of my tent. It’s not an experience that I’ve had any time recently in my adult life - at least not since I started photographing seriously. Until now, I haven’t had the time (or income) to make it happen.

With our new gear in tow, we set off on the second weekend of September for the northern tip of New Hampshire, to do an easy one-night camp in the Pemigewasset Wilderness (“The Pemi” for short), a massive woodland watershed that encompasses multiple ranges at the heart of the White Mountains. Setting off from Boston in the dark, we arrive at the quiet, between-seasons ski resort town of Lincoln around 7 AM, and find a parking spot up the road from the bustling trailhead parking lot shortly thereafter. Shouldering our packs for the first time, we walk several miles in along the rambling East Branch of the Pemigewasset River. Early fall colors are beginning to show here in the northern woods; along the forest canopy, the amber-red maples and golden birches are splashed among the leafy oaks and elms, and studded with pines and spruces. Morning light, that mystical, ethereal stuff of autumn magic, is filtering in through the fog and the trees. At the Franconia Brook campground, we find an empty tent platform and pitch our new tents. For relative newbies, we acquit ourselves fairly well, setting up our shelter and sleeping gear in about half an hour. After a brief snack break (nuts, bars, dried fruit), we empty our packs, stow our bear canister away in a tree hollow, and set off to explore. To reach the trails on the opposite bank, we cross the knee-high river barefoot; this winds up being a slippery, stony task that nearly ends with me face down in the water, and I vow to never again leave my water shoes behind in camp.

On the other side of the river, we walk along the Lincoln Woods Trail and climb the short path up to Franconia Falls - a series of slides where the river branch has carved its way through a slant of pink granite. Lying upon her pack, Jane takes a nap on the rocks, while I set up for long exposures of the nearby little cascades. We watch a family of school-age boys, happily tail-wagging black Labrador in tow, go plunging down the freshwater slides. In the mid-afternoon, we pack up and hike back across the river (this time I cross with my boots on, committing to their being wet the rest of the trip). Back in camp, I switch shoes and hang my boots against a tree to dry. We set up the camp boiler and heat two cups of water for our dehydrated dinners (a Mountain House breakfast skillet for me, and chicken and dumplings for Jane). In the evening, we briefly return to the riverbank to photograph the sunset light, before creeping into our sleeping bags for a long, chilly night in the forest.

Day 1: Ausable

“As a man tramps the woods to the lake, he knows he will find pines and lilies, blue herons and golden shiners, shadows on the rocks and the glint of light on the wavelets...
He can stand on a rock by the shore and be in a past he could not have known, in a future he will never see. He can be a part of time that was and time yet to come.”
- William Chapman White (1954)

What makes a landscape beautiful? What makes that beauty endure over time?

As a photographer and a lover of all things natural, I’ve grappled with these questions for many years, and I’ve written about them in the context of many places. There is something to be said for the concept of “unspoiled wilderness” - primeval land shaped over aeons by tectonic, hydraulic, and ecologic forces, but untouched by human hands. But these places are increasingly hard to find. Their beauty seemingly lies in their rarity, in the sense of adventure that comes with visitation, and in the painstaking, bittersweet acknowledgment that, in today’s globalized human civilization, such places will not remain wild forever without a significant fight. And even when nominally maintained as wild, sooner or later - through photography tours, tour buses, vacation resorts, and capital interests - it seems that each beautiful place will eventually bear the loving, smothering impact of human appreciation. Wilderness, the cynical environmentalist in me says, now exists only as a construct of certain “civilized” minds: a contrast to the modern city, and an ideal to be defended. But nothing more.

This definition of nature (one that emphasizes the wild and ignores the human) is one way to understand natural beauty. But it excludes many places in the world. It speaks against what I know empirically to be true - against the deep, emotional impact that I’ve felt from studying, visiting, and photographing, however briefly, places like the Hebrides, the Faroes, and Smith Island, where nature and humanity are hopelessly intertwined. Places like this present a different vision of nature - one that acknowledges the human presence. Where each landscape is imbued with human history and cultural meaning. These places have their own enduring beauty. The question becomes how long that beauty will endure after my brief visit (for after the photographer, comes the tour bus).

