New Hampshire had one of the highest snow fall totals this winter, since anyone bothered to keep records.
This past week the weather gods followed up with huge rain falls and above average temperatures. If you have ever seen a frozen solid river let go all at once, you stood in awe witnessing the power and pressure of water.
A huge debris field was created in the Pemigewasset river when one of the widest parts of this major waterway is squeezed in to a narrow passage under the route 175 bridge here in Woodstock.
Forty foot trees snapped like tooth picks and tossed about randomly all over the piles of ice.
It really is hard to tell, but these walls of ice are more than twenty feet tall in a lot of places. The area of coverage I would estimated to be roughly 70 acres, it took me two hours to walk the perimeter using snow shoes with crampon picks on the bottom.
Some of the single slabs of deep blue ice, are two feet thick and fifty feet across. I stepped on one that let go from the shore and took me for a brief ride.
A Couple of times I heard the ice drop and found the place I had been standing a moment ago was gone, replaces with a deep dark cavern with fast moving water below.
The snow shoes help disperse the weight and allow you to stay on top of this rather unstable ice flow...trust me you don't want to spent any time in the water in March. I estimate it's a few degrees above freezing, less than a minute in this water and you are all done.
To give you some idea of the height of these piles of ice...take a look at these two seasonal shots taken from the same location (my Hammock in one and the attachment on the trees in the other).
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