Gile and Cardigan.

7-1-10 VERMONT: It has turned cold again. It’s in the low sixties and windy with mostly overcast skies and showers—a shivery day. We, Lily, Eoin, Joe and I, climbed Mt. Cardigan. Generally regarded as not hard, we did it, round-trip with a hour for lunch on the top, in 3.5 hours. Thanks to a terrible fire in the 1850’s, the top is mostly bald with a fringe of vegetation. After the fire, the soil on the top was washed away leaving the bedrock of Kinsman grandiorite, a type of granite. The rock has a speckled gray backround with large chunks of white feldspar and whitish quartz veins—kind of like a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor. Cherry Garcia, anyone. The top was cold and windy, but we found a nook in the lee on the south face for shelter from the north wind and had lunch. The boys found a niche that they said was warm.


The top from the lower summit. Those little black vertical sticks on the granite are hikers.
Tonight we have a fire going.

Two days ago, we four did Gile Mountain as a warm-up, a quick up-and-down the mountain and fire tower.

New blooms: filipendula, monarda, Stella D’Oro day lily.