| Summary | |
| Owner | MITOC Gallery Administrator |
| Creation Date | 2004-09-16 09:03:58 UTC-0400 |
| Description | Trip Report: Leonids 11-19-2002 Participants: Deb Fraser and Dave Scott -- yeah everyone else bailed -- ya sissies! jk ;) Since the forecast for the Whites was calling for 40-50 MPH winds, we opted to watch the Leonid meteor shower in the Monadnock region in NH instead, where the forecast called for minimal wind dying down overnight and mostly clear skies. We set out for North Pack Monadnock Mountain, a little after midnight. As we headed into the countryside in NH, we noticed increasing amounts of snow cover on the ground. We turned off route 101 in Peterborough to make our way along some back roads to the North Pack trailhead. Although the roads were plowed, they were narrow and there were patches of hard frozen snow forcing us to travel slowly, especially with a sports coupe. While we drove, we happened to see a couple meteors shoot across the sky. Now, having been to the mountain, a few years back, I had a good idea of where we wanted to go, however it was not as easy as anticipated to navigate the back roads in the dark, with a limited memory, map, and directions. To add to the challenge, the streets seemed to morph from one to the next. Several times we started down one road that was named with a street sign, and when we reached the other end, without taking any turns, the road was labeled with street sign of a different name. So we ended up passing the trailhead, driving back and forth, thoroughly mapping out the area in our heads (we know it real well now!), and verifying the guidebook directions which described a route coming from the opposite direction. Traveling at about 20 MPH, it took us roughly an hour to find the trailhead after we left the main road. It was roughly 2:30 am. We packed up our gear, and set out on the trail, hiking by headlamp. It was cold (predicted temperatures in the 20s F), but a nice calm night. The ground was covered with a few inches of packed icy snow. Our surroundings were very pretty, with frozen snow on the pine trees, and a layer of ice coating the tree branches, and even the dead leaves hanging from them, which looked like glass ornaments as they clanked into each other. The trail was easy to follow with blazes and some snowshoe tracks to guide us. Dave also noticed what looked to be fox tracks or some similar animal. We hiked for roughly a half hour until we came to rock slab clearing with a good open view of the sky to the east, where we set up our bivy camp. As predicted, it was mostly clear with a few transparent high altitude clouds passing. However, it was very bright out for the middle of night. The moon, which was now hovering at the treeline of the furry pines that stood behind us to the west, shone down on us like a giant flashlight in the sky. There was also some light pollution on the horizon coming from the Nashua, Amherst, Milford area city/towns to the east. Nestled in our sleeping bags, at around 4 am, we watched the sky. Going on little sleep from the days before, even with the cold air on my face, I had a hard time staying awake, and could relate to how Hector must have felt on our trip last year. The sky gradually began to darken as the moon lowered to the west, and the stars became brighter. Still with the combined light pollution from the moon, city/towns on the horizon, and eventually the rising sun, it just wasn't nearly dark enough to see more than the brightest meteors. But they were still nice, and I was glad we had made the trip. Some had bright blaze tails with a bit of color, green, orange, gold. There were a couple bright flashes of ones that hit the atmosphere dead on. There were faint ones too, and you could only wonder for every one that we saw how many hundreds or thousands were shooting by that we couldn't see. Around the peak time, after 5 am, I saw a few bursts of like 5 or so per minute. Sometime after 5:30, I sat up to see the pretty orange light of the rising sun coming over the horizon. The winter wonderland of the snowy trees around us was becoming more visible and beautiful. Wish I had brought the camera. Dave saw the space shuttle on the horizon near dawn, but I missed it, as I started to doze off just before 6 am. I was completely out for about 1.5 hours. At 7:30, we got up, packed up camp and headed back down, admiring the wintry scenery along the way. Dave noticed some more tracks which he thought might be from a bobcat or some other feline. When we reached the car, we met a nice older gentleman, who had just arrived to go hunting after getting off the night shift. He, a shotgun hunter, and Dave, who hunts with bow and arrow, talked shop for a while. These are conscientious hunters mind you, only hunting for the challenge of obtaining food for themselves and connecting in their own way with nature. I gathered from the conversation, that the both of them only set out to bag one animal in a given year, if lucky, which provides enough food to last quite awhile. Dave says he still has deer meat from one he got two years ago. And we talked about viewing the meteor shower, which the hunter had seen at his work place. As he headed into the woods, we made our way back onto the road in search of breakfast. Overall, last year's show was much more spectacular because it was much darker out and you could see many more meteors. I had seen between 20-30 per minute during the peak that year. But we saw some good ones this time too, and had a nice little adventure. Deb |