I was up early and decided to head over to the parking lot in Stark NH at Christine Lake. Its a paved road and plowed to the summer club gate. The driveway to the boat landing and parking was not, but most vehicles could make it through to the parking. There looked to be few folks who had camped there overnight (despite signage to the contrary. The hike to the Percys via side trail to connect up with the Coos trail is about 1/2 logging road and then once on CT its well graded until the climb up round south Percy and up to the Col. This is a longer and lesser-known approach to the Percy's but I and others wanted to avoid parking at the gate on the south end of Nash Stream Road. The Percy Peaks trail coming up from Nash Stream Road is shorter including the road walk but its steep and has one known slide path that crosses it, but the majority of the folks took that route. There was steady stream of folks coming up the summit of North Percy even past the beginning of the eclipse. What made it ideal for eclipse is the North Percy has extensive open ledges accessible from the trail from the col which avoid the steep ledges to the SW of the summit (the former Underhill trail traversed that side. The summit cone also drops rapidly to the west so its sharp drop down in the valley looking west. There were a lot of people on the summit, my guess 100 plus but there was plenty of room to stretch out. The crowd was mixed from well-equipped folks to people with little or no gear and sneakers. Most had come up from Nash Stream road and those who took the route described it as conga line in many spots. When I arrived at the summit, there were a few groups already up there and the skies were blue with a faint trace of high clouds in VT. As the morning progressed into afternoon these clouds came closer but never got overhead. Most of the summit had snow on it with various rocks and some ledge was exposed. I hope that that minimized the impact to the summit. I didn't see any trash. I think a lot of folks elected to go to Rogers Ledge as it "was easy to get too". Given the shift in the eclipse model I expect they were disappointed and given the small area of the cliff it must have been packed.
Winds were very light and temps were mid fifties. Despite applying sunscreen, I got some color from the full sun and reflection from the snow. Around 2:30 the eclipse started. It was still bright out but as totality approached the view to the west reminded me of sunsets on the west coast. I think the high clouds to the west gave some additional coloration to the sky. I and others were looking in the general direction the eclipse was approaching from rather than at the sun itself looking for a distinct shadow rushing at us which various experts said to look for. I dont think anyone of us saw a distinct shadow but we could see the zone of totality darkening up and approaching with some very sunset colors to the north and south. Totality was only a minute and half long but it was definitely impressive. I did find my Android phone would not take crisp pictures as putting a filter over the lens appears to impact ranging. There were some folks on the summit with tripods and high end gear but I was there for the experience. It did not get as dark as I expected but it definitely cooled down and the winds picked up quite a bit. Long Mountain blocks the view to the east so I dont think a lot of folks hung around very long post totality.
The hike back to the col was a conga line but once I turned on the Coos trail south it was fairly quiet. I used my snowshoes for about a 1/3 of the total. Many folks were forgoing snowshoes running down the trail making a mess of it but my snowshoes regroomed it a bit. Once I switched to microspikes the snow at best was 4" deep and melting rapidly, my guess is the snow line had gone up slope considerably with the days sun and melting. In the AM I had sawed out a blowdown that people were bypassing and potentially missing the turn to Victor head (a closer alternative). By the afternoon traffic had shifted
I did get a surprise when I pulled onto RT 110. Barely any traffic, into Berlin. As I entered Berlin I saw brakelights ahead and the traffic was nearly stopped. It was that way all the way to traffic lights in Gorham. What normally would take me 15 minutes took me close to 1 hour and half. Luckily, Gorham opened up the shoulder of the road and designated it for RT 2 west so once I made the turn onto RT 2 there was no traffic in my direction but quite steady in the other direction to Gorham. My guess is anyone traveling south on RT 16 probably will be on the road for many hours As traffic through Conway down to Ossipee is slow even with normal traffic.
I guess to wrap it up , miracles do happen, a sunny day in April in Nothern NH that lined up with an eclipse. I am glad I had a plan and actually got to use it.
Winds were very light and temps were mid fifties. Despite applying sunscreen, I got some color from the full sun and reflection from the snow. Around 2:30 the eclipse started. It was still bright out but as totality approached the view to the west reminded me of sunsets on the west coast. I think the high clouds to the west gave some additional coloration to the sky. I and others were looking in the general direction the eclipse was approaching from rather than at the sun itself looking for a distinct shadow rushing at us which various experts said to look for. I dont think anyone of us saw a distinct shadow but we could see the zone of totality darkening up and approaching with some very sunset colors to the north and south. Totality was only a minute and half long but it was definitely impressive. I did find my Android phone would not take crisp pictures as putting a filter over the lens appears to impact ranging. There were some folks on the summit with tripods and high end gear but I was there for the experience. It did not get as dark as I expected but it definitely cooled down and the winds picked up quite a bit. Long Mountain blocks the view to the east so I dont think a lot of folks hung around very long post totality.
The hike back to the col was a conga line but once I turned on the Coos trail south it was fairly quiet. I used my snowshoes for about a 1/3 of the total. Many folks were forgoing snowshoes running down the trail making a mess of it but my snowshoes regroomed it a bit. Once I switched to microspikes the snow at best was 4" deep and melting rapidly, my guess is the snow line had gone up slope considerably with the days sun and melting. In the AM I had sawed out a blowdown that people were bypassing and potentially missing the turn to Victor head (a closer alternative). By the afternoon traffic had shifted
I did get a surprise when I pulled onto RT 110. Barely any traffic, into Berlin. As I entered Berlin I saw brakelights ahead and the traffic was nearly stopped. It was that way all the way to traffic lights in Gorham. What normally would take me 15 minutes took me close to 1 hour and half. Luckily, Gorham opened up the shoulder of the road and designated it for RT 2 west so once I made the turn onto RT 2 there was no traffic in my direction but quite steady in the other direction to Gorham. My guess is anyone traveling south on RT 16 probably will be on the road for many hours As traffic through Conway down to Ossipee is slow even with normal traffic.
I guess to wrap it up , miracles do happen, a sunny day in April in Nothern NH that lined up with an eclipse. I am glad I had a plan and actually got to use it.
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