Early Ice Storm Hits

An early season ice storm hit the Hudson Valley late last week. Here in Beacon, the town itself escaped, but the mountain took on the appearance of a giant sugar-glazed porcupine hunched at the end of Main Street. Climbing up the trail that starts at Mt. Beacon Park on 9D, there is no evidence of the storm until just past the half-way point. I turned the corner on a switchback and the entire forest above me was coated with a thick layer of ice. A few yards further on, so many small birches by the side of the path had bowed over that they formed what looked like a cave made of dripped glass. All around were the pale yellow wounds of  tree trunks and branches not so giving that were snapped off by the weight of the frozen rainwaters.

The wind was calm when I went up several days after the storm, but the quiet was constantly broken by the sounds of branches cracking and ice tinkling to the ground up and down the hillside. At one point a branch shed its glistening skin directly above my companion, who covered her head and emerged unscathed except for a few ice crystals in her hair.

Small trees bent to the ground form a cave of ice.

The towers on top of Mt. Beacon got a coating, too.

Most of the trees will spring back when the ice melts