Rotten Ice
February 5, 2020 by New Hampshire Garden Solutions

I wanted to see how the ice columns had grown at the deep cut up in Westmoreland so off I went last week with low expectations. With the unusual warmth we’ve had I wasn’t sure I’d see any and when I saw the parking lot empty I was pretty sure I had wasted my time. No ice climbers on a January weekend is unheard of but I found out why; though there were ice columns most were rotten and crumbling.

An opaque finish on ice it does not bode well for an ice climber, because ice that looks like this is rotten and unsafe. Ice becomes rotten when water, air bubbles, and/or dirt get in between the grains of ice and cause it to honeycomb and lose its strength. Instead of a sharp ringing crack when it is struck it produces more of a dull thud. The grayish white color and matte finish are a sure sign that you should stay away from it when it’s hanging over your head. Ice grows very clear and shiny when it’s cold and it doesn’t usually get rotten until March. Since January’s average temperature has been a full 8 degrees above normal I wasn’t that surprised to find it rotten.

The slush underfoot showed how warm it was, even in here where the temperature is usually a good 10 degrees cooler.

This is where I’d expect to see climbers. There were signs that they had been here but nothing recent.

Just so you can get an idea of the scale of the place here’s a shot of some ice climbers I took previously in about the same spot as the previous photo. It was a lot colder that year.

Leaving the northern canyon in the previous photos, I made my way into the southern canyon. It was here that disappointment hit me, because you could see as much stone as you could ice.

This photo from 2015, taken from about the same spot as the previous one, shows what the southern end of the trail looks like in a cold winter. You don’t see a lot of stone.

I did see some colored ice though. All of this ice is caused by groundwater constantly seeping through the fractured stone of the canyons and I think the color comes from various minerals in the water. This photo also shows another example of rotten ice; there is no shine to it at all when normally it would shine like glass. It’s dull and completely opaque.

The mineral laden water also stains the snow.

Here were some stains on the stone; caused by iron, I’m guessing.

There was some hard shiny ice here, but very little.

The railroad engineers knew about all the groundwater and they built drainage diches along the sides of the rail bed to carry it all away, but to see the ditches open and flowing in January was odd. Usually the ice covering them is strong enough by this time to walk on them.

The mosses seemed to be loving the weather and I loved seeing the mosses.

I’m guessing that I’ve been through here a hundred times or more but I had never seen this big vein of quartz until this day. That’s why naturalist John Burroughs said “To find new things, take the path you took yesterday.”

Here was an ice column just getting started. It was about as big around as your thigh and, though it’s hard to tell from the photo, it only touches the stone at its top and bottom. If it grows it will become as big as a tree trunk in diameter and attach itself to the stone all along its length. Clearly though, the mosses were winning on this day.

Here were some chunks of fallen ice along the side of the trail. When an ice column detaches from the wall it can fall across the entire trail, and when that happens this can be a very dangerous place to be. Once or twice I’ve seen small pieces fall; I didn’t hear a thing until they hit the ground so I doubt you would have any warning.

Here was more fallen ice. Any one of these pieces was big enough to kill someone and that probably explains why I didn’t see any snowmobilers here. I saw one lady on cross country skis and she looked like she was trying to get out of here as quickly as she could.

If a piece of ice or stone falls on you from way up there, you’re all done.

This is the biggest piece of ice I’ve ever seen and I know that don’t want to be anywhere near it if it lets go and slides into the trail. It’s like a small glacier.

Behind this ice was a hidden waterfall of groundwater and it made the ice crackle and sizzle like bacon frying in a pan. It was one of the strangest sounds I’ve ever heard in nature.

Here was another smaller waterfall that had washed away most of the ice that covered it. It shows how water streams off theses walls in places. When you understand that all this water is groundwater, running under the ground we walk on, it seems incredible.

