Trevor Livingston
Cold fingers and burning forearms. I try to shake the water from my eyes as I swing at the ice with my tool, aiming for a solid placement. The never-ending stream of water continues to barrage my face. I remember looking at the weather app this morning: twenty-six degrees Fahrenheit: freezing. There are several potential reasons that make ice or snow melt in temperatures below freezing. The primary reason, especially concerning the ice flow that I’m climbing, is that the ice is not pure; it is full of minerals secreted from rock and dirt and attached to the water molecules. These minerals will lower the freezing point of ice, making it more likely to melt when it is just freezing outside. This is similar to sea ice, because of the high concentration of salt, temperatures must be much colder, or other factors achieved, to freeze sea water.
As I pull myself to the top of the flow, relief washes over me. The water drains from my eyes and I take a moment to look at the landscape surrounding me, Smugglers Notch. Ice forms frequently along the valley walls, each flow has a slightly different shade. The smaller, thinner flows tend to have a more yellow, earthy color, due to the high concentration of minerals absorbed in the ice. The larger flows, however, tended to have a deep blue color, like glacial ice. This is because the oxygen-hydrogen bond in water molecules tends to absorb slightly more light at the red end, as opposed to the blue end, of the visible light spectrum. Over large amounts of ice, this effect is exaggerated and gives the ice a beautiful light shade of blue, as opposed to the natural clear or slightly yellow state.
Besides the ice there is, except for on the sheer faces of rock where no ice has formed, a variety of vegetation, primarily white pine and paper birch trees. This vegetation thrives in the notch because the water, as indicated by the impure ice, is full of essential minerals plant life needs. This is partially because the rock in the area, Albite Schist, while hard, more readily gives up minerals to the water so it can be absorbed by plants. This is unlike granite, which naturally weathers at a slow rate, and renders the waters surrounding it devoid of nutrients. Thus plants in granite areas struggle more to grow.
January 14, 2017