The walls of Conway granite rise to a height of 70 to 90 feet and are 12 to 20 feet apart. We had intended to make our way to the lower end of the gully, and investigate it from below, but our time was quite short….The Flume is a natural gorge extending 800 feet at the base of Mount Liberty. On reaching higher growth, we made our way rapidly down the rocky bed of the main stream. Much caution was requisite in abandoning our chosen path, as it was necessary to take advantage of a few widely separated projections of the rocky wall as footholds, and to choose discreetly upon which of the shrubs rooted in the wet, mossy soil we would rely for our grasp. From here, so far as we could discover, there was an almost vertical descent of perhaps seventy–five feet. A few rods farther brought us to a place beyond which it seemed imprudent to venture without proper appliances. At one point our simplest course was to remove some large stones that lodged in a broad crevice which began abruptly at the base of the a steep rock, and to let ourselves down through the hole thus made to its steeply inclined bottom some six or seven feet below us, thence under the sky again. We undertook to make our way down it, but found this by no means an easy task. Reaching finally the proper point, we found a very steep, irregular, rocky gully, down which, during rains, a considerable quantity of water doubtless finds its way to the brook below, and where the drainings of the previous day’s rains were still trickling. Descending too soon, we were forced to make our way several hundred feet through dense scrub growing on a treacherous and precipitous slope. Time will also be saved if, when ascending Lafayette, one carefully notes the point on the crest ling below which the shadow begins. A half-hour would afford time to obtain a general idea of its character and return to the summit but for a thorough exploration (such as we were unable to make) one should be provided with a long rope, and allow more than an hour. We found the mysterious shadow to be caused by a sunless gorge, which if not so remarkable a natural feature as we had hoped to find, seems to us a worth of a visit from such sure-footed pedestrians as should find themselves on Mt. A good opera-glass failing to determine its nature, we decided to explore it, and to return to the Profile House by the untried way of the ravine. It extended perhaps half-way down the remaining distance to the ravine bottom. It began perhaps a hundred feet, measured on a vertical, below the crest, and somewhat to the right of a noticeable protuberance of rock on the ridge-line, - just to the right also of the upper part of the broad expanse of precipitous ledges that form so prominent a feature on the northwest slope of this mountain. Lafayette, on the 12th of September, 1880, Professor Cross and myself, during our halt for lunch just beyond the lakes, noticed, as we looked across the broad intervening ravine, a narrow dark shadow running for some distance down the precipitous northerly slope of the great west spur of Mt. I have probably made mistakes transcribing this so please refer to the original account in the May 1881 Appalachia journal for the most accurate account: Here is Fay's description of his rather bold and dangerous descent of this gorge. In this way the gorge could be accessed without damaging the alpine vegetation on the upper west ridge of Lincoln. Take the south branch of Walker Brook (toward the Throat) and look for the base of the gorge on the right (well before the Throat). There may be old logging roads in this area, but I have heard conflicting accounts of these. I would think that the way to access this gorge would be to follow Walker Brook up to its major fork. Carpenter cut a trail up the west ridge of Lincoln, but this trail was obliterated by subsequent logging. There is no easy access to it that I know of, but in 1897 Frank O. He called it a precipitous “sunless gorge”. Fay who descended down it from the untracked west ridge of Lincoln. I am especially curious about what it is like in the summer.Īs far as I can tell it was first explored in 1880 by Charles E. In the summer it might be a cool, interesting flume (or a dark, slimy, impassible fissure). This gully is choked with snow and ice in the winter and might present an interesting climb. This is not the Throat on Lincoln, or the other slabs on the west slope of Lincoln (which Guy Waterman called “Lincoln’s Shaving Nicks”), but rather a flume-like slice into the northern slope of west ridge of Lincoln. Lincoln? This exposed gorge is clearly visible from the Agonies along the Old Bridal Path up to the Greenleaf Hut and from the hut. Does anyone know about the gully that runs north off the west ridge of Mt.
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