Board by board the old lineman’s shack slowly disappears, yet still it stands, a testament to the quality of the railroad worker’s craftsmanship . Each year I tell myself it can’t possibly stand through another winter but here it is. How will I feel I wonder, when it finally comes down?
How much water can the weight of ice carry?
~Dianna Hardy
Thanks for coming by.
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Posted in Nature, Scenery / Landscapes | Tagged appalachian mountain club, Big Ice, Canon EOS Rebel T6, Cheshire Rail Trails, Cheshire Railroad, Colored Ice, Ice Climbing in New Hampshire, Ice Columns, Keene, Mineral Staining, Native Plants, Nature, New Hampshire, New Hampshire branch of the Appalachian Mountain Club, NH, Olympus Stylus TG-870, Quartz Vein, Rotten Ice, Westmoreland Deep Cut, Winter Hiking, Winter Plants, Winter Woods | 13 Comments
Beautiful photos, Allen! I don’t get to see ice, solid or rotten, like that where I am now.
Thank you Lavinia. I’d say you were lucky that you didn’t have to go through the kind of cold it takes to make this kind of ice.
I always enjoy your visits to the ice cliffs.
I wish I could have shown you some more impressive examples.
These were pretty interesting so I was very happy.
Your anecdotal evidence about less ice and less cold in your area of NH is very interesting, of course, but it may reflect your location often just outside the eastern margin of a now more southward-bending jet stream that in recent years is bringing colder, snowier, and more protracted winters to the rest of the U.S.
This is happening globally as well as nationally, but logically it should not be given the continued, steady rise in CO2 levels worldwide if that particular greenhouse gas is the forcing agent for global warming/climate change.
For a well-documented discussion of this, see: https://youtu.be/St6E1cF00GA
That CO2, manmade or natural, is NOT the forcing agent for global warming/climate change is demonstrated by the 800,000 year record of ice cores taken in the Vostok region of Antarctica, which shows that when the temperature rose it was FOLLOWED by an increase in CO2 by an average of 800 years later and vice-versa. See: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/09/09/empirical-evidence-shows-temperature-increases-before-co2-increase-in-all-records/
The average cooler summers and winters in the U.S. and globally since 1940, when man’s production of CO2 began a sharp increase, is evidence that something else is causing this trend especially since 2000. Contrary to conditioned opinion, it turns out that it is probably solar cycles, as tied to sunspots and geomagnetic activity, that is responsible for this trend.
This development fits very nicely with the observations, examination of historical and proxy records, and laboratory experimentation since the early 90s of Svensmark and others that it is cloud-forming cosmic rays entering the earth’s atmosphere, as modulated by the sun’s cyclical geomagnetic output, that gives us our varying climate. See: https://youtu.be/8dDjmSkpA3Y
On Wed, Feb 5, 2020, 6:08 AM New Hampshire Garden Solutions New Hampshire Garden Solutions posted: ” I wanted to see how the ice > columns had grown at the deep cut up in Westmoreland so off I went last > week with low expectations. With the unusual warmth we’ve had I wasn’t sure > I’d see any and when I saw the parking lot empty I was pretty sure I had > wa” >
Actually, according to NOAA 2019 was the second warmest year ever recorded anywhere on earth, according to their 140 years of recording the data.
They also say that the world’s five warmest years have all occurred since 2015 with nine of the 10 warmest years occurring since 2005.
I believe them because this is what I myself am experiencing. It’s a very easy thing to understand when you spend virtually all of your time outside as I do. You can easily see it and feel it.
It seems like big chunks of ice on the tracks would be a problem. Was the shack for someone to stay in to keep the tracks clear?
Signs of warming temperatures have come to NH. Yesterday I stumbled across a beaver pond where bears have clearly been active for much of the winter rather than hibernating. Sometimes it’s exciting to see things you’ve never before witnessed – until you realize the cause. 😦
I’ve often wondered how they kept the canyons cleared of snow when the trains were running. Of course they had plows on some of the trains but all that snow would have been pushed to the sides against the walls, so it still would have had to have been removed. Since the shack roof doesn’t show any evidence of having a wood stove in it I think it was used for tool storage-probably the tools it took to clear the tracks.
Thanks for the update on the bears. I’ve been wondering if they were sleeping. I wonder what they’re finding to eat.
It was such an abundant nut crop last fall, I think many are eating acorns and other nuts and seeds. We found maybe 7 “house sized” scraps in the snow around mature oak trees. Of the sort turkeys, deer, and other animals make, but the chunks of snow were bigger with bear prints and claw marks. Also diggings in an old beaver dam for cattail roots. By the amount of scat that was in the area, they were finding lots to eat.
Thanks very much for that. I didn’t know bears ate cattail roots but it makes sense that they would.
Wonderful pictures and an interesting commentary on a facet of nature that I shall never see.
Thank you Susan. I doubt most people ever see anything like this. It’s a rare thing even here, and that’s what makes it so special.