Total Solar Eclipse on the Appalachian Trail, August 21, 2017

Total Solar eclipse, photo on 35 mm slide film by yours truly in February 1979.

In my fifty-odd years of adult life I have had the opportunity to experience two total solar eclipses within a day's travel of where I was living.  For the first of them—on March 7, 1970 along the east coast of the US—I owned a car and could have easily made the 500 mile drive to get to the zone of totality.  But I didn't.  I stayed home at Penn State U and saw the overcast sky dim for a while.

Skipping that opportunity was a mistake that I'll always regret.  Yet I didn't know how much I regretted it until I *did* witness the total solar eclipse of February 26, 1979 near Williston, ND (photo up top—I was living in Fort Collins Colorado at the time).

Here's what the landscape looked like just moments after totality ended, during the 'diamond ring' phase, captured as best I could with my simple 35mm camera with no wide angle lens. 

I had a fantastic panoramic view.  The sky was a beautiful blue, wind was calm, and when the totality arrived, the sensation of heaven revealing its secret glory amid a surreal calm was unforgettable.  The sky overhead was totally black, and yet light from the horizon, where the eclipse was not total, permeated horizontally so that there was an aura of dawn-like glow lighting the ground from all directions.  There's truly nothing like it.  This fish-eye photo taken from a boat somewhere in the tropics gives another idea of what it's like:

That experience was so moving that I vowed I'd not miss the next opportunity.

And here it comes.  This will be the very next eclipse to occur in the United States since 1979.  On August 21, 2017, sights like the above will be within a day's drive for Americans from coast to coast—Oregon to South Carolina.  Visit NASA's eclipse web site for all sorts of details.

I urge you to put it on your bucket list.  Total solar eclipses are among the rarest and most intense visual phenomena this planet has to offer.  Many people plan vacations just to see them.

One great way to tap into the wild beauty of this event would be to take it in as part of a section hike of America's foremost hiking trail, the Appalachian Trail.  The path of totality will be visible along a couple hundred miles of trail, and there are any number of excellent view points.  Here's an overview map, probably too detailed to see easily.

Totality will not be visible from the southern terminus of the trail at Springer Mountain, GA.  But you'll enter the zone after 22 miles of hiking, at about two miles north of Woody Gap.  The first good viewpoint would be six more miles up the trail, from the rocky outcrop next to the stonework hiker shelter on top of 4500 foot Blood Mountain.  For day hikers this is a rugged (steep) 2.5 mile hike up from a big parking lot at Neel Gap, and there are services right there at the Walasi-Yi hiker hostel and store at the gap.



Detail of the southern part of the trail through the path of totality

Panoramic view from Blood Mountain summit

Blood Mountain shelter, right at the summit

Next good viewpoint is five miles the other side of Neel Gap (some call it Neel's Gap.  Either way, it's named after a USGS surveyor who bullied his name onto the map because he drew it.  The proper local name is Walasi-Yi, or in English, Frogtown Gap).  This is another wide open rock outcrop on top of Cowrock Mountain, and another mile and a half up the trail, beyond Tesnatee Gap and just before Hogpen Gap is Wildcat Ridge.

View of Cowrock Mountain from Wildcat Ridge, a short way off the AT on the trail to Whitley Gap Shelter

From here there aren't a lot of great panoramic viewpoints that I can remember through the rest of Georgia, though when you get out onto the road at Unicoi Gap or Dicks Creek Gap, you'll find decent views of the sky.

In southern North Carolina, which you reach after 75 1/2 miles of trail, you'll get into the area of the maximum eclipse.

Here you'll have a selection of several decent viewpoints, including Standing Indian Mountain (nine miles north of the GA/NC border) and Little Ridgepole Mountain (seventeen miles).  Right on the centerline of the maximum eclipse is the old Albert Mountain Fire Tower.

