Came across this article today: Galloway Forest Park: one of the darkest places on the planet. The article took me on a tangent to learn about John Bortle’s Dark Sky Scale. How dark is your local sky?

This article by Tony Flanders posted on Cloudy Nights gives a nice description with observations on how to judge the darkness of your sky: Ground Truth for the Bortle Scale

In the post discussion thread there is a reference for Wakely Mountain with a couple of links to the dark sky maps. I’ve been visiting Wakely Dam for the past several years for the Ultra Run. It really is a dark place and the night sky is spectacular.

Click the following images to land on the page for each map.

Wakely Mountain Light Pollution Map.  The cross hairs on the maps indicate Wakely Mountain.  You can see the northern border of New York State as a while line on the map.  The black area in the map covers Wakely, Sagamore and Raquette Lake in the Adirondacks.

Wakely Mountain Clear Sky Chart

“Dark Sky Finder – Wakely Mountain (a nice mix of Google Maps and dark sky levels)

This comment on the Times Online article about Galloway Forest Park was brilliant! All credit of the remainder of the post goes to Trochilus Tales.

Trochilus Tales wrote:
There is a remote and rocky cragy area called Edmund’s Col, located in the Presidential range up in New Hampshire.

It is tucked down in, north of the second “peak” of Mt. Clay, which itself lies in the shadow of Mt. Washington, thence just southeast of a step-like rock formation known as Jefferson’s Knees, jutting out down from the peak of Mt. Jefferson. The col lies along Randolph Path up from another protected location called the Perch, and is further clockwise visually bounded by Mt. Sam Adams, Mt. Adams, which hide Mt. Madison beyond. Finally, it lies near the edge of the vast Great Gulf Wilderness, a considerable glacial cirque just out to the east.

There used to be a tiny Quonset hut located there on a flat, which hut was no more than four or four and a half feet high, and perhaps only 12 feet long or so. It was one where hikers who happened to be traversing the northern Presidential Range, could crawl in to get shelter from any of the sudden and dicey weather.

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