2013 Geology Posts That Never Quite Made It

Ancient West African Crust in Boston; Enigmatic Beach Sands of Florida; Living Fossils in Backbay; Cretaceous Oysters in New Jersey; Alpine Bogs in New Hampshire and a Precambrian River in Newton Center, Massachusetts

Every blogger knows the challenge. What shall I blog about next? What photos should I use? By the time the end of the year rolls around, there are always a few posts that never quite made it. And so, with this final post of the year, here they are from here and there. Please visit the same for 2012 here.

January
Flying High Above Boston’s West African Harbor Islands

Looking frigid and uninviting in mid-winter, Boston’s Harbor Islands are best explored during the summer months. The harbor is sprinkled with 38 of them, most designated as National Recreation Areas. Many have fascinating histories such as Georges Island (apostrophes are not used) with Civil War-era Fort Warren used as a Confederate prison and its resident ghost, the Lady in Black. Little Brewster is home to Boston Light, the oldest continually used lighthouse in the U.S. from 1716. Worlds End has plantings and roads by legendary 19th century landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of Central Park in NYC and Boston's Emerald Necklace park system. There’s even an abandoned, off-limits Nike missile silo on Long Island.

As for the region’s geology, Boston Harbor is a glaciated structural basin that has been inundated and modified by post-glacial sea level rise in the last 15,000 years. It contains dozens of exposed and submerged Pleistocene-age drumlins and other glacial features modified by coastal processes. The bedrock crops out at numerous locations and consists of the Late Proterozoic Boston Bay Group, rocks of the Avalonia terrane that accreted to Laurentia during the Middle Paleozoic.

The group consists of fine-grained clastics of the Cambridge Formation (“Argillite”) and coarse-grained clastics of the Roxbury Conglomerate better known as “puddingstone”, the Commonwealth’s state rock. The terrane of Avalonia rifted from its peri-Gondwanan, Southern Hemisphere-berth off the northern edge of the West Africa craton (although some advocate a northern South America provinence). It then drifted some 6,000 miles during the Ordovician across the Iapetus sea to its present location in Boston Harbor, accreting (attaching) in the process to a large portion of the Appalachian orogen along Laurentia’s northeast coast. 

February
On an Appalachian-Derived Beach at Fort Lauderdale

This Fort Lauderdale beach scene is far more welcoming meteorologically this time of year. It depicts a commonplace entity with the warming climate – beach erosion and restoration. Sediment (mostly sand) is typically lost through longshore drift (movement of material by waves that approach at an angle to the shore but recede directly away from it) and from changing ocean currents and storms. A wider beach reduces damage to coastal structures by dissipating energy across the surf zone. It also protects upland structures and infrastructure from storm surges, tsunamis (not on this passive marginal coast) and unusually high tides.

Of course, Floridians will need to deal with the issue that everyone must confront, rising sea levels from melting glacial ice. It won’t be the first time it has risen. Fluctuating glacial periods of the Pleistocene triggered vacillating high seas that periodically flooded coastal plains. Before that, during the Cretaceous, North America’s central continental and coastal lowlands were completely submerged by global high seas of the Tejas transgression.

By the way, Lauderdale’s beaches are composed of brownish, quartz sand not whitish, calcium carbonate, which is not what one would expect considering Florida’s carbonate-platform heritage. Silicon dioxide-rich sand was transported downbeach from the eroding Appalachians Georgia-way by longshore currents during the Cenozoic. Next time you stroll along the beach further south, check out a handful of sand. It gets whiter as its carbonate content increases with distance from its granitic source up north.

April
Living Cretaceous Fossils in Bloom in Boston’s Backbay

The annual explosion of pink and white magnolias in bloom is one of Boston’s first rites of spring. The city's floriferous trees have more to offer than large flowers, showy colors and fragrant scents. There's a tale of evolution to be told here.