View from Albert Mountain Fire Tower (21.5 miles north of the GA/NC state line).  Big Spring Gap shelter is within a mile farther north.

Farther up the trail is Winding Stair Gap and the highway down to the welcoming trail town of Franklin.  There will be a great view of the eclipse from town, and you can get a motel room and make it a zero day, dedicated just to the eclipse.

Four and a half miles north of Winding Stair Gap is a short side trail up to beautiful open Siler Bald. It's a really pretty spot.

Looking up the side trail to the open summit of Siler Bald

There's also a shelter near there.  Another six miles of trail brings you to the Wayah Bald observation tower.

This 'bald' is now overgrown with forest, but there are good views around the tower area.

The next two viewpoints north are lowland spots, the Nantahala Outdoor Center, which is as famous for white water sports as for hiking, and Fontana Dam, at the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

Once you enter the national park you will have hiked about 160 miles from Springer Mountain.  After climbing for about five miles you'll have an opportunity to climb rickety old Shuckstack Fire tower.

And then there will be views along the ridge on the border between NC and Tennessee.

Last of these views before you leave the zone of totality in the vicinity of Charlie's Bunion, is the popular (and likely crowded for the eclipse) tower on top of Clingman's Dome.

What about the weather?  Well, unfortunately the high ridges on a summer afternoon are places where billowing cumulus clouds frequently form.  Weather is hot and humid this time of year and the iconic 'Great Smoky' haze will also be abundant even if the clouds hold off.  Climatology says that there is about a seventy percent chance of cloud cover at the time of the eclipse, about 2:30 in the afternoon Eastern Daylight Time, at that time in August.  If you prefer a better chance of clear sky, I'd head out west to the Great Plains of Nebraska, even as far as Wyoming.

This eclipse will be only the fourth one to cross the Appalachian Trail since it was opened.

The first was on January 2, 1925, which passed through Harriman State Park NY.  The trail between Bear Mountain and Arden NY opened Oct 7, 1923, and the eclipse encompassed the entire length of the Appalachian Trail as it then existed!  Guaranteed *that* will never happen again.

The next total eclipse singed part of the White Mountains of New Hampshire on August 31, 1932.  Trails had long been in place there, known by other names.  They would become part of the AT, but since the AT wasn't officially completed until 1937, I don't know the status of the White Mountain trail system during those years.

Finally there was an eclipse that crossed Southern Maine on July 20, 1963.  After that there has been a half century wait until this summer's event.

If you're wondering what's next, there's a major US eclipse across the SE and Midwest on April 8, 2024, and that will cross the AT at its northern terminus on Katahdin and will be visible from Whitecap Mountain and the hundred mile wilderness.

If you miss that one, you'll have a long wait.  The next time an eclipse crosses the AT will be on Sept. 14, 2099 in Central Virginia.

Wherever you decide to go, I know it will be a memorable experience.  Good luck with your viewing.  Maybe I'll see you out there.

A Month of Beach Sunrises—31 in a row: The week three Extravaganza

Sunrise of April 11th at the Sea View fishing pier

This fourth installment in the "month of sunrises" project found me hiking the dawn beach in the presence of some awe-inspiring displays. If you want to catch up on what came before, here are the links to the first three posts in this series:

Introduction and the first three sunrises of the thirty-one (March 25-27).

Week One—March 28^th through April 3^rd

Week Two—The sunrises of April 4-10

Now, without much further ado, here come the rest of the Week Three sunrises:

Pre-sunrise sun pillar on April 12th.  This phenomenon is caused by flat ice crystals that are falling through the air.  The air flow around each crystal causes it to spend most of its time oriented parallel to the ground.  You can observe this behavior yourself by dropping a piece of paper or a flat leaf. 

On April 13th, with the help of high thin clouds and a few thicker ones, the sun seemed to be imitating the planet Jupiter with its stormy bands.

The sunrise of April 14.  This is one of my favorite shots of the month, with the gull and the billowing and towering cumulus clouds out over the warm waters of the Gulf Stream.

