Camel’s Hump Sunset

By:  Greg
August 5, 2010


OK… no… that’s definitely not Plattsburgh. Must be a plane coming in to Burlington Airport. Those are some pretty bright headlights though. Hmmmm. Maybe, just maybe that is the sun.
what is that thing?

After that quick tease however, the sun ducked back behind a set of clouds and disappeared. “OK,” we thought, “now the fiery orb is REALLY gone for good tonight. Good riddance anyway. It’s not like we devoted a good bit of thought and our entire afternoon to trying to watch it set anyway.”
sun is back behind the clouds

We contemplated packing up and heading down to take advantage of the little remaining natural light in an effort to make the late-day descent a bit easier. We realized however that no matter what, we were going to need to use headlamps before we got to the bottom, and so we might as well stick around until the end just in case. I had the sunset pegged at exactly 8:14PM so we knew when to leave even if we couldn’t see whether or not the sun had set. I played around with the camera a little bit trying to get a view of the summit “lake” and Lake Champlain all in one.
not too promising

Then suddenly, at exactly 8:12PM and 37 seconds, what appeared to be cloud cover right to the horizon, turned out to have the tiniest of slivers of clear sky in which the sun could poke through. The trigonometry of the situation baffled me: What tiny angle of opportunity must the sun have taken advantage of in order to peek through this window? The probability of the situation astounded me: How many slightly different positions of the cloud ceiling would have completely obscured our view of the red orb? The geometry of the situation floored me: What volume of atmosphere must the sun be beaming through as it shines directly overhead in Alaska to reach my eye here on the top of Camel’s Hump; a mountain which is now almost perfectly perpendicular to its rays? The artistry of nature however was simple.
the artistry of nature

the aritstry of nature

the artistry of nature

The thing I like most about sunsets is that you have time to reflect on any number of mysteries you choose to engage. No matter how puzzling your quandary however, the apparent simplicity of nature grinds on, and provides a deadline for your thoughts. Of course, if you fail to reach a solution, you may try to come back again tomorrow and have another go. But the truth is however that you won’t remember what your problem was in the first place since the overwhelming consensus of nature as evidenced by the sunset is simple: it doesn’t really matter. What a relief.

Thanks for checking out HIKE WEEK on FIS.

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6 Comments

  1. Lionel Hutz
    wrote on August 5th, 2010 at 2:00 pm  
    1

    Dude…Mountain House is so not befitting of Bud Select. Come on now. Bud Select demands better.

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
    • Greg
      wrote on September 14th, 2010 at 9:27 am  
      2

      sorry we didn’t bring our Hibachi backcountry-Puck

  2. Bill
    wrote on August 5th, 2010 at 7:21 pm  
    • Greg
      wrote on August 5th, 2010 at 10:16 pm  
      4

      Yeah. Why do you hate beer bill? ;)

  3. Austin
    wrote on August 7th, 2010 at 4:52 pm  
    5

    Speaking of the sun… I really want to try for a Mt. Washington sunrise sometime this winter. Some of the observatory’s winter sunrise pics of downright amazing. I of course assume that you would be done for this.

    Respond to this comment/comment thread
    • Greg
      wrote on August 10th, 2010 at 3:54 pm  
      6

      lets do it mang!

      i’m always game for stuff like this…and if it’s fun, i’d be up for doing it often

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