A Day Away from Coronavirus Lockdown: Escaping to the Mountains

Hello Steemians! Or Hiveians now? What do you think?

Anyways, I'm writing today as a follow up in sort to my last post about the current Covid-19 pandemic around the world and sharing a bit of my experience, as I hope you do too, let me know in the comments how it's affecting you and where you are in the world, I've already got some amazing and insightful responses from around the globe!

With that said, here in Boston are still on lock down, though it's not very strict, and focuses mostly on businesses that are non-essential staying closed. However people can still move around freely and there is no penalty or anything for gathering in public, though the majority seem to be adhering to the recommendations and staying home for the most part.

I decided to head up to the White Mountains and escape the lock down here for a couple days, and quarantine a bit in Nature.

My original plan for the day was to hike the Franconia Ridge, which is probably my favorite hike in the White Mountains. It consists of 3 mountains, Little Haystack, Lincoln, and Lafayette, 4k, 5k, and 5k footers respectively. I checked the weather and it looked a bit rough, but manageable with a high of 17 degrees at 5k ft elevation, and with windchill about 6 or 7 degrees. But first I thought I'd do some smaller hikes. Which turned out, was a very good thing.

My first hike was supposed to be a quick run up Artists Bluff, an amazing view for a very short and easy hike - usually. As I began to make my way up, I noticed my footing seemed a bit off. I brushed some snow aside, and noticed the entire ground was covered in a sheet of ice. It had melted a few days ago, and refroze since then, and then was covered in a few inches off snow, so a quick hike became a much slower and more dangerous endeavor. But I made it without much of a problem, as you can see from my selfie.

Well now, what to do? Do i try to embark on this 8 mile 3 mountain hike knowing that more than half the mountains are probably covered in ice like this? I decided it wasn't worth it and spent some time here instead, and another small hike after, but we'll get to that in a few.

Because of the Covid-19 outbreak, they also shut down all the ski resorts - but that didn't stop the die-hards.

This is Cannon Mountain, as seen from Artists Bluff. If you look close, you'll see 2 dots in the center of the photo, those are 2 skiers hiking back up to make another run. And all those trail marks you see? Those are all from people hiking up to ski, as it had snowed already since they closed down the lifts. I saw a good 5 or 6 people hiking up while I was there. As well as some other great views, here's a few.

^^ This is the top of Lafayette, in the back, the tallest of the 3 mountains I was going to hike that day.

After relaxing for a bit up there, I headed back down and went to fly my drone a little bit since there was no one around. Here's a couple of the shots I got from that, as I'm still going through the video at the moment.

From there I headed to a place called The Basin to see some waterfalls. Here are a few shots from there, as I didn't take too many, and was mostly shooting with my cellphone here testing out the camera a bit.

After this I headed back to the house for my last night in the mountains before heading back towards Boston. It was really great to get out into nature at a time like this, and especially since there was literally no one else around so I had the mountains even more to myself than usual.

It was great to help clear my mind and reflect on what this world is going through at the moment and what world may emerge on the other side of this pandemic. I fear things will get quite a bit worse here in the US, as we were late to acting on this disaster and even now aren't practicing truly strict measures yet either. Today the US took the #1 spot for most cases in the world at the moment and our death toll essentially doubled over night. I hope we get a true handle on this very soon, if it isn't too late already, and take this as seriously as we should have been since January.

With that said, how is this affecting you and your country? How are you dealing with this pandemic and essentially the shut down of life as we come to know it? How has this been affecting your relationships in your life, your mental health? I look forward to hearing your experiences yet again and hope the best for you and the rest of this world. Stay home.

And in the meantime, don't forget to follow along with me on Instagram at www.Instagram.com/SeanGoldPhotos or check out my website at www.SeanGold.com for more of my work and to purchase prints to support my work! Thanks!

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