8/01. Mt Washington Discovery Museum

(8/01 - Sunday)

Weather Station Mock-up,
Mt. Washington Observatory Museum.

  
The Mt Washington Discovery Museum is across the street from the Eastern Slope Inn in N. Conway. The museum houses displays about the weather observatory atop Mt. Washington and the important collection of 1937 aerial photographs of the White Mountains taken by Brad Washburn. 

  

http://www.mountwashington.org/

  

Brad and Barbara Washburn have donated the complete portfolio of 63 negatives from the 1937 Washburn Collection to the Mt. Washington Observatory. Brad is an author and photographer; his first book, published in 1926, was a guidebook to the Presidential Range. He is also well known for his landscape photography and his challenging aerial shots of Mt. Washington, which he took through an open airplane door while flying low over the snowy peaks.

  

The images on the Washburn website have been drum scanned from Brad’s original negatives to a digital file. All of these images can be ordered in print form in a variety of sizes, framed or unframed. The images on display in the museum are stunning. The collection can be viewed on-line at:

  

http://www.washburngallery.org/

  

We returned home via Jonathon's Seafood where Charlie bought Lobster Rolls for our lunch. What a great lunch we had. (Jean was at her Kennett HS class reunion at the Eagle Mountain House in Jackson - she missed our lunch.)

  

For evening supper we loaded the 7 of us into two cars and headed for Flatbread Company in N. Conway. Delicious flatbreads cooked in the wood oven.

  

http://www.flatbreadcompany.com/2007Home.htm

  

This was a day to celebrate the White Mountains and good food.

Retired Snocat
Mt Washington Discovery Museum
N. Conway, NH.

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7/30. Mt. Washington

(7/30 - Friday)

The clear weather continues; it’s hard to believe.

Weather Station
Atop Mt. Washington.

    

Today I started to upload pictures from my camera to prepare an album for our vacation. I also started this blog today (that’s why the posting date of the daily blog entries lags about 10 days). Next step is editing the first entry, for 7/20/2010, on Blogger.com.

  

Today’s adventure is a trip to Pinkham Notch to take the auto road to summit of Mt. Washington. The temp at the summit was in the 40s and the wind was blowing 45 mph, a small gale. The fog obscured the summit at times, but cleared now and then to give splendid views in all directions. We parked near the end of the trail from Tuckerman Ravine where we saw several hikers on their way to the summit. We looked down on Lion's Head and could clearly see the trail. From the visitor center we had good views of Mt. Madison, which I once climbed.

Tuckerman Trail emerging
from the ravine.

   
The auto ride up the 7.6-mile road to the  summit takes 20 minutes. We were accompanied by the voice from a promotional CD given us at the entrance to the auto road. Every year there is a foot race up this road from the bottom to the summit. 
  
This year’s race was the 50^th edition and took place on June 19. The winner was Chris Siemers, “a Chicago-bred flatlander who says he was born to run up mountains” who finished in 1 hr. and 22 seconds. His time was slightly faster that my time climbing the Tuckerman Trail several years ago, which was about 5 hrs.

  

Today we had clear views of Moat Mountain from the farm. If you knew what to look for, far to the right of Moat in the photo, you could make out the flank of Mt. Washington. Today, the summit Mt. Washington was in the clouds as usual.

Moat Mt.  as seen from Conway.

      

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