In the face of that question, the Adirondack Park in northern New York State offers a singular reply that forms the thesis of its existence: “Forever.” The park’s 6 million acres (nearly the size of Massachusetts, and larger than Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Great Smokies National Parks combined) were enshrined in a 1894 amendment to the state constitution that declared New York’s forest preserve to be “forever wild”, reversible only by direct vote of the citizenry. Like many beautiful places, it is a place of contrast. It is the largest publicly protected area in the Lower 48 states, a land of 10,000 lakes, 30,000 miles of rivers, countless mountain peaks, and expansive wetlands and old-growth forests. It is also home to 100,000 year-round inhabitants in over a hundred towns and villages, and many more seasonal residencies, farms, businesses, and mining and timber interests. These form a patchwork of private land within the park that ebbs and flows with time and legal action, such that the Adirondack Park has been described (somewhat derisively) as “conservation in reverse” or (somewhat optimistically) as “the greatest experiment” ever undertaken in conservation.

For any who have studied conservation in the United States, the history of the park’s creation is striking for its unreliance on capitalist benefactors carving out land with wealth (as in the Tetons or Shenandoah), or on the presence of land whose expansiveness and remoteness favored early preservation over exploitation (as in Alaska and much of the interior West). To be sure, the Adirondacks are not without their ecologic and economic troubles. But, located just a few hours from New York City and the other great metropoles of the Atlantic seaboard, this mountainous land presents a uniquely hopeful and enduring vision for what natural beauty can look like in an increasingly human world. For what could be, if we strive to live in harmony with the land around us.

The Adirondacks are a mountainous massif bounded to the east by Lake Champlain and Vermont, to the west by the Finger Lakes region, to the south by the upland valleys adjoining the Hudson River, and to the north by Canada. It is host to an enormous range of ecosystems, including the largest forest preserve in the continental United States, the second-largest canoe area in the country (after the Boundary Waters), alpine and sub-alpine terrain at the heart of the High Peaks, and innumerable riparian, littoral, and edge communities wherever woods and waters meet. In short, it is a naturalist’s (and nature/landscape photographer’s) paradise. In fact, Jane and I had travel plans for the region (Lake George, specifically) as far back as Thanksgiving of 2013. This was back when we seemingly didn’t understand a thing about holiday traffic, driving distances, or late November weather in the North. We simply wanted to get out of the city, and pointed ourselves toward the largest concentration of freshwater bodies and mountain summits we could find. Fortunately, logic prevailed, and we stayed home that year, eventually taking our first vacation together in Shenandoah - the very first post on the Mid-Atlantic page of this site. As soon as I received my fellowship year schedule and saw a vacation slot in the first week of October, though, I knew that a return to the North, to explore the autumn Adirondack landscape by car, by foot, and by paddle and portage, was finally in order. This is how we spent the week of our 29th birthdays.

After an early morning flight with a layover in Philadelphia, we’re approaching Burlington, VT, in a small aircraft. From the airplane window, I watch as the rolling hills and farmlands of the Champlain Valley give way to the enormous body of water separating New York from Vermont, site of so much struggle from the days of empire (the French-Indian War) and before (the Algonquian and Iroquois Confederations). As we swing around to land in Burlington, I see the earth rising in a great wall beyond Lake Champlain - the Adirondack Mountains, weathered and imposing. Small wonder, then, that the interior of the massif was scarcely explored by Americans until well into the 19th century - at a time when the West was already being settled, the Colorado River’s canyons were being navigated by Powell, and Manifest Destiny had seemingly arrived. Before the mill towns and mining settlements, before the tuberculosis sanitoriums, the Great Camps, and the ski resorts, there were only the Native Americans, the fur traders, and a handful of hardy mountain men, guides and explorers whose deeds verged on mythic. The word “Adirondack” itself is derived from a Mohawk phrase meaning “bark-eater,” a derogatory reference to the hunter-gatherer Algonquins. Thus, although the park’s name today evokes scenic beauty, wilderness, and relaxed summers spent hiking and paddling, the English equivalent would be a futuristic alien civilization making a wilderness preserve of Earth and calling it “Motherfucker Planet”. History has a way of bringing such ironies into sharp focus.

