This weekend, Judy and I went on a hiking trip with a grad student, Erin Shea, to the White Mountains in New Hampshire. On Friday, we hiked 4.5 miles up the Stony Brook trail near Mount Moriah to the Imp Campground, which is just off the Appalachian trail. Since it was our first backpacking experience, Judy and I had a lot to learn. Erin taught us everything from setting up and using the stove to how to pack our bags, which will all be useful when we go into the field in a few weeks. Rain was in the forecast for Saturday so instead of backpacking the original loop we had planned, we left our tent set up at the campground and hiked along the Carter-Moriah trail for about 8-9 miles. The view was gorgeous once we got on top of the ridge.
We hit the summit of Middle Carter Mountain, one of the forty-five 4,000 foot peaks in New Hampshire. Throughout the day, we stopped and looked at the rocks and learned a bit of geology. In the picture below, we were looking at the quartz, which is grayish and on the left, and plagioclase which is white and cracked.
Here is a dike, which is an intrusion into the rock and can be identified by the differences in weathering from the surrounding rock.
It rained from the late afternoon and throughout the night, but this gave us a full camping experience. On Sunday, we hiked back down the Stony Brook trail tired but even more excited for our fieldwork in Washington, now that we had caught a glimpse of what lay ahead.
Emily Shorin