You see, beetles pollinate magnolias, not bees as one might expect. Bees were not around in the mid-Cretaceous (about 100 million years ago), when magnolias were evolving. That pollinator relationship has changed little over the millennia since the co-evolution (mutual evolutionary influence) of insects and angiosperms (flowering plants). Magnolia flowers don't produce nectar, the sugary secretion that encourages insect visitation (and hence pollination). They do produce large quantities of pollen that's high in protein, which beetles use for food, and in the process, cross-fertilize (transfer) pollen from the male anther of one flower to the female stigma of another. The high proportion of beetle-pollinated systems within the Magnolia family has perpetuated the long-standing theory that modern flowers were derived largely from beetle-pollinated proto-angiosperms. Indeed, many paleobotanists have devoted their attention to plants such as magnolias in their attempts to unravel the events of angiosperm evolution. 

Magnolia's ancestral floral characteristics include: its large blossom with its tepal structure (magnolia's petals and usually green sepals in higher plants all look alike); its central, cone-like receptacle of spirally-arranged, male stamens at the base and similarly-arranged spiral, female carpels; its radial symmetry; its actinomorphism (floral parts similar in size and shape); and its leathery beetle-durable petals. 

One of many botanical classification systems, Cronquist's interpretation assigns magnolias to the most archaic positions of all living angiosperms, the subclass Magnoliids, along with water lilies and buttercups. The concept that magnolias are amongst the most basal angiosperms has been refuted by higher-level phylogenetic analyses, yet they remain one of the most important lineages in the early radiation of angiosperms. Appearing long before the radiation of flowering plants, Charles Darwin called their abrupt appearance in the fossil record “an abominable mystery.” What's more, the magnolia qualifies as a "living" fossil, having changed little since it first appeared.

By the way, magnolias acquired their name from the 17th century French botanist and physician Pierre Magnol. Now back to enjoying spring in Boston!  

June
Luxuriating in the Grenville-Age High Peaks of the Adirondacks

This High Dynamic Range photo of glacial Heart Lake was taken from the summit of lowly Mount Jo in the High Peaks region of the Adirondack Mountains in uppermost New York State. The tall peak to the right is Algonquin. Colden is the rock slide-scarred summit in the center, and to the left, Mount Marcy is the highest in the state, each separated by Precambrian faults re-activated during the Paleozoic.

We see almost two billion years of geological scenery in the making, beginning with the meta-anorthosite bedrock that emplaced during the Grenville orogeny. The protracted, multi-phasic tectonic event culminated with the formation of the Late Proterozoic supercontinent of Rodinia and a transglobal Grenville Mountain spine. Rodinia’s subsequent fragmentation in the latest Proterozoic formed two megacontinental siblings: smaller equatorial-positioned Laurentia and larger australly-located Gondwana. The two incrementally re-assembled throughout the Paleozoic into the supercontinent of Pangaea along with its Appalachian Mountain spine.

In the Late Cretaceous, the peneplaned Grenville’s, now internal to Laurentia, began to dome upward triggered by the region's proximity to the Great Meteor Hotspot that tracked southeastward from Canada beneath the drifting North American plate. The hotspot crossed the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, after tracking beneath the North American plate generating seamounts in its path, and is currently off the coast of Africa beneath the African plate.

Having been glacially sculptured during the ice ages of the Pleistocene, the Adirondack’s ascent of “new mountains from old rocks” (namely Grenville basement crust domed into a mountain range) possibly continues to this day. What’s more, we geologically recognize that the Adirondack’s (located cratonward) are distinctly non-Appalachian in origin (paralleling the coast)!

July
A Summer’s Wade in the Late Cretaceous Marl of Big Brook

This lazy stream, a “piddly little dribble” in the words of the New York Paleontological Society's field guide, courses through one of the oldest and prolific collecting sites for marine fossils on the East Coast. Collectors, both amateur and professional, have been extricating both vertebrate and invertebrate faunal remains out of the clear-flowing waters of Big Brook in Monmouth County of coastal Central New Jersey for well over a hundred years.

