Autumn Comes after Winter
December 27, 2009
A big blizzard hit East Coast last Sunday that made me felt there should be a lot of snow accumulation in the mountain. I changed the location to Tiorati Circle intended to see the Ice Cave. It was too bad that the 24 hours rain on Saturday had washed away most of the white stuff, both snow and ice. I had Chung Kwong, Fang, Helen, Susie, Rose, Esther, Philip, Eric, Raymond, Clara and Moon in the group. It was Eric’s first trip with Nature You but it was already the last trip of 2009. Hopefully, he wouldn’t wait too long to join again next year.
We met at Tiorati Picnic Area at 10 am which was not new for most hikers. Actually, Clara’s group was here 2 weeks ago. In order to give them some new experience, I decided to hike on the other trails. I first announced the top three hikers of 2009 who were Rose, Moon and Esther. Once again, all positions were won by female hikers. We reached the water tank along Blue Trail and climbed up to Ice Cave from a steep slope. The loose stones on the trail had frightened some new hikers. As I had predicted, we found only some mini sized ice formations at the Cave. The water splashed down a small waterfall was even more attractive. Rose, Esther and Eric were so happy to take picture with an ice trophy. I led them turned into Long Path afterwards in order to complete a 7 miles trip. The Long Path was flat where water had no place to flow. Susie was nice to lend Eric a hiking pole because the wet trail might be slippery. There was always a rule of not getting the feet wet during hiking, we crossed the swamp by switching side to side or walked on dry edge of the trail. We took a break at the junction of AT and R-D where Esther remembered it firmly.
I picked AT and started climbing up to a viewpoint. It was quite tough even the trail was cleaned. After taking the group picture at the viewpoint under good sunshine, we descended the hill. Esther brought a camera which was so new that she wasn’t clear about the functions. We heard machine gun shoots when she pressed the shutter. When we reached a spot with less wind and more stones, we decided to take lunch there because it had been noon already. Chung Kwong was so happy to claim it was the best lunch this year because no any rain, wind, snow or coldness. The weather today was a perfect day for outdoors. The climate was so strange that we had experienced Autumn hike after Winter hike of last week.
We crossed a bridge before hitting Seven Lakes Drive. The water level was so high that the bridge was almost submerged. We continued on AT to climb the slope. Susie almost got lost by going into an unmarked trail. I saw parts of the trails were turned into streams because of snow melt. We had to pay more attention when crossing streams because the stepping stones were wet. I led the group switched into R-D at the junction and started climbing Goshen Mountain. Fang said she was sure very tired after these ups and downs. I knew now she wasn’t so strong for difficult hikes even she had come from cold province of China. We descended the mountain and hit again the Seven Lakes Drive.
Eric found a big animal in the stream and Susie shouted to us it was an otter. The frightened animal sank back into the water before everyone came closed. I led the group climbed a slope and went back to the same tree that Esther could recognize. They knew now we had made a big circle and exercised 4.5 miles after we reached this spot in the morning. We climbed the last mountain with the trail full of ice. This probably made Fang and Clara more exhausted. We experienced mixed trail conditions today which included normal, wet and icy. The difference was made due to terrain, direction and duration of sunshine. We finished 7 miles and reached the parking lot by 4:15 pm.