Close encounter.  Before sunrise on April 14th I came across this UFO—a jellyfish saucer—that had landed on the beach.

Ragged clouds and a red-rubber-ball sun made for a spectacular wide shot on April 15th

Earlier on April 15, I came across this beach castle.  Is this where the jellyfish-saucer Aliens live?

Another 'red-rubber-ball sunrise' happened on April 16th.  When it's very hazy the sun rises dimly, sometimes barely visible when it first appears, and gets bright only very slowly as it lifts above the haze.

Final day of the week, April 17th found the waning crescent moon perched high in the sky as the first pale light of sunrise was developing.  This view also features Sea View Fishing Pier.

Another of my favorite shots, the sunrise of April 17th.

Weather was wonderful this week.  Temperatures were in the 60's F.  While wind on the beach can make a day in the 60's feel downright cold, there was very little wind this week.  It was a pleasure to be out there as the new day unveiled itself.  I almost don't want this month to be over.

Thirty-One consecutive sunrises, week two

Sunrise of April 5th, which I shared with another two legged onlooker

Sunrises seemed to come in matched pairs during this seven day period.  The headline shot above came on the second day of the week, and it was sandwiched between two mostly cloudy mornings where the sun didn't make a direct appearance.  Fortunately the sky still held some interest.

Bands of retreating clouds around sunrise on the morning of April 4th.  It got sunny later in the day.

Roving bands of clouds obscured sunrise on April 6th.  It didn't rain, but the morning was persistently cloudy. 

The following two days had almost identical appearing sunrises.  I've already posted the one for April 8th.  Here's April 7th's sunrise.  The sky was completely clear except for this scattering of very low cumulus clouds out over the Gulf Stream where the cool air met the warmest of the water.

Fortunately there were some other beach oddities to keep my interest on these two days.

Portuguese Man-o-War.  I found several beached on the morning of April 7th after the stormy onshore winds of the day before.  These are not considered jellyfish but are a colony of cooperating organisms that, like jellyfish, have a very nasty sting.

A Black Skimmer. The color of its translucent bill and bright legs was enhanced by the early morning orange sunlight on April 8th.  Lower mandible of the beak is much longer than the upper because this bird skims the surface of the water with it as it flies, scouring the surface for small fish, insects, crustaceans, and mollusks.

Finally, April 9th and 10th featured bright orange sunrises. and for both of them my best shot happened right at the moment of sunrise.  What's more, on both days I was in the vicinity of the New River Inlet channel entrance buoy.

So to provide a distinction between these last two days I grabbed one final shoreline shot, taken in the dawn glow before sunrise on April 9th.

March for Science - well meaning people, but a very bad idea

Tomorrow, Earth Day, 22 April 2017, well-meaning folk will be gathering in cities around the world in a ‘March for Science.’  I won’t be one of them.

The idea is to advocate for and to raise awareness of science as one of the major pillars that uphold the common good.

But in practicality it comes across as a protest march. The lofty positive message is window dressing. People have picked this particular Earth Day to march because they perceive that science is suddenly under attack due to a political change.

Wrong. What is under attack is the respect for the role of science in society, and the problem has been slowly developing for decades.

Particularly since the arrival of the internet, we, the people of the free world, have been engaging in way too much hot, polarizing, rancorous debate over issues ranging from the effect of vaccinations on Autism to the effect of human activity on Climate. The volume of scientific research directed at these and other hot-button topics is completely inundated by the volume of rhetoric. The March for Science will only add more rhetoric to the mix. It is only going to bury the science even deeper.

The way to most effectively ‘champion’ science is exactly the opposite. Science shares three qualities that naturally allow it to rise above the smothering partisan fray. It is these qualities that need to be communicated, not the supposed ‘facts’ that result.

