Your Survival Guy: “Air Quality Alert Today”

Your Survival Guy is sitting here at our cabin in New Hampshire, looking out the window, and all I can say is it’s hazy out there. Smoke from wildfires burning in Canada fills the sky.

Last night, my parents were over for dinner, and my mom commented on how the smoke was bothering her. There’s an air quality alert until 11 pm tonight with warnings about outside activity. When the skies clear, I would like to scramble up the Caps Ridge Trail to Mount Jefferson.

Ed Parsons describes his ascent in The Conway Daily Sun:

The 2.5-mile Caps Ridge Trail to Mount Jefferson (5,716 feet) is a favorite for many hikers. Starting at 3,008 feet on the dirt Jefferson Notch Road, it requires less elevation gain than any other trail to reach a Presidential peak over 5,000 feet.

However this doesn’t make it easy, as there is substantial scrambling up the three “Caps” on the ridge to reach timberline. For those who like that, it is all-round fun.

I did it alone once on a day with cool temps, shade from plentiful clouds, and intermittent sun. When I drove up through Crawford Notch to Bretton Woods at 9:30 a.m., the upper slopes of the Presidentials were in the clouds.

I drove down the Base Station Road to the Jefferson Notch Road (directly across from the Mount Clinton Road). In 3.4 miles on that road I reached the height of land and the trailhead parking on the right.

Starting up this trail in the Canadian Zone evergreen forest you feel like you are already up on the mountain. You are.

If you have been there before, you look forward to the great lookout located 1 mile up the trail. It is a classic ridge top perch located at 3,791 feet, with a couple big rounded granite boulders to stand on. Above, one’s eye is drawn to the sharp peak of Mount Jefferson. In the deep ravine directly ahead, I could hear a rushing stream.

On top of the boulders where you stand are substantial glacial potholes, created about 12,000 years ago when the glacier was “down-wasting.”

The top of Mount Jefferson was already free of ice, and a stream formed on melting glacial ice to the immediate northwest of the mountain, creating the potholes.

How is this known? Normally potholes form in a stream bed, not on a ridge top.

This lookout is well worth a trip in itself. Later, on my way down I met a couple who had only gone that far. There is a good easy hiking tip for you, when you are in the area.
From there the upward trail soon gets interesting on the first Cap. Scrambling commences in earnest. Winding your way up the ridge you encounter the sharp merciless rock called the Littleton Formation. It originated as sediment on the bottom of the Iapetus Ocean.

Later, as tectonic plates closed 200 million years ago, it began to metamorphose into its present form. Because of that intense heat there are no sea fossils in it, like there are on the Appalachian Trail in Maine. It is rough on Vibram soles.

Action Line: I hope to see you on the trail. When you’re back home and want to chat email me at ejsmith@yoursurvivalguy.com.