Avalanche Pass Halloween 2003

On October 31, 2003 I hiked into Avalanche Lake, mostly to see the damage done in the pass by the avalanche in 2001.  Hurricane Floyd was dumping many inches of rain on the mountains and as you can see in the picture on the right of Mt. Colden from Marcy Dam the Avalanche on the far right slid into the pristine and quiet pass below.  

It was in this pass in the years just before, I had written poetry and mediated while I wrote my book "Etchings and Insights".

I hadn't returned because I wasn't ready to see the destruction of such a quiet and contemplative spot for me.

At one point on the trail into the pass you see before you how open to the sky it is and you realize that just up ahead is where the avalanche occurred.

Before the light would be diffused into the pass, I called it, 'a light like no other', because it was so conducive to poetry and meditation.

In the images below you can see where trail workers chain sawed through 30 foot high barricades of fallen trees.  Earth, moss, trees slide off the granite mountain side.  Where once there was a water fall cascading out of solid granite and being the northern most source of the Hudson river.  Now it's just a tangle of trees, rocks and earth.  No sign could I find of the waterfall.

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