2006 Waterman Fund Awards

As reported by Mike Dickerman today in the Littleton Courier, the Guy Waterman Alpine Stewardship Fund has announced its 2006 grants to ATC, ADK, town of Waterville, and DOC. Two projects focus on Moosilauke. Full proposals can be read on the GWASF website.

Interesting.


After reading the proposals, I'm curious about a couple of things:

1. Does anyone know to what extent a "permanent photomonitoring point" captures images? Do they look at a whole area on the summit? The proposal stated that the purpuse was to "monitor recreational impacts to alpine vegetation". Do they monitor one clump of plants, or a wider view? Sort of made me wonder since the grant was given to the ATC. Is there a problem with hiker misuse, or is the project to maintain this particular section of the AT?
2. Has anyone ever met the summit steward on Welch? I never hike it on the weekends, when I would imagine a steward would be on duty.

BTW, my curiousity about specifics of the grants should in no way imply any criticism of the Waterman Fund.

Periwinkle, as I understand it, photomonitoring, or photo point monitoring basically involves setting up a stand from which the photographer can take picture of exactly the same place again and again to monitor conditions. It sounds fairly low-tech and non-invasive, although there may be more sophisticated operations with permanent cameras mounted. It also sounds as if the image range is limited.

The only summit stewards I have met around here were on Moosilauke and Camel's Hump. The Moos steward had her hands full keeping a class of almost 30 taken up by a Dartmouth prof on the rocks and off the vegetation.

summit stewards

The folks on Moosilauke do nice job being helpful without being too obtrusive. I recall Guy Waterman did the same on Lafayette and Lincoln. It's challenging to inform the interested and/or ignorant without being a jerk.
Nattering on on the subject of summit monitoring:
Both Hale and Carter Dome have become steadily more treed than about 20 years ago with consequent loss of views. Any comments on loss or gain of views from other peaks are welcome. I was thinking more or less about places with "induced" treelines such as Firescrew, Resolution, Crawford, Baldfaces, the Travellers but you might also ask about some marginally treeline places such as Guyot.

Disappearing Views

bill bowden said:

Any comments on loss or gain of views from other peaks are welcome.

Click to expand...

Not sure you wanted the comments here but the most dramatic example that comes to my mind is Mt. Field, which used to have the 180 degree view of the Pemi that now belongs to Mt. Tom, which was totally treed and viewless when I first did it. I also recall that North Tripyramid used to have a much better view than it does today.

Exactly what I was looking for! Our posts are not precisely in keeping with Waumbek's original post but are in keeping with Guy waterman's abiding interest in the White Mountains.