Wildcat Mountain Summit via Gondola

Author's Comments

There are easier ways to stand at four thousand feet, and the gondola is one of them. I do not think this diminishes the view. Wildcat puts you directly across Pinkham Notch from Mount Washington, and the geometry of that placement is the entire point - you are looking at the Presidential Range from the only angle that lets you see it whole, with the ravines of Tuckerman and Huntington carved into the face like something a glacier signed. Morning is the hour. The gondola faces west across the notch, which means the sun comes up behind you and lands on Washington first, and for maybe forty minutes the range is lit while the valley below is still in shadow. That is the photograph. A wide lens, the ridge in the foreground going down into the dark of the notch, and the Presidentials catching the first warm light across the gap. I have been up here in September when the lower slopes were just beginning to turn and the summit cone was already in winter. The vertical distance reads in color as much as elevation. Come early. The gondola does not always run at the hour you would want for true sunrise, so check before you drive, and accept that you may be working with the second-best light rather than the first. It is still very good light. The notch holds it longer than you would expect.

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