Ed Schmahl

Yesterday I went out on my own personal quest for altitude and snow. XC skiis in the car and a topo map of Maryland stashed by my side, I drove west, watching the snow patches grow more continuous and thick as I passed Germantown, Sugarloaf Mtn (always a possiblity, but not today), and then Myersville and the Appalachian Trail. The AT is good for XC-skiing after a big storm–big enough to exclude the trampling, no-skiis-for-us hikers– but today they were out in force, and what snow there was would be no good for skiing on after the herds had trampled it all down.

So I continued on to Sideling Hill, the 3rd ridge of the Appalachians west of the DC area, just past Hancock, MD. At that point, MD gets so skinny you’re no more than 10 mi from PA and WV in either direction. There was lots of snow, so with great expectations I drove up “Scenic highway 40” (that’s what the signs say) to just below the radio tower, pulled off, and had a look around. The rain of the past week had hit here, and the trees were glistening with ice crystals. Down the highway half a mile, and 400 feet lower in elevation, there had been no ice on the trees. Here we were just high enough to get below freezing, and the forest had been hit hard. Hardly any trees lacked a broken limb or two, and every branch and twig was enveloped by a shell of 1/2-inch thick ice.

A side road for jeeps ran up the hillside from where I had stopped my car. I stepped off the tarmac onto the snowpack and broke through the crust with one foot. My foot continued on down about three feet into bottomless powder. After a struggle to extract myself I put on my skiis, hoping to ski up the jeep road into the woods and have a look at the crystal forest up there. Skiis kept me from penetrating the crust, but there was no way to slide anywhere but down. It was like a frozen pond tilted at 10 degrees. Anyway, even if I could manage to work my way up the jeep road, it would be a death run back down, with a terminal collision at the chain across the entrance. So I just stood and looked up at the trees.

It was then that I heard the tinkling coming from all directions. Ice sheaths on branches were melting everywhere, and the shards of ice were clinking and clanking as they bounced down through the branches to the ground. The slope was so steep and icy, that every piece of released ice slid on down to the road I was standing on. I looked around my feet and saw the accumulation of the morning’s thaw–a half-foot layer of broken ice sheaths on the low side of the road as far uphill as I could see.

Leaving my skiis behind, I started post-holing up the road. I’d step gently on the ice, but it always broke, and then I’d pack my foot into a deep hole of airy snow, and make the next step. Slowly, at about 1/4 mph, I climbed up the jeep road towards the peak, and into the forest.

Looking at the trees as I went, I could see twinkling ruby, topaz and emerald flashes in the branches where the ice was refracting tiny, evanesant rainbows from the bright sun. About half the branches of trees were duplicated–the original branch standing out in dark contrast to a crystal sheath newly peeled away by partial melting. These sheaths looked like ghost branches, each one about 3 times the diameter of the real branch. Most of the sheaths had claws, where the icicles curved sideways, or even upwards. Apparently as the ice accumulated or melted, the branches bowed down or unbent up, and changed the direction of gravity for the icicles, which curved accordingly.

The dead beechnuts and weeds in clearings between the trees were all encased in shells of ice, like the work of some mad glass smith. I reached out and bent the stem of an encrusted weed. The glassy sheath broke, and half of it fell off, leaving only a weakened, floppy stem. The heavy seed pods were triply heavy with their icy shells, and only the sheaths of the stems supported their weight. Ice supporting ice, clever winter engineering.

I didn’t hike far up the road, only far enough to see the woods up close. Even without any skiing, I reflected, the hike into the rapidly disappearing crystal forest had been worth the long drive. On the way back down the jeep road, I was gratified in my decision not to take my skiis up. I thought about Mt. Monadnock, and was given pause by the promise that someone might risk his neck snow-boarding down in similar icy conditions. (But we will see. Maybe we’ll hear about that.) I managed to take a few pictures andposted them: