Rime on the Ridge Tops

I saw rime on the ridge tops the other day. It finally got cold enough, and conditions were perfect for it. Hoarfrost, my grandmother called it. That is from the Old English, meaning white or gray.

On a cold and sunny winters day with a hard blue sky, a lone cloud floats onto the top of a mountain or ridge line, and seems to become attached to it, as though alive, and with some purpose. The ridge top is closed from view, as the cloud seems to slowly move and boil, lifting an edge from time to time to reveal pure white below. It stays, as though communing with the mountain top, and finally begins to float away, ragged now, with wisps and streamers departing from the main cloud, which slowly moves off to reveal a shining white mountain top or ridge line, a white so pure and glowing above the gray winter woods that it hurts the eyes, reflecting the sun so perfectly.

I was caught in one of these clouds more than once, or might I say, I was graced to be within them. The sun is hidden, and the world is gray, gray woods and a gray mist that moves like something alive, depositing ice on everything, trees, limbs, twigs, Rhododendron leaves, grass blades. Even my beard was turned white; it was red back then. It now looks as if I had been standing in one of these clouds. Time is like a hoarfrost cloud for me, I guess. Ice is deposited heavily on the side of the twigs that the air is moving from, making a wedge shaped ice shroud on the upwind side. This greater accumulation of ice on places like Craggy Gardens and Mount Mitchell will kill the buds on the upwind side of the trees, giving them a lopsided shape, called "flag formed". To be on a mountaintop while this is going on makes one feel magical, as though some mystical creature is going to appear out of the mists; indeed, shapes appear in the mists and seem almost to turn corporeal, and then dissipate, sending shivers up your back, though it is only the cold.
And the mountaintop is pure gleaming white in the light of the winter sun.

This phenomenon is a form of sublimation, where ice forms directly from supercooled water vapor, without the intermediate phase of liquid water. Mostly, you will only see it on the higher ridges and peaks in the middle of the winter, when the odd clouds turn the mountain tops white.