In Burlington, we quickly pick up our rental car, a white Toyota Camry. After a pit stop at the local Hannaford grocery store (chocolate croissants, fruit, and milk for breakfast; instant noodles and a variety of canned proteins and vegetables for lunch and dinner), we head south to the Charlotte-Essex ferry, which takes us across Lake Champlain and to the foot of the Adirondack Mountains. Along the way, we pass apple orchards, dairy farms with pastured cows, and fields of baled hay. Outside of Keene, we stop at a meadow to admire the colors in the trees. Autumn comes much more quickly in the North than in Maryland - and whereas we in the Mid-Atlantic have just begun detect a whiff of the great seasonal change, here the birch and beech trees stand like golden amber on the hillsides, and the Main Street of every little town we pass through has a maple tree aflame with bright crimson leaves. We have arrived just in time for the region’s peak autumn foliage, which spreads from late September to early October, outward like a wave from the High Peaks region to the surrounding foothills and valleys, and southward from the park’s northern boreal ponds and forests to the lowland waterways and woodlands. In about an hour of pleasant driving, we make our way from the shores of Lake Champlain to the town of Lake Placid just below the High Peaks - our home base for the coming week.

At Lake Placid, we check into our accommodations - a cozy ground-floor apartment with a full kitchen, a living room, and a roaring fireplace. After unloading luggage and groceries, we have a quick snack break before heading out for the afternoon. We take Route 86 northeast out of town and through the pass below Whiteface Mountain, following the West Branch of the Ausable (Au Sable: “Sandy”) River as it emerges from its source in the High Peaks and drains toward its delta on the western shore of Lake Champlain. Along the way, we pass High Falls Gorge, where the river drops out of the upland forest in a series of steep, picturesque waterfalls. We stop at several points to photograph the river and its surrounding foliage. Parking roadside at Monument Falls, we descend the dirt bank of the river to watch it curve into a lovely, shadowed stand of pine and spruce trees. There is a another excellent composition here - of the river and road curving together to the northeast as the summit of Whiteface soars behind them; but the harsh mid-day light, even with a ND filter, blots out all features on the river and turns the roadside foliage a ghastly, jaundiced color.

Next, we stop at the parking area for Whiteface ski lifts, where a bridge over the river affords a lovely view of the rocky riverbank. The ski area is swarmed with tourists heading up Whiteface for afternoon summit views; we choose to steer clear. Moving on, we stop on either side of the Wilmington Flume, a chute of turbulent falls just a mile below High Falls Gorge. On the northern side of the Flume, a roadside parking area and a neat dirt trail lead to a pond with a flooded forest, standing beneath the eastern aspect of Whiteface Mountain. Jane and I take photos together here; the path continues and allows access to the river for the fly-fishermen, whom we watch from above.

Crossing the road bridge to the southern side of the river, another dirt trail descends steeply beneath the level of the road and through a stand of fir and pine trees. The ground is covered by a thick, soft mat of pine needles and fallen leaves, and the roar from the cataract below us is deafening. A few minutes down this path, we find a wide ledge just above the main section of the Flume, buttressed by the roots of a solitary oak tree. Jane walks out while I photograph the swirling spray of the falls, illuminated by the glow of afternoon sunlight. For the sake of time, we choose not to descend further along the river, but there are undoubtedly other fascinating waterfall compositions to be had in this area.

Back on the road, we pass through Wilmington as the sun sinks toward the hulking wall of Whiteface Mountain. In town, we stop on the bridge beside the town’s tiny public library. Here, the West Branch of the Ausable emerges from the mountains, becoming a slow, broad river surrounded by marsh grass and mixed hardwood stands. The river’s curve looks particularly lovely in the light of the setting sun, against the backdrop of the Sentinel Range. A few miles east of town, we stop at our sunset destination and terminus for the day - an expansive meadow that opens up to an amphitheatre of mountains. Clements Mountain sits to the immediate southeast, with the Jay Mountain Wilderness beyond, while the Sentinel Range and Whiteface lie to the southwest and west. I take a timelapse of sunlight fading on the distant, forested slopes, before we make the short drive back to Lake Placid and the first of many extravagant noodle dinners on this trip.

