Day 6

Day 6- We decided to climb Mt. Lafayette (5,260 ft) today which according to Dr. Arion was an eight on a one to ten scale. The rise wasn’t too bad but the terrain was by far the rockiest we have hiked yet. The view at the top was amazing but we couldn’t stay up at the summit too long due to the cold. Along the way up the mountain we came across many rocks and stone that were all primarily made of granite which makes sense since New Hampshire is the Granite State. There was one stone however, that looked different from all the rest. It was a piece of granite that had a single quartz stripe going all the way through it. Dr. Zorn explained it happened after some disturbance in the granite that probably started a small little crack. Then, with the right minerals and conditions of high pressure and temperature, quartz slowly began to form in the crack. It grew more and more until finally it had split the granite and taken the appearance of a quartz stripe. As we continued our ascent we came to the area known as the Alpine Zone which is above the tree line. Right before the tree line though, we came across krumholz which is vegetation that has very stunted growth due to the extreme conditions. Cairns, which are manmade rock piles, led the way up the rest of the path and allow hikers to better navigate to the summit in foggy conditions. At the summit I realized most of the granite was much more pink than the granite on the rest of the mountain. Dr. Zorn explained to me this was because of a different mineral in the granite called feldspar. He said that since it was at the top of the mountain it was about 100-200 million years older than the rock below it that was of different color. This really put a good perspective on just how old these landmarks are. After the 3 hour descent off of Mt. Lafayette we went to see some geographical phenomena.

The first was the Old Man of the Mountain which was first discovered in 1805 by Francis Whitcomb and Luke Brooks. I was surprised it wasn’t discovered by a Crawford since it seems like everything else was around here! At one time the Old Man was in danger of becoming property of a lumber company’s but with the help of over 15,000 donors, the state was able to purchase the land and it soon became Franconia State Park. Over the years the Old Man had been fortified with rods and turnbuckles on the outside, epoxy in the cracks, and special drainage ditches to divert the water around the monument. However, it was only a matter of time until the monument fell in 2003 and only the memorial stands today.

The next was The Basin which at first sight doesn’t look much better than the surrounding area but after one stops to really think about how it formed it really is quite spectacular. The river bore out a 15 ft deep, 30 ft wide basin in solid granite. The sides of the basin were slowly carved out by the river picking up sand and stone and eroding away at the granite that seemed as smooth as glass with water running over it. It really doesn’t sound like much in the way I explain it but if one were to see it they would be dumbfounded how just water and sand can cause something so magnificent.