Itinerary

Springwater Fieldtrip M

November 2-5, 2018

Dallas Abbott and Bill Menke

Friday, November 2, 2018

10 AM, Leave Tappan NY.

1 PM, Gas and a snack, Irving Gas & Circle K, Route 5 in just north of Exit 24, Interstate 91 in Whatley Massachusetts.

4 PM, Walter-Newton Natural Area, off Cummings Hill Road, Plymouth New Hampshire. Hike the Ruth Walker Trail to Rainbow Falls.

5 PM, Dinner with Paul and Gigi Estes at their house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

We spent the night at the Estes house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

Saturday, November 3, 2018

8 AM, Breakfast with Paul and Gigi Estes.

10 AM, Examine large cast iron pot at the Boise Rock picnic area off of Interstate 91 in Franconia Notch State Park. Though in a list of springs, the pot is not currently spring fed.

11:15 AM, Spring 1 (Site 88) Roadside spring near 689 Route 102, Maidstone Vermont. The spring is on the uphill, west side of the road. It has no spring house, per se, but a hose is fed in a shallow depression dug into the hillside and covered with a plywood sheet, about twenty-five meters from the road. The hose empties into a cylindrical basin at the roadside. The meandering Connecticut River is east of the road and well below it.

11:30 AM, Spring 2 (Site 89) White Sulfur Springs, Brunswick Springs Vermont. We drive from Route 102 onto the south end of Brunswick Spring Road and drive that dirt road north, but wind up in a farmer’s field. We return to Route 102, drive to the north end of the road, and take it about a quarter mile south to a pull-out. We continue on foot along the road another eighth mile to the site of the old spa, on a low hill east of a beaver pond and west of the Connecticut River. Only a few concrete walls, floors and stairways survive of the old hotel. Several springs are by a decaying concrete platform partly down the steep bank of the river and are accessible by an old concrete stairway. A mild sulfurous smell is evident. People have left small sacred objects and offerings in the vicinity of the spring. Bill climbed down to river level to the confluence of the spring outflow and the river.

1:25 PM, Stop for supplies and lunch, Batch’s Kwik Stop / Valero, 25 Landcaster Road, off of Route 3, Northumberland New Hampshire. We unexpectedly met former Lamont Summer Intern Austin Hart (ahart@fs.fed.us), who had been kayaking with friends in the Upper Ammonoosuc River. Austin now works for the US Forest Service and is based in southern New Hampshire.

2 PM, From Route 110 in Berlin New Hampshire, we drove York Pond Road and Kilkenny Loop Road as far as the intersection with Godfrey Pond Road, looking for a spring. Kilkenny Loop Road roughly follows the course of the Upper Ammonoosuc River, which is in a narrow valley just north of the road. We believed the spring to be near the first stream crossing north of the Godfrey Pond Road intersection. We searched the area on foot (and in pouring rain), including a small clearing a little north of the road with a Berlin water department sign, but could not find any signs of a spring.

3:30 PM, Spring 3 (Site 90) Stark Cold Spring, 16 Cold Spring Road, off of Roue 110, Stark New Hampshire. A white plastic pipe is on the south side of the road.

5:00 PM, Dinner with Paul and Gigi Estes at their house in Plymouth New Hampshire. A falling tree took out the power (and their electric stove) so Bill cooked dinner on their deck using our Coleman Stove.

We spent the night at the Estes house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

Sunday, November 4, 2018. Gigi Estes joined us on today’s fieldtrip.

8:00 AM, Breakfast with Paul and Gigi Estes at their house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

10:00 AM, Spring 4 (Site 91), Edwin Elliott and Marion Wing Elliott Memorial Spring (1988), 557 Whiteface Road, Sandwich New Hampshire. The spring is on the east side of the road. A plastic pipe begins at a small, rectangular concrete spring house about ten meters from the road and leads to a roadside stone basin. The basin has the inscription, “Placed by Henry Willard Bullard of Bennett Street circa 1905”. A small but deep, dug-out pond with a fire department draw pipe is directly across the road.

We drove Sandwich Notch Road (a mostly dirt road) from Route 113 in Center Sandwich New Hampshire to Route 49 in Goose Hollow New Hampshire. We stopped to view two waterfalls along the way.

11:15, Spring 5 (Site 92), Sandwich Notch Spring, 960 Sandwich Notch Road, Sandwich New Hampshire, about one hundred meters north of a white farm house (which is the first building that one comes upon when driving the road south to north). A wooden trough sits on the west side of the road. Water flows down the hillside via a rivulet and passed by the trough, but the black plastic hose that putatively feeds the trough is not flowing. Gigi and I followed the rivulet, hiking gently uphill for a quarter mile, to where it disappeared into a boulder field at the base of a steeper part of the hill. We doubt that this water source really counts as a spring.

12 Noon, We hiked the Algonquin Trail, whose trailhead crosses Sandwich Notch Road about a mile south of Sandwich Notch Spring and just south of a major stream crossing. However, after about a half mile, we discovered that we would have to ford the stream to continue. Bill was able to cross it via a fallen tree, but the rest of us decided that continuing was too risky, so we all turned back.

12:40 PM, We parked at the Smarts Brook Trailhead, off of Route 49 in Thornton New Hampshire. We hiked the Tri Town Trail up into the hills and the Smart Brook Trail back, a distance of about two miles, round-trip. Smarts Brook Trail follows the south bank of Smarts Brook, and passes a moderate size waterfall and many smaller cascades and slides.

6:30 PM. Lisa Doner (ladoner@plymouth.edu), an Environmental Scientist from Plymouth State University, joined us for dinner at Paul and Gigi Estes’ house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

We spent the night at the Estes house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

Monday, November 5, 2018.

8:00 AM, Breakfast with Paul and Gigi Estes at their house in Plymouth New Hampshire.

10:00 AM, Leave for New York.

1 PM, Gas and a snack, Irving Gas & Circle K, Route 5 in just north of Exit 24, Interstate 91 in Whatley Massachusetts.

3:30 PM, Arrive Tappan New York.