The Mountain Club on Loon

conference hotel

The front of the conference site, a ski resort/condo/timeshare place that did conferences during the summer. Some of the events were at a building at the bottom of this hill, which I walked and ran up and down many times during the week...The meeting featured extensive coverage of the construction of the new station at South Pole.


resort viewed from the cable car

On Friday after the conference, I took the gondola up Loon Mountain. This is what the back of the hotel looked like near the cable car station. There were perhaps 100-120 people at the meeting including a few familiar faces from the National Science Foundation, CRREL (Army Cold Regions Research Lab) and ASA (Antarctic support contractor).


up the ski slopes

Looking down towards the hotel from the gondola car. During my visit I had an opportunity to explore (go running along) some of the flatter cross-country ski trails and Forest Service paths. I did not see any loons, so I asked about that at the hotel. "There aren't any," was the answer! They do exist elsehere in New Hampshire, but apparently acid rain did away with them in this area.


Mt. Washington

From the summit of Loon Mountain (about 2600') there was an observation tower; this is the view looking northeast towards Mt. Washington (6228') in the center distance. It is typically in the clear only 1 day a week. The conference dinner featured a speaker who has worked for many years for the TV station with a transmitter on the summit, and he had some amazing stories and photos. For our conference trip up the mountain on Wednesday, the weather was more typical...


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