1. Science is selfless. Personality has no place in its process or its products. At the heart of the scientific world-view is the assumption that all results (all ‘facts’) are conditional, always subject to review and revision. Science requires the experimenter to ‘turn the other cheek.’ Any individual who questions a result is free to test it themselves—to try to knock it down. The methodology and the result of these tests are all that matters, not who does them.


2. Science is universal. The more people who try to knock down a result the better.  Reproducibility is the measure of the ultimate value of a scientific result. A scientific finding is not considered ‘true’ unless an overwhelming majority of the experiments used to test it, conducted independently around the world and over time, converge on the same finding. The power of universal results cannot be underestimated. They can be applied to people’s daily problems, and they work. Look at the ‘miracles’ that modern technology has produced. Thanks be to Science. Science gets results.


3. Science is transparent. The average person today does not believe this. They see science as some alien religion—completely fallible and requiring faith in order to trust it. That is because these days, science experimentation is so complex and so specialized that only a handful of people world-wide have enough knowledge to fully understand what is being done. This implied ‘elitism’ is one of the greatest hurdles to trust. I do not have a solution to this pervasive loss of respect. All I can say is that the standard of transparency is iron-clad and must be unimpeachable. We who do science have no right to demand trust and respect. We must earn it with our behavior and with our results.

I am a retired Earth Scientist. On the face of it, participating in a march for science on Earth Day would seem natural—a near perfect fit. But marching on Washington will do nothing to improve the quality of any scientific finding. I’m willing to bet that participants will not come away from it appearing more selfless. They are not likely to spend any time better exposing any universal truth, and almost certainly participants will not come away with any more trust and respect than they arrived with. No. Bad idea all around.

A Month of Sunrises - hiking the beach, Week One

A peloton of pelicans.  Pre-sunrise, March 28th.

In a previous post I introduced the 'Month of Sunrises' project with a discussion of the astronomy of sunrises and a look at the first three of the thirty-one consecutive sunrises I hoped to witness while hiking the beaches of Topsail Island, NC.  I'm going to present the remaining 28 sunrise views in four posts covering a week each. 

March 29th telephoto shot of a flat sunrise, typical of the situation where the air is warmer than the water.  Air was in the mid 60's this morning and water temperature of the coastal shelf was in the upper 50's 

The weather here in coastal NC has been unusually mild, even warm, this spring.  Winter's chill is long gone.  The coldest temperature I've encountered so far in this month-long string of hikes on the beach at the coldest time of day, has been in the low 50's F.

Sunrise of March 30th framed by the structure of the Sea View Fishing Pier.

When you propose to capture sunrise every morning, regardless of weather, you have to expect some cloudy, stormy days, where there won't be much of a view of the sun.  So far I've been pretty lucky with that, but a very windy storm blew through overnight of March 30-31.  The rain ended at 8AM and I went out and was able to get this shot of the wind-and-wave-whipped foamy surf with a bit of reflection of a dim, cloud-shrouded sun.

For the rest of the week I focused on the variety of sky color preceding the actual moment of sunrise.

God rays, April 1.  Although there was not a single cloud in the sky, there were clouds below the horizon from the departing storm of yesterday.  The 'streamers' of light and dark are caused by the shadows of these clouds and the sun beaming between them.

Denizens of the dawn, April 2nd.

Beach pavilion, snack bar and restrooms at the county park, sunrise on April 3rd.

No other time of the day combines quiet serenity with such a kaleidoscopic color display.  Sunrise is my favorite time of day.  Seeing a sunrise from a mountain top is a special experience, but with mountain trails you have to stop to catch the view.  Because a beach itself can stretch from horizon to horizon you can capture the joy from wherever you happen to be.  Freedom.

Hiking Home - Need your feedback - Help me choose my route

My 'Tiny House', built before 'Tiny Houses' were a thing.  I called it a 'shack.'  8x16 feet, built at a cost of $75. Lived here Nov. 1976 through Sept. 1980 while building a regular house on this four acre Colorado mountain property.