The diverse, age-spanning list includes Cretaceous bullet-shaped belemnite guards (a squid-like mollusc), brachiopod, oyster and clam shells, steinkerns (shell casts), hadrosaur (washed down from the mainland), shark and mosasaur teeth, alligator scutes, Pleistocene sloth and mammoth remains, Holocene Lenape arrowheads and even Colonial nick-knacks such as smoking pipes and pottery.

As the brook wends its way to the sea through farmlands, forests and the gentrified estates of rural New Jersey, it flows through a Late Cretaceous continental shelf setting and dissects its way down through Pleistocene and Holocene alluvial surface-overburden along the way. Although the banks are off limits for active fossil exploration, the brook does most of the work for fossil hunters as the bounty virtually collapses in from the upland Navesink Formation and glauconitic Mount Laurel Formation of the streambed. All that’s needed to sift through the streambed is a wire-mesh screen, a garden trowel, a pair of waders and a little patience.

Simply park your car, stroll a short distance through the woods, step into the stream, and travel back in time 66 to 70 million years near the end of the Age of Dinosaurs! 

August
Monster Mushrooms in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts



This astounding three-foot beauty appears like clockwork every August near the base of a massive oak in my Boston suburb of Chestnut Hill. The rather drab, cream-colored mushroom is intricately branched with overlapping caps, yet surprisingly emanates from a single stalk. Its mycelial network remains dormant beneath the soil until summer rains and heat cause the fungal “roots” to germinate into a gargantuan “plant” above the soil. It gives the impression of growing from the ground, but it actually has colonized the buried roots of the tree, making it parasitic.

Once considered to be plants, with which they share many traits, fungi actually belong to their own kingdom of classification. As for the mushroom (the fruitbody), it’s relationship to the parent fungus is as the apple (the fruit) to the tree. This Bondarzewia berkeleyi is a bracket fungus, so called because many within the family grow shelf-like from the sides of trees. Its reproductive spores are manufactured within tiny tubes on the underside of the fruitbody rather than within the more accustomed gills we're used to seeing. For this reason, species within this group are called polypores. If cut when fresh, the pores exude latex. It’s not considered edible because of its leathery and woody texture, not that you're tempted.

September
My Lofty Visit to an Alpine Bog in New Hampshire

Artificially located above the treeline due to ravaging fires in the early 19th century and below the climatic treeline of higher mountains in the region, this exquisite alpine bog hides on a corner of the summit of Mount Monadnock at the foot of the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

The tops of mountains, where the climate is cold, windy and rainfall is scant, are amongst the harshest biomes on our planet. Only a select few plants and animals can exist in these severe conditions. Depressions in the bedrock collect rain and retain what little soil exists on the summit, keeping it permanently saturated. The lifeforms encountered here are similar to those found in the arctic tundra further north. Well-adapted to the bog’s poorly-drained, nutrient-poor and acidic peat soil are Sphagnum mosses, which form a carpet on which the bog’s dwarf shrubs and herbs grow. Look for Deerhair bog sedge, sheep laurel and tufted cotton-grass interspersed with patches of Labrador tea, leatherleaf, cranberry and round-leafed sundew to name a few. 

Mount Monadnock’s rocky core at higher elevations is composed of highly metamorphosed schists and quartzites of the Devonian-age Littleton Formation, which extends well north into the White Mountains of New Hampshire. The mountain represents an overturned syncline derived from compressional forces exerted during the Acadian orogeny, the second of three tectonic collisions that created the northern Appalachians and contributed to the crustal growth of Laurentia (proto-North America).

As our planet experiences progressively warmer climatic conditions, alpine flora and fauna will be challenged as they attempt to progress to a higher elevation to survive. They can only climb so high before being eradicated from their biome. If changing climatic conditions regionally prevail globally, the lifeforms will become extinct. This occurrence, species extinction, has been going on naturally since life appeared on our planet, but we understandably become concerned when its thought to be anthropogenic (man’s fault).

Henry David Thoreau spent some time on Monadnock in the mid-1800's, writing in his journal about the regional botany and geology. There's supposedly a bog up here named for him. This might be it!

