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2006-05-11 07:54:12.000 – Neil Lareau,  Observer

“Moist and grey,” that is how Mike Davidson described yesterday. The same can be said for today. It will likely hold true for tomorrow and the next day as well.

Driving up to the base of the Auto road for shift change the notch looked like fall. Swelling buds of red to orange mixed with the pale green nascent leaves to suggest, at first glance, the flip side of summer.

The Warblers have been flooding back in this week. The woods are a chatter of song and call.

The summit just looks dreary. The patches of snow and ice that remain where drifts had been deep look as weathered as the rock. The gaps between the schist boulders are back, after having been packed full with snow since October.

The good news is that shift changes are easy at the moment. Taking the truck top to bottom without chains is a glorious thing after the long encumbered changes of the past few weeks. This also means that the tech staff, that splits time between the valley and the summit, can get here with ease. Supplies for the summit museum have been arriving steadily. Spring cleaning is underway. A new data base for wind vane is in place, and instrumentation experiments and comparisons have begun. The ease of summer is dangling in front of us.

Neil Lareau,  Observer