Climbing into the White Mountains: the granite geology of the Granite State and the northern hardwood forest that lights up in fall.
Feel the road tilting upward now as we climb into the high country. These are the White Mountains, the tallest range in the northeastern United States, and the rock beneath your wheels is the reason New Hampshire is called the Granite State. This is molten rock that cooled slowly, miles underground, into hard gray granite, then the whole region was heaved up and scoured bare by mile-thick glaciers in the last Ice Age — which is why the peaks around you are rounded and rocky-topped rather than jagged. The forest climbing these slopes is northern hardwood — sugar maple, yellow birch, American beech — and it is exactly that sugar maple that sets this drive on fire every autumn, blazing scarlet and orange and gold. Watch the road edges for moose, especially at dawn and dusk; a bull moose can weigh as much as your car, so a moose in the road is no small thing up here. Climb on with me toward the pass.