October
High Atop Laccolithic Katahdin in the Remote North Woods of Maine



Congratulations are in order! You’re approaching the flat Tableland of mile-high Mount Katahdin in the wilderness of northern Maine from its west flank. Notice the botanical succession you've witnessed with elevation: deciduous hardwoods in autumnal splendor that blanket the lowlands; evergreens foresting the mountain's slopes; and alpine tundral sedge in the foreground.

The bedrock of Katahdin is a Devonian-age laccolith that has achieved its lofty status through intrusive buoyancy, surface erosion and post-glacial isostatic rebound. Katahdin (Mainers and climbers in the know drop the “Mount” from the name) formed during the Acadian orogeny, the second of three tectonic collisional phases that built the Appalachian Mountain chain and contributed to the crustal growth of Laurentia, the Paleozoic continent of North America.

Once Pangaea fully assembled following the third orogeny, the Appalachians graced the supercontinent with a Himalayan-esque mountainous backbone. The pluton of Katahdin, along with the other regional peaks, emplaced within a sea of Late Silurian rock during the Acadian collision in what is thought to have been a retro-arc setting.

Getting here was no easy task, especially if you just trekked 2,180 miles along the Appalachian Trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to this point at the trail’s terminus. But you're not quite finished. To reach the Tableland you still have to complete the “A.T.’s” final assault via the Hunt Trail’s Spur on a near-vertical, 

quad-burning, heart-pounding, lichen-encrusted, truck-sized boulder-strewn ascent of pink Katahdin granite. Once on the Tableland's plateau, you must strive for Katahdin’s penultimate summit of Baxter Peak, one of five that rim its three cavernous glacial cirques on its east flank.

"Press on. You’re almost there. The view is spectacular!”

November
The Remnants of Historic Fort Bowie within the Apache Pass Fault Zone

Apache Pass is a natural opening and low point at the juncture of the Dos Cabezas and Chiricahua Mountains in southern Arizona. Since prehistoric times, it’s been of importance to humans as a major travel route connecting the San Simon and Sulphur Springs Valleys.

Part of the Basin and Range physiographic province of southeastern Arizona, the surrounding mountains rise abruptly like islands of rock in an arid desert from relatively flat, sediment-filled basins that formed during an extensional tectonic regime about 20 million years ago. Even older is the Apache Pass fault zone, initiated over a billion years ago as strike-slip and more recently reactivated as normal faults during Basin and Range extension. Precambrian rocks on the southwestern side of the fault (on this side of the fort) have been moved upward relative to the Paleozoic and Mesozoic strata on the northeastern side (the hills just beyond the fort). Thus, the fort rests on Permian Horquilla Limestone of the Naco Group, while, amongst other rocks, the hills are Late Jurassic to Cretaceous Glance Conglomerates of the Bisbee Group. Erosion of the fault zone's shattered rocks formed the saddle of Apache Pass.

The Apache people, who arrived in America with their Navajo cousins sometime after 1000 AD, hunted and camped in the area, and drank from Apache Spring that emanates within the fractured and faulted rocks within the fault zone. With the arrival of the Anglos in the mid-1800’s, Puerto del Dado, the Spanish name for the “Pass of Chance”, became the site of Fort Bowie (actually the second) by 1868 to insure the safe movement of the Butterfield Overland Mail, a stagecoach and mail service that connected Memphis and St. Louis with San Francisco. Prior to this, the arduous route was by ship across the Gulf of Mexico to the Isthmus of Panama, and on to California via the Pacific Ocean. For years, the Apache Wars led by Cochise and later Geronimo of the Chiricahua Apache waged upon the U.S. military. It all ended in 1886 with Geronimo's surrender and expatriation to Florida, leaving the foundations of the fort to decompose into the landscape.

The region’s complex geologic history contributed to the strategic importance of the pass and delivered dependable water into the fracture zone. It's another reminder of the importance of geology and geographic setting in shaping the course of civilization and human history.

