[at-l] Re: ATN article, 1936 Scout Hike

[KAB@concordia-ny.edu (Kurt Bodling)]

Of course, there's snow and then there's snow.

I didn't read the article to clearly say that they were slogging 
through thigh deep drifts all the way through Maine.  I read it to say 
that there was snow within sight pretty much most of the time. But 
maybe not literally ALL the time. Maybe not on hillsides facing 
south, for example (but even there maybe where it had been 
packed down by previous walkers).  Even this snow-poor winter 
here in New York, I did some day hiking on the AT where the only 
visible (packed) snow was actually on the Trail.  

Now, granted back in the 1930s in Maine on the Trail (not on road 
walk portions) there would have been fewer (or NO?) people to have 
packed down the snow.  But I'm just positing possibilities here.

Kurt
Concordia

> >I've  yet  to hear of anyone averaging 20 miles a day through snow and
> >drifts in Maine.  I  won't say it's not possible -- for a 15-year-old no
> >less. But I'd bet 1,000 to 1 that it never happened.
> 
> I haven't been able to find specific snowpack figures for that year in
> Maine but I did find some telling facts.  A number of sites refer to the
> "all New England Flood" of 1936.  It seems that with higher than normal
> snowfall in the winter of 1935-36, March began with a thaw in the first
> week followed by heavy rains the next two weeks that melted the snow and
> caused flooding from Virginia all the way up through Maine.