Flume Gorge - Jan-Eric Osterlund

*The walk to Flume Gorge in heavy rain with mist and clouds covering all distant views with a grey veil*

It rained – a lot! We were driving to Flume Gorge for a short hike along the trails. The gorge is a ravine around 250 metres long and 25 metres deep. But the walk to the gorge was said to be very attractive. When we arrived the rainfall increased and a thick mist covered the valley. Jennifer decided to stay in the car, while I set out with my camera equipment.

I passed a couple of covered bridges which I have published in my earlier post about covered bridges. But was fascinated me here was the stream (Flume Brook) which we followed upstream. After a while it ran over granite slabs which had taken on a multitude of colours and the falling leaves further added to that. The colours became very muted because of the mist I walked through but it also saturated the colours. Many other families were out braving the bad weather and wherever I set up my tripod and camera they stopped with their iPhones and tried to make a similar composition. All of them very friendly and we all laughed in the rain.

*Flume Brook running across the granite slabs formed 200 million years ago*

*The granite slabs were coloured by the fallen autumn leaves. At several places the path crossed the brook as here where a bridge spanned the little stream*

The gorge itself wasn’t so impressive. They had built walkways so we could safely walk alongside the stream. If you look closely at my photo, there is on the left side some cloudy shadows moving across the image. That is actually people moving on the walkway. It was very dark down in the gorge and the rain and mist added to the darkness, so my exposure time was 8 seconds and the diffuse clouds are actually a group of people moving across the image as I exposed.

The Flume Gorge ws discovered in the beginning of the 19th century by a 93 year old lady, Aunt Jess Guernsey, who came upon it accidentally, when she was out fishing (quite impressive at that age, I must say) in the brook. The gorge is constantly changing and becomes deeper due to erosion.

Flume Gorge above the gorge itself. This is the beginning of the so called Avalanche waterfall, formed at an avalanche in 1883. However, I found the details of the water and the leaves on the slabs and boulders more interesting than the larger falls.

Leaving Flume Brook I came upon Pemigewasset River, and the images below are shot, one upstream and one downstream, as I crossed the river over another of the many covered bridges. The whole walk should according to the information centre take around one and a half hour, but I spent four hours due to all my photography. All that time Jennifer was sitting in the car in the rain watching movies on her iPad (without her iPad I would have been in big trouble).