December

A Six Hundred Million Year Old West African Riverbed in Newton, Massachusetts

Oblivious to most passersby alongside Beacon Street, a major thoroughfare out of Boston, is a cross-section of an ancient streambed embedded within a cliff wall. The stream bed appears as a semi-circular channel outlined perfectly by fallen leaves. The transected bed and its banks consist of fine-grained, thinly-bedded, fissile (easily split along its planes) siltstone (mud rock) that displays a large infill of conglomerate rock over its entirety. The siltstone preserves the contours of an ancient landscape that was buried by subsequent deposition.

Upon close inspection, laminations within the streambed display whorls of sediment indicative of stream turbidity currents and slump features indicative of settling. The manmade wall at the top is composed of stacked conglomerate boulders.

The flat-lying rocks of the entire assemblage, being sedimentary, were deposited horizontally under the action of gravity. Subsequent to their deposition, compaction, cementation and lithification (conversion to solid rock), the assemblage and the rocks in the region were tilted by tectonic forces, which accounts for the angulation seen in the photo. These rocks belong to the Roxbury Conglomerate, a 2,000 foot thick formation of coarse arkosic sandstone with small to medium-size, rounded clasts (rounded fragments of stones). In 1830, the American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes likened the Roxbury to puddingstone, its common name, since it reminded him of raisins in English bread pudding.

The puddingstone's sandy matrix and rocky inclusions indicate they were deposited in a high-energy depositional and/or transport system such as a cascading mountain stream or a massive submarine flow. The Roxbury is exposed almost everywhere in the neighboring towns to the west and southwest of Boston. The channel's siltstone is a facies change, a clastless sediment within the Roxbury Formation. Along with the Cambridge Argillite (or Slate), the Roxbury Conglomerate comprises the sedimentary strata of the Boston Bay Group. As mentioned in the first vignette at the top of this post, the group was deposited on the microcontinent of Avalonia in an extensional regime, such as a faulted rift basin in Late Proterozoic-time between 595 and 540 million years ago.

Avalonia originated as an elongate volcanic island chain along the edge of the megacontinent of Gondwana, possibly of West Africa cratonic provenance in the southern hemisphere. Avalonia’s deeper basement is volcanic in origin, and, in the vicinity of the Boston Basin, they include the Brighton, Dedham, Mattapan, Lynn and Westwood granites, which underlie the rocks of the Boston Bay Group. During the Acadian orogeny, Avalonia welded to the continent of Laurentia about 370 million years ago. Can't get enough of the Roxbury Conglomerate? Check out my previous post here.

The "unnoticed" streambed is an example of my masthead statement at the top of my blog. "Geology is all around us, scarcely thought of as we go about our lives." Perhaps I should add, "but not by all of us!"

Happy New Year from Franklin the Border Collie (and Jack)!

High Dynamic Range digital photograph

Backpacking in the Great Range of the Adirondacks: From Johns Brook Lodge to the Summit of Mt. Marcy

"Because it's there."
George Mallory, 1923
English mountaineer

This July I had the pleasure of backpacking in the Adirondack Mountains of New York State with my daughter. It was actually our first, extended excursion together without the rest of the family. We went to the Great Range, an 11-mile chain of a dozen or more contiguous mountains in the High Peaks region with names such as the Wolf Jaws, Armstrong, Saddleback, Gothics, Haystack, Big Slide, and of course Mt. Marcy, the highest peak in the state at 5,344 feet. Summer haze can obscure visibility from the summits due to heat and humidity, but our climbing conditions were picture perfect. We had warm and dry weather with deep blue skies and big white clouds.

This four-photo panorama of the Great Range extends from the southeast to the west. It was taken from the summit of Big Slide Mountain (4,240 feet) which we climbed the following day. Johns Brook Valley lies in the foreground of the range with Johns Brook Lodge basically in the center. From the far left the peaks include Giant, the Rooster Comb, Lower Wolf Jaw, Upper Wolf Jaw, Armstrong, Gothics (with the big slide), Saddleback (two summits), Basin, Haystack, Marcy (the pointed peak right of center), Gray (tucked behind Marcy), Colden (pointed peak), Phelps (small), Algonquin (also a pointed peak) and Wright.
Click for a larger view.

