Jordan Pond Frozen
Today Janice I again took advantage of the recent snowfall by snowshoeing the length of Jordan Pond. With the sun so strong and temps in the mid 30’s, the conditions were spring-like except for the fierce north wind which made for a brutal crossing, but it was worth it.
The eight small images at the bottom of the gallery below show our route. Starting from the boat launch at the south end of the pond, we headed NNW toward the base of the South Bubble (the one on the right). Upon reaching the north shore, the wind died down and we enjoyed a little break before trudging due west to the shore located directly below the Tumbledown (more on it below). You can see our tracks in image 10 if you start at the right edge of the frame at the shore and follow the light diagonal line ending in the vegetation on the left.
Once on the western shore, we made the steep ascent up onto the Carriage Road at a location just north of the Tumbledown, near the skiers in image 9. In that photo, notice how steeply the terrain drops off on the right — that’s what we came up. Staying on the Carriage Road we headed south through the Tumbledown where I took images 3 and 4 of the rocks and images 10 and 11 of the views looking northeast and southeast. I took the last shot, 12, just south of and only a few hundred yards from where we started.
While editing these pictures I was surprised to see the difference in the profile of The Bubbles between image 1 which was taken from nearly a mile away, and image 2 taken from a few hundred yards from the shore. In image 2, the South Bubble (elevation 768′) appears to be so much larger than the North Bubble (elevation 872′). Image 2 is a three-shot handheld panorama of three landscape orientation images stitched together in Lightroom. I took all of these images with a Fuji XT-3 and 27mm Fuji pancake lens (except the one of me which Janice took with an iPhone 8 Plus).
While Jordan Pond has always been one of the most special places for me on Mount Desert Island (I worked and lived at the Jordan Pond House in 1977), the Tumbledown is one of my favorite spots in Acadia National Park. Whenever I hike, run, or bicycle past this spot, I always stop to take in the view and marvel at the construction of the Carriage Road across this massive rock slide. Despite the steepness of the slope and the size and number of boulders, John D. Rockefeller Jr. persevered to build this section of road in the early 1920’s to connect the northern and southern sections of the park. I used black & white for images 3 and 4 to emphasize the rocks above and below this spectacular section of road.
