Blue Group (D1B1)
Location
Cardigan Mountain is located 41 miles from Contoocook New Hapshire split in between the town of Orange and the town of Alexandria New Hampshire. The town of Orange is roughly an hour north of Contoocook. The summit Cardigan is about 30 miles east from Newfound lake. The coordinates from the summit of Cardigan are 43.6498° N, 71.9148° W. To hike up the mountain from the AMC lodge takes about 3 hours and is about a 10 miles round trip. At the beginning of the trip to Cardigan from Contoocook, you may pass the Contoocook river. You may also pass Ragged mountain resort. Closer to the end of your car trek you may pass straight through the town of Danbury. After Danbury, you will finally find a couple of miles down Cardigan road that will lead you directly to the AMC lodge.
Place
-Cultural
Around and at Cardigan, there are many signs of people who lived at the bottom of the mountain. These signs are mostly older rock walls, but if you look closely you may discover where a family might have had a place for an old field because the trees are all older around it, but in a certain area, there are very new and young trees. At the top of the mountain, you will find the man-made sculptures called karons. These are a sign of the correct way but are also an art and a man-made beauty. At the bottom of Cardigan, there is another sign of cultural that you might not think of, it is the AMC lodge. They made the lodge in 1939 as a popular ski lodge. If you look closely at the man-made objects you find, you may discover a clue to the past of the familys that lived on Cardigan mountain.
-Physical
Cardigan national forest and mount Cardigan both flourish with tons of species of trees, and wildlife. In the Cardigan area, there are things called zones. They are where different types of trees live. One zone is the Northern hardwood zone. This is where mostly the Sugar maple trees and the American beech trees live. Another zone is the Boreal zone. This zone holds the Red spruce trees, the Balsam fir trees, and the Paper birch trees. The last zone is the Alpine zone there are questions about if the alpine zone is really a zone because it isn’t tall enough. But that is false, the Alpine zone is a legit zone. Some of the trees at cardigan are the Sugar maple American beech Maple and the Paper birch. Walking up the mountain you will find many fungi along with edible and non-edible ground plants. When we were hiking up the mountain we stopped and ate an Indian cucumber. The Cardigan landscape was not too steep at the bottom, but at the top was way steeper than the bottom. When we reached about the three-quarter mark we found that we were seeing more and more birch and evergreen trees. When we got to the top, though we only saw evergreen trees and ground plants, the trees were really small.
*We were at Cardigan for three days*:
October second, October third,
and
October fourth
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