I've backpacked the Great Range four times over the years, having first done it back in high school with a very close friend, a good 45 years ago. Equipment in those days was heavy and cumbersome, and qualified as being called "no-tech." Backpacks were made out of heavy, green canvas that got even heavier when wet, and stayed that way. There was no such thing as "cotton kills." Wool and down worked fairly well back then before being replaced by fleece and other breathable-microfibers. And certainly, there was nothing like DEET, which works well against the Adirondack's notorious blackflies. I remember a big frying pan dangling from my backpack that banged against my legs! Things have definitely changed for the better.

Fortunately, to my great delight, everything looked just as I remembered: the scenic drive up the Adirondack Northway (I-87), the majestic stretch to Keene Valley on NY 73, the quaint, little town of Keene Valley, the better-get-there-early car-park in the Garden, the 3.5 mile hike into the valley of Johns Brook, and finally, the lodge of the same name, maintained by the Adirondack Mountain Club (a.k.a. ADK). The excitement hadn't changed either! I hoped my daughter would experience the same. 



This old man and his young daughter are looking "ready, willing and able" at the Garden car-park. 



Johns Brook Lodge, known to many as JBL (but with the "J" written backwards stemming from an old tradition), is an unforgettable oasis in the woods. It’s the perfect base from which to initiate hikes into "some of the best hiking in the northeast." It’s rustic (c. 1925) and isolated (over an hour from the car), but clean as a whistle and very well-maintained. A veritable haven of peace, quiet and tranquility. You'll feel the stress flow from your body as you approach it. There’s no electricity, just a solar-powered refrigerator and a propane-powered stove. Even the lights are propane-fueled. By the way, all the food is backpacked in three times a week by the dedicated JBL crew. The lodge has a great porch-deck with chairs for hanging out. And what a view of the tops of the High Peaks through the trees!

The lodge has high ceilings inside with big beams and a massive, stone hearth. There are long, wooden tables for dining family-style. Listen for the dinner bell! There's hearty, home cooking with great deserts. How about some hand-churned ice cream? There’s lots of socializing. “What did you climb today?” "What's the condition of the trail?" “What’s the forecast for tomorrow?” Guest-lectures are in the evening after dinner. Scrabble. UNO. Monopoly. Bunk beds for 28 guests. Quiet time after 10. Even earplugs for non-snorers! Hot coffee and oatmeal are served in the morning when the breakfast bell rings. Pancakes too, with real maple syrup. My daughter absolutely raved about the lodge and can’t wait to come back next summer. 

Johns Brook Lodge

View of one of the range's peaks from the deck of the lodge

The Adirondacks have a distinctive look and addicting appeal. Hiking them is very different from my experiences in New England, and certainly out West. All the repeated ups and downs. The high water-bars made of logs that test the merit of your tendons and ligaments. The gnarled, exposed tree roots that offer a step-up to the next level, as well as a chance to trip your gait. The huge steps of rounded, glaciated-stones. Ascend and work your heart and lungs; descend and blast your knees and quads! And of course, there’s the wet, black muck. Step in it and risk pulling the hiking boot right off your foot. By the end of your trip, you will have acquired the balance of the Flying Wallendas by walking on all the narrow bridges made of wooden planks and logs. 

High above, the leafy tree-canopy sways in the breeze. Down below, the ever-present fallen trees are rotting and decomposing, covered with fungus, mushrooms and moss. Butterflies are everywhere, and unfortunately, blackflies and mosquitoes are too (mainly in the low wooded sections). Great smells, sights and sounds. Sensory overload. It all comes back to you, almost fifty years later. Tremendous!

Typical appearance of gnarled roots, exposed on the woodland floor

The infamous, Adirondack, boot-sucking, black muck has devoured my right foot.

