September 19, 2012 Franconia Notch State Park, New Hampshire

A notch in this area is a mountain pass. I don’t know how high the pass is, but the mountains on either side are 4-5,000 + feet high.

Cannon Mountain ski area. It has a tram you can take in the summer and see the view.  This is the back of Cannon Mountain by the pass.

The Basin of the Penigewasset river is a deep glacial pot hole at the base of the waterfall measuring 20 feet in diameter and 15 feet deep. John is pointing out a 300 ton glacial boulder.

A scenic covered bridge over the Penigewasset River on the way  to the Flume Gorge.  Flume brook at the beginning of the gorge.

Flume brook. The beginning of the gorge.

Wall of the gorge, John getting closer. The gorge is a chasm nearly 800 feet long. The brook tumbles in a series of waterfalls and pools between the 60-90 foot high granite walls that are 12-20 feet apart.  You walk on a boardwalk and lots of stairs, all over the water.

water is dripping down the sides of the gorge. The gorge gets tighter and the water faster.

Right around the corner from John is a 45 foot waterfall, you can see the mist.  You can hear it roaring long before you see it. The second photo is above where John is in the preceding photo.

 

Looking back down the gorge, looking up the stairs, the stairs and boardwalk are over the water.

Avalanche falls drops 45 feet. Fall leaves near the top

A rooster tail at the top of the falls. John having lunch and reading his GPS

Sentinel Pine Covered Bridge over the Pemigewasset river again. It is over a cascade that flows into a pool.  Looking up river at the cascade, which is much bigger and steeper than it looks in this photo. This morning on the high water from the rain a kayaker died somewhere under the bridge. We passed all the emergency vehicles on the way in and when we got to the bridge a TV cameraman was filming the river. Very sad.

The Wolf Den is a narrow one way path that involves crawling on your hands and knees and squeezing through rocks.  Of course we headed in. Here is the crawling part, all I could see were John’s ankles.  John got through so I knew I could.

After crawling all I had to do was squeeze out this crack.  Another view of the bridge from the other side.

The killer cascade(rapid). Again it is much bigger and scarier than it looks in this photo.  John says it is a solid class V. The pool at the bottom is 40 feet deep and 150 feet in diameter and is surrounded by cliffs that are 130 feet high. There are huge granite blocks in the notch, they were left by the glaciers, here are a couple with trees trying to grow around them.

They have moose in New England. John is posing with a giant stuffed animal moose in the lobby of the visitors center. The North woods of New Hampshire have 3,500 moose.

The peaks behind the visitors center. 4-5000 + high.

We stopped at the ski museum at Cannon mountain on the way back.  The red car was one of many pulled by a cable to take skiers up the mountain-the first chairlift. Antique skis in the museum, John says he had at least 6 pairs of ski’s like the ones in the museum. John with a pair of skis like he had once , in front of a photo of Tuckerman Ravine.  The ravines sheer west wall challenges expert downhill skiers. It is a little north of here, I hope we get to see it.