A walk in the woods

[Dodgy Loner]

Yep, I'm already nostalgic :-\

[Furby]

Actually Jeff, that would be incorrect!
Different tower.

[pigman]

   Furby is right again. ;D  I finally googled and discovered there is a tater knob tower, but that tower is a lot shorter, is located in a different place, is not still in use and is not owned by a University. I am going to have to start paying more attention. I suppose that is not necessary since Furby is on the ball. ;)

Bob

[Furby]

Actually, I found and was thinking Tater Knob at the start, but did some more digging and found the truth.
The pics were the big give away though. ;)
Jeff's in the right ballpark and could have the answer with very little trouble.

[SwampDonkey]

Everybody was pretty close on this one - I was on a trail that crossed over the AT, but I didn't actually hike the AT itself.  Furby nailed it!  I was in the Great Smoky Mountains, specifically on the Sugarland Mountain trail.   It started near the peak of Clingman's Dome at about 6000 feet above sea level, and ended up only 3000 feet above sea level, so we passed through a huge variety of forest types on the way down, from the spruce-fir-yellow birch at the top to the oak-hickory-poplar at the bottom.

Thanks for sharing your vacation with us all. That's beautiful country, I can say first hand. 

I was going to guess the same because of the covertype or species you were documenting on your hike. And I didn't think you would be a long way from your home turf for your hike. But, as happens sometimes we are a little too late to find these posts or have been away from the 'puter for a few days. That Dome, is it the one you drive to by car and there is a big parking lot? I don't know the trails down there because I never spent a lot of time there. It was the route we took back to Va in 2001. So, I'm not familiar with the names. Those big old yellow birch sure don't look yellow when they are old growth.  :D



On the Tobique.



Here's a big old white birch (18 inch) at the mouth of the Tobique on my uncle's lot.

The red spruce diameters down there are similar to the old growth we find on occasion here, but usually they are wind swept and shorter on our ridge tops. On the Wapske R. I did measure one 46cm at dbh and 32 meters tall. I couldn't believe the height and had to measure it 3 times.  : There were others about the same and the balsam fir was all dead or nearly.


Here's a picture of the stand. The tree I measured is the one in the middle and way back there in the background. See the snapped off trunk, typical of decadent fir, they rarely get uprooted.



The base of the tree, red tape. More fir snags leaning. Some trees had a tiny crown left on top, < 3 m live crown.

The tree was on the flood plain which is not typical, usually that is for white spruce and fir, the red's are on the hardwood ridges. A typical fir or spruce will top out at 24-26 meters on our best sites, where white pine goes to 35-40 meters. Balsam fir is more nutrient demanding than spruce.

Lots of old man's beard lichen around in those pictures. This is typical of a deer wintering area in our northern climate. Where these old stands have been almost completely removed from the landscape, the deer population has pretty much been nuked along with it. :-\ Deer typically migrate up and down the Tobique and Miramachi watershed. In winter when grand father took trips into the camps, there was no sign of a deer on the Serpentine Lake. This was near the divide (Graham Plains) of the Tobique and Miramachi Rivers. Once woodland caribou country, wiped out by brain worm and TB. There are many old deer paths around the lakes up there, some may have been caribou trails adapted by deer. I'm no deer biologist, but when you hang around a guide outfitter for the early part of your life, you learn about deer. A lot of what the experts know about deer came from these old timers whether they will admit it or not. They just had to spend a lot of tax payer money to confirm what they were already told  :D ;D ;)





65 cm (25.5 inch) DBH on my woodlot.  ;D

[Dodgy Loner]

Nice pictures, SD.  Regarding your question, yes, Clingman's Dome is the mountain with the parking lot up near the summit.  My favorite peak in the Smokies, though, is Mt. LeConte.  It's the third-tallest peak east of the Rockies, and you have to hike at least 5 miles to get to the top - there are no roads.  Last time I hiked Mt. LeConte (it was several years ago), I saw several red spruce that were 4 feet in diameter and 120 feet tall.  Too bad I didn't have my camera with me :-\.