A week from now, once I finish my 'Month of Sunrises' beach hiking project, I'll be heading out to Ohio to resume hiking west to the last two areas where I've lived that I haven't yet connected with 'boots on the ground footprints' - Wisconsin and Colorado. 



Recent Google Street View of 713 Jefferson St., Sauk City, Wisconsin, where I lived from when I was born until age 2½ .

The house I built in Colorado, set on a ridge with a killer 150-mile view of the high plains to the east.  The 'shack' can be seen at right in the background of the last photo.

Over my life, I've had twenty-four different mailing addresses, and except for the ones in Wisconsin and Colorado, I've already hiked trails connecting all of them.  I call it my 'Personal Continuous Footpath' project.  You can read more about it by clicking the tab labeled 'Hopping Rocks' above.

But Colorado and Wisconsin are a long way from eastern Ohio, and the Nationally recognized (scenic and recreational) foot trails across the middle of the country are pretty sparse and take very meandering courses to get me to where I'm going.

Important also is that my biological clock is ticking away.  I'm approaching the age of 70.  Who knows how many more miles I have in this old bag-o-bones I call a body.

So ... as I return to Ohio, I will be facing a fork in the road.

Should I carpe the diem, stick with the trails, smell the roses, take the scenic route, let the journey be the destination?  Or should I hit the roads, make a bee-line, pound the pavement, travel as the crow flies, keep my eyes on the prize?

Here are some of the pros and cons.  Distance and time are obviously much shorter, probably at least five times shorter, taking the roads.  In Ohio alone the North Country Trail route meanders for 750 miles to get to a point 214 miles by direct road walking from where I will start at that fork in the road.

Yet road walking can be a dreary affair.  I hate the barking dogs worst of all.  I'm generally pretty good about finding things to entertain myself when boredom seems inevitable, but for close to 1500 miles with no respite? - no chance to wander in the woods?

On the other hand even the established trail route consists of roughly half road walking.  I've never come to terms with the lack of connected trails in our country.  Why can't we have a Benton MacKaye Interstate Trail System to rival the Dwight David Eisenhower Interstate Highway System?  The cost would be trivial by comparison.  The benefit in terms of improved quality of life and national pride is immeasurable.  Ahhh, but that's an aside, a subject for another post.

Lastly, the good trails are way up north for most of the way, so that I won't be able to hike a long season.  There will be winter down time.  It may take four years of all-summer hiking to get to Colorado.  Meanwhile my joints aren't getting any younger.  My stamina and recovery get less every year.  If I get the road walking done, achieve the goal of connecting every place I've ever lived with a continuous string of footprints, then I can always go back and hike the longer trail route at my leisure, and make a more 'honest' connection.

So ... HELP!  Which way should I go?  Share your thoughts with me ... please!  One thing I know for certain is that you readers have the experience that can help me with my decision.  You'll come up with all kinds of ideas and angles that I've overlooked.  Post your thoughts in the comments here and/or on Facebook where I'll be posting a link to this page.  Let me know what you would do and why.   And I thank you in advance for your feedback.

Beach bumming -- a Month of Sunrises

Gosh!~ Has it really been nearly three months since I posted something here?  What the flying-hairy-horse-potato have I been doing?  Why on this green Earth have I not been sharing it here?

Well, let's answer the second question first.  I confess that I have no good excuse.  I've been lazy and I've been too focused on other goals.  One of those goals has been to try to finish reading a behemoth 4.4-million-word Fantasy tale called The Wheel of Time, by Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson.  Honestly I wish I hadn't, but I own the books and I wasn't about to let them sit on my bookshelf unread.  Maybe I'll post details about this later.  By late March I had finally finished all fourteen books, and I've written reviews for each one.