This massive erratic in Johns Brook Valley was carried and deposited by glacial ice. In North America, the Laurentide continental ice sheet covered the uppermost half of North America during the Pleistocene, beginning 1.6 million years ago. It was characterized by several glacial advances and retreats, the most recent surge of which was the Wisconsin, ending about 10,000 years ago. Continental and later alpine glacial ice covered Mt. Marcy and the other peaks of the Adirondacks, as evidenced by glacial polish, glacial striations, and erratics such as this. 

On our first full day of hiking, my daughter and I plunged right in. We climbed remote Mt. Marcy at 5,344 feet. Starting at an elevation of 2,316 feet from the lodge, the distance to the summit of Marcy (my daughter and I still disagree on the mileage), is a total of 11.5 miles round trip (her figure is 13). The exact number matters little. It’s not a difficult climb to Marcy’s summit, but taking into account the distance from the lodge, and the elevation gain and loss of over 6,000 feet, it was a loooong day. Trust me. Our round trip was nine hours. Drink lots of water!

 

Our hike to the base of Mt. Marcy began from Johns Brook Lodge;
our hike to the summit began about 3 hours later. 
Heading southwest along the Phelps Trail (yellow markers) that essentially follows the brook,
we then skirted past Slant Rock (red markers) to summit from Marcy's northeast slope.
Notice the contiguous peaks of the Great Range that parallel our trail to the east.
You can climb them all in a Grand Traverse.

On our trek through the valley to Marcy, we've transitioned from the Northern hardwood forest zone
(of maple, beech, birch and hemlock) at the car-park and lodge to the coniferous spruce-fir forest zone
(of spruce, fir and balsam) at about 2,500 feet. A bridge of logs traverses a low, wet section of the boreal forest covered with Sphagnum moss, sedge and liverworts. As we gain altitude, the environment changes as well. The growing season is shorter. The temperatures are colder, and the effective precipitation is higher.  Notice our entry into a section of thinning, mature growth with a new, evergreen understory.

Sphagnum moss and Leather-leaf are right at home on the wet, boggy forest floor.

Decomposition is vital to renewal.
This gill fungus is probably Pluteus admirabilis that fruits on well-rotted wood.

Someday this rotting stump will be "borne-again",
 when its organic, nutritional components provide the fuel for new growth.

Ganoderma applanatum forms large, bracketed fruitbodies with distinctive concentric grooves.
It is also known as Artist's Conk, since it can be used for etched designs when fresh. It turns dark brown
when bruised. It occurs on living trees as well as recently cut stumps and logs.
There is some scientific evidence that indicates this mushroom has some antibacterial properties.

This epiphytic (tree) lichen (possibly Evernia prunastri or "Oakmoss lichen") is thriving
an a decomposing limb. Lichens are actually complex organisms, the result of a relationship
between a fungus and alga. In an alpine ecosystem such as this, the lichen functions as a soil-former
by converting atmospheric nitrogen into a utilizable form for other plants. 

After a while, it became a joke between my daughter and me.
All the butterflies landed on me, while all the mosquitoes landed on her. 
I actually had one beautiful butterfly that I was trying to photograph,
land on my hand that was holding my camera! This is a White Admiral (Limenitis arthemis).
It has a prominent white band across its wings making it readily recognizable on forest trails.

The well-camouflaged American toad (Bufo americanus) is a common trailside-insectivore.
The bracket fungus is Trametes versicolor with its characteristic shelving and overlapping of its fruitbodies.
Also known as "TurkeyTail," it's commonly found on downed logs and rotting stumps.
There has been recent research done on this fungus for its medicinal value
as an adjunct treatment for colorectal cancer and leukemia.

What at first appeared to be the top of Marcy is actually the summit of Little Marcy at 4,765 feet.
Many of the Adirondack's mountains have false summits and dual peaks. Read those maps!



We're now in the Krummholz or "crooked wood" zone at about 4,500 feet.
The trees have become shorter and are almost impenetrable with thick stands of balsam, fir
and black spruce. The inhospitably harsh climate here dwarfs the trees. The growing season
is barely two months. Along with the thin soil, extreme temperatures, winter winds,
and reduced sunlight due to clouding and fog, the flora appears in a miniaturized form.

That's Marcy's treeless dome, almost shrouded in the clouds, looming in the distance. Trees there can't survive the harsh summit conditions of its alpine climate zone. In the foreground, a poorly-drained depression has developed into a small alpine bog. My experience with bogs thus far has only included rather large, lowland bogs. Typically, the bog's tundral flora includes Sphagnum moss, sedge, leatherleaf, cottongrass and even carnivorous plants. Notice also the dwarf spruce and fir trees.
Final push for the summit!
Please visit my three posts on woodland bogs starting at:

http://written-in-stone-seen-through-my-lens.blogspot.com/2011/06/walking-on-water-at-philbrick-cricenti.html



While buffeting over 50 mile in hour gusts of wind at Marcy's summit, my daughter proudly exalts in the fact that she's the most elevated person in the State of New York, both geographically and emotionally.
Marcy's treeless and glaciated summit of exfoliating metanorthosite is speckled with lichen and moss,
the indigenous tundra-vegetation. Fragile patches of alpine soil are protected from the unsuspected trampling of hikers by rows of rocks. Non-native sedge has been planted to stabilize the sites so that native mosses can gradually revegetate the area. Johns Brook Valley, from whence we cometh, is in the distance and far below. Many of the plants in the alpine zone are rare, threatened or endangered, but all are protected. 



My turn on top!

The plaque at the summit officiates our presence.

Back at the lodge nine hours later, the cold Johns Brook is a sure-cure for tired, aching, blistered feet.

The brook is choked with large cobbles of rounded metanorthosite, also in gneissic and gabbroic forms. In fact the entire Great Range is underlain with this ancient, Precambrian rock. A compositionally similar version of metanorthosite is actually found on the Moon. The mysteries of the tectonic genesis of the Adirondacks as well as its curious, more recent doming, which accounts for up to 3mm of rise per year, remains a subject of heated debate and research. Thus, the Adirondacks are considered to be "new mountains from old rocks." It is a common misconception that the Adirondacks are merely old, eroded mountains. Another misconception is that the Adirondacks are geologically related to the Appalachians. In actuality, they are the only mountains in the eastern U.S. that aren't geologically Appalachian. The Adirondacks are related to a terrane called the Grenville Province and a mountain-building event called the Grenville Orogeny that far predates the formation of the Catskills, theTaconics, and the Green and White Mountains of New York and New England. I plan to address these issues in a future post.

Taken near the summit of Big Slide Mountain, climbed the following day, we were afforded an impressive view of of Big Slides' sheer slope, the Johns Brook Valley, the Upper Great Range and Mt. Marcy (to the right). On many steep slopes such as Big Slide and Gothic (seen in the distance), slides are common where a thin, soil cover over the basement of metaplutonic anorthosite has slid off. The groundwork for such slides was probably laid during the last ice age at elevations up to 2,000 feet or so. Clay and silts were deposited in large deep lakes in advance of the glaciers. Their deposition facilitates the conveyance of groundwater that contributes to slope instability especially on steep inclines. Heavy snowpacks, melting snow and rainfall over the millenia infiltrates the subsurface. At higher elevations, the soils that cling to the slopes are thinner making them less stable, especially when steep. Interestingly, talus at the base of the slopes is minimal.  

Back at the lodge at night and reflecting on the day's trek to Marcy and back, my daughter proclaimed “I’m really proud of myself!” And I, of her! There's an organization amongst climbers called the Forty-Sixers which recognizes those who have ascended the 46 High Peaks in the Adirondack Mountains. My daughter says she's interested.

Summiting Marcy was the second best part of the trip. The best part was doing it with her. Call it “quality time.” And, that it was.

P.S. I highly recommend the pocketsize Adirondack Alpine Summits by Nancy Slack and Allison Bell, as an ecological field guide with wonderful photos and concise descriptions.