Day 2: High Peaks

In the morning, our apartment is cozy and warm, the fireplace having burnt into a smouldering glow overnight. We get dressed and have our breakfast of chocolate croissants, juice, and yogurt. It is just past 6 AM, and first light is showing over the treetops in the backyard. The photographer’s heart within me flutters, for there are shapely, medium-altitude clouds in the sky, which are just beginning to catch color. Perfect conditions for a stunning sunrise. In the car, we drive the short distance northeast out of Lake Placid to the turnoff for Connery Pond Road. A single dirt track takes us about half a mile into the woods, to a parking spot just short of the water. Unfortunately, we fail to notice the small wooden signpost pointing toward Connery Pond, and instead set off up the trail toward Whiteface Landing. We realize our mistake after a few minutes, when the path begins to wind uphill, but valuable time is wasted. Back beside the car, we locate the portage trail, which leads us to the marshy southern shore of the pond. Boots sucking in the mud, Jane and I make our way to the water’s edge, where I set up compositions of the breathtaking view across Connery Pond.

Though we missed the best of the sunrise colors, there is still plenty of drama in the sky. Clouds streak past us toward the northeast, shrouding the upper body of Whiteface Mountain, which only emerges in momentary glimpses. Sunrise builds behind the peaks of the Sentinel Range to the east. And all along the water is that classic sight of fall in the Adirondacks: a prism of autumn colors atop beech, maple, and oak trees, set apart by the fine, slender-white trunks of silver birch. I move back and forth along the shoreline, using the reach of my new camera’s lens to take close compositions of the distant trees while the second camera captures a timelapse. A carload of noisome Chinese photographers, their yelling audible from half a mile away, come and go after taking a number of selfies and flying a drone around for a few perfunctory minutes. Jane, myself, and one other photographer continue our work in silence.

Daylight is advancing in the east as we leave the shore of Connery Pond, walking the portage path out to our car. Back on the highway, we proceed a few miles down the road to High Falls Gorge, where we are the park’s first visitors of the morning. Paying our entrance fee, we walk out onto the boardwalk, which forms a short loop that clings to the edge of the canyon. Through the canyon, the e Western Branch of thAusable River cascades downward to the Wilmington Plain in a series of picturesque falls. At the bottom, where a suspension bridge crosses the chasm, I stop to take photos of this magnificent scene: jade-green moss clinging to weathered granite; ferns and hemlocks perched upon rocky holds; and oak leaves, like golden crystals, shimmering in the chasm’s reflected light. We have the place all to ourselves - at least, until a few minutes later, when a busload of touring elders begins to make its way down the canyon. From the bridge, I take a series of one-second exposures with Jane standing beside the waterfall, using the median technique to remove other humans from the shot. On the other side of the chasm, I use my zoom lens at an overlook to capture the vibrant autumn canopy covering the eastern slope of Whiteface Mountain. We wind our way back along the canyon, stopping to photograph a lovely curve in the river upstream from the gorge.

Back in the car, Jane takes a brief nap while I drive us back toward Lake Placid along River Road. On the banks of the river, we pass an alpine ski team training on roller-blades. Past the town’s Olympic ski jumping complex, we turn south on Adirondack Loj Road, which meets the highway at a large open field with expansive views into the heart of the Adirondack massif. I stop here to take some photos of the clouds rolling in over the mountains; a rainstorm is due later in the evening. Heading south now, we enter the busiest region of the park - the High Peaks, beloved by hikers, climbers, and campers alike. We leave our car in a turnout a few hundred yards down the road toward South Meadows, and reach our first trailhead of the trip: a five-mile out-and-back to the summit of Mount Van Hoevenberg.

After typical vacation car lunch (bread, chocolate milk, oranges, and Pringles), we sign our names at the trailhead register and set off. The western approach to the mountain begins as a flat, leisurely jaunt through mixed hardwood forest, which seems to go on forever (in fact, just a mile and a half). Jane and I take our time, stopping frequently to take in the intimate woodland scene around us, and to take pictures of the foliage. The wind out of the southwest is beginning to pick up, but down in the understory, the air is calm, and the sound of the breeze rippling through the treetops is quite evocative when paired with the crackle of the fallen leaves underfoot. These are the sights and sounds that remind one of autumn - and of the inevitable, slow, but beautiful passage of time. At length, the trail emerges into a clearing at the edge of a sunken forest, with the broad top of Mt. Van Ho looming in the distance. We skirt our way around the pond, making a muddy crossing over a series of boulders, before rejoining a dirt path that becomes increasingly steep and rocky as it ascends the flank of the mountain.