The reading was my obsession.  I tend to be an obsessive personality.  I focus on one thing to the exclusion of all others.  So while I read I took a break from my more deep-rooted obsession--hiking, and that was not a bad thing.  The break let a minor tweak of my chronically weak left knee heal and recover.

To answer the first question, I've been spending most of these first few months of 2017 taking it easy at the shore, Topsail Island, NC.  Once I finished the reading, I headed back to the trail, or in this case the beach.  I slipped on a pair of Crocs on March 25th and headed out the door of my oceanfront condo, and have been hiking the beach at sunrise every day since.  I've made a project of being on the beach to personally witness every new arrival of the sun for a full month, through April 24th.

Here's where the laziness shows up.  I should have been posting these sunrise photos, but I kept putting the work off.  Now I have accumulated 22 sunrises to share, and a handful of other interesting sights captured in photos along the way.  I've hiked about 113 miles during this time, so my average morning sunrise hike distance is five miles.

To properly witness a sunrise I need to be out on the beach at least an hour before the moment the sun actually appears.  A sunrise is a dynamic thing, and the changes as it evolves are as exciting as that instant when the sun first appears.

Sunrise of April 8.  There's a hint of a green flash here (see text) but it was already transforming into orange.  The sun is at left, surrounded by a halo in the thin haze.  To its right are shreds of small clouds, and their reflections are bouncing off the surface of the warm water (air temperature has to be lower than water temperature for this 'mirage' effect to happen) so that inverted mirror images of the clouds appear.  Yes the true horizon is up there in the 'sky' where the bright sliver of sunlight appears.

At middle latitudes the sunrise 'process' begins with what's called 'Astronomical Twilight' a full hour and a half before the sun actually appears.  During the next half hour, depending on how clear the sky is and how much man-made light or moonlight is around, the first visible glow develops on the eastern horizon.  Astronomers shut down their telescopes this early, because their sensitive detectors are already picking up the sunlight being scattered by the far outer fringes of Earth's upper atmosphere.

An hour before sunrise when the sky is free of clouds and haze the glow is readily visible.  That's when what's called 'Nautical Twilight' begins.  For the next half hour all you can really see are silhouettes, such as that of a ship out at sea.  There's not enough light for the human eye to make out details or identify small objects.

Then starting a half hour before sunlight comes what's called 'Civil Twilight'.  At the beginning the light is about as strong as the light from the full moon.  Over the next few minutes most people will begin to feel comfortable walking around without bumping into things.

About twenty minutes before sunrise, the sun begins to shine on jet contrails and the highest clouds at the boundary between the Stratosphere and the 'weather layer' called the Troposphere.  This is when those clouds, made of ice crystals, begin to display fiery pink and orange glow.  It's when the real glory of a sunrise begins.

View about fifteen minutes before sunrise on April 5th.

About ten minutes before sunrise the sun can begin to shine on the underside of middle level liquid-water clouds, creating perhaps the most spectacular moments of all.

Finally the sun actually peeks above the horizon and there are intense changes that sometimes last only seconds.  First there is the 'green flash'.  Because the atmosphere bends light rays of different colors by slightly different amounts, the shorter wavelengths curve around and reach the eye first.  But this really is a flash--way less than a full second.  A good green flash requires a haze-free sky, so it's best when the humidity is low.

The rising disc of the sun produces endless variety of effects as it climbs up through layers of haze and any clouds that are around.

No two sunrises are the same.  Meanwhile under my feet the tide and waves have sculpted a pristine new treadway for me.  That's what I love about doing these beach hikes.  I can hike the same geographical location over and over and have different surroundings every time.

Okay, so without further ado, here are the first three sunrises.  I will follow this post with four more posts covering a week each.  Enjoy.

March 25, wide view

March 26, a stormy night led to the sunrise being hidden behind racks of departing clouds

March 27 was a warm morning.  When the air is warmer than the water as it was here, the sun rises compressed and flat-looking at first.  Shore birds add a wonderful dimension of additional variety to the scene.