This last portion of the trail, also merely a mile or so in horizontal distance, feels equally interminable. Jane and I are in reasonable shape from our running routine, but the climb up the mountain quickly becomes a slog, at times requiring traverses along rock ledges, and in one place or two, some basic scrambling. As is common throughout the Adirondacks, the trail feels devilishly organic in design, shooting uphill along stream beds and rock falls, only to drop carelessly into a sheltered dell or a forest glade. This is in stark contrast to the modern, efficient switchback climbs that tend to inhabit such popular outdoors locations, which Jane and I are frankly more used to. We shed layers as we go, pausing to pretend to enjoy the forest scenery while we catch our breaths. Near the top, the whir of the wind rises into a howl, then a roar, as the trail funnels us out of the woods and onto open granite. We quickly replace our heavy outer layers as we reach the wind-blasted summit, where we are greeted with panoramic views of the mountainous plateau to the south: South Meadows with its picturesque, winding brook far below us to our left, the rounded knob of Mount Jo straight ahead (with the highest of the High Peaks shrouded by storm clouds beyond), and the outlying farms of North Elba to our right. I try in vain to take long shots of South Meadows Brook and the distant peaks from this vantage point, but the strong wind precludes any tripod use (or any prolonged fumbling with the camera in general), the light is flat and dreary, and the foliage in this skybound plateau is well-advanced, peak color having come and gone at least a week or two earlier than in the lower regions of the park. We settle for a quick panorama and an exchange of selfies with another photographer and his family at the summit, before turning around and making the long journey down the mountain and back to the car.

We retreat to the cabin for snacks and a brief afternoon nap before returning to the Loj Road, this time following it all the way south to the campgrounds beside the Adirondack Loj. Here we park and pay for a day-use permit before setting off toward Heart Lake and the trail up Mount Jo, where we intend to photograph the golden hour and the incoming storm clouds. The trail follows the north shore of Heart Lake for a few hundred yards, passing an old cabin and a number of interpretive exhibits before turning uphill to the north. While Mt. Jo has two approaches that can be hiked as a lariat, Jane and I decide to go up and down on the shorter, steeper (approximately one mile) route in order to maximize our time at the summit. Like on Mt. Van Ho, the path quickly devolves into a jumbled rock fall. Ignoring our labored breaths and burning calves, we scramble upwards quickly, not wanting to be caught in the dark on this descent. Above this long series of boulders, the trail levels into a series of boardwalks over mud pits before making a final push up to the summit, assisted by metal ladder rungs and wooden steps hammered into the granite.

At the top (note the false summit; the path to the true summit is just around a corner, obscured by a pine tree), we are treated to a breathtaking view of Heart Lake below, and the mighty Algonquin beyond. The wind is whipping furiously around us now, as a billowing mass of storm clouds surges over New York’s second highest mountain peak, which is drowned like a islet within a frothing ocean wave. As the sun drops toward the mountains to the west, the golden light is ever-changing, playing across the granite and the treetops and fading in and out with the passage of mist and cloud. After Jane and I take some photos together, I set up my tripod, which Jane dutifully helps me stabilize. As we sit and admire the drama unfolding before us, I find myself thinking that this evening encapsulates what I love so much about landscape photography - that it is all about being at the right place, at the right time, with the equipment to make the shot work. The rest of it is just bearing witness.

After a relatively quick timelapse, we descend the mountain the same way we came, in the growing dark. Back at the trailhead, we pay a short visit to the shore of Heart Lake before returning to the Loj. At the campground café, we order and share a hot dog with chips, a fruit punch soda, and strawberry ice cream cone before hopping in the car and making the short drive back to Placid. And not a moment too late - the pitter-patter of rain alights on our windshield as we enter town, and by the time we pull into our little parking spot and retire to our apartment for the night, the rainstorm has arrived.