this has been a crazy up and down winter--cold and snowing one day, warm and raining the next. definitely not conducive to backcountry skiing--my favorite 'going downhill fast' activity.
but, last week a warm, wet snow of 6-7-8~ish inches, blanketed everything--again--laying down a solid base we could ski on without hitting rock--mostly. as the storm passed, the temperatures fell to seasonal levels and the bulk of snow froze up. the next couple of snows were much drier and a 3-4-5~ish fluffy inches accumulated on top of the crust. this put me back in a wintery mood--again--and i pulled my skis back out.
i can't remember last friday for the life of me, but i don't think i was out skiing. it was predicted to get warmer saturday morning. it was definitely raining by then, even though the thermometer was holding at 30°F. desperate to get in some winter activity before we lost our 3rd 'blanket', i called skip and proposed a ski.
him: it's raining!
me: it's supposed to change to snow...
him: when? it's lunch-o-clock you know.
me: i realize. by the time you eat and we gain a little elevation it will be snow...i hope.
him: ok.
me: shaker wildlife management area or the road up to mowgli and firescrew?
him: firescrew! it will be snowier!
me: good choice. you eat. i'll be over.
sure enough, about an hour later, + a 1000 ft, that is a smile on a mostly dry skip as we headed up the mowgli trail toward firescrew. it was snowing!
conditions were good for going up, read we didn't need to hassle with skins. but as we came to a couple of steeper sections i started wondering aloud. this might get tricky going down, do you want to turn around here? i actually wrote about it in ttyol last sunday.
"skip and i kept going higher and higher on a narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper trail. ...the snow was thick & heavy, ie wicked hard to turn in, at least smoothly. i dropped a few hints that perhaps we should turn around here...or here...or maybe here. he kept mentioning something about it "leveling off" and "let's make this a tour." i guess i'm an easy sell. thank god for that knee high blowdown signaling further progress would be downright dangerous on a decent.
as we locked down boots and bindings and looked downhill, i thought i heard skip agree that maybe we shouldn't have come so high up. ...i quickly calculated that taking any more of [time] before dropping in would only [help] me...visualize disaster. at that thought, i pointed my tips down the fall line."
back out at the road, i found a vantage point to practice my recent fascination with series shots--the kind you can click on and toggle through like a flip book.
yeah, i know, i need a lot more practice. but despite the old 'camera' camera, we had a grand day going outside and playing! nobody melted--or bashed any trees either, hop turning though the thick, cement-like snow.
and speaking of practice, pam and i looped around our snowshoe trail sunday at sunset. this time i used her phone camera. the quicker recovery time, makes for a much 'neater' series.
the two series above are uncropped. the one below i cropped to look like she is entering and leaving the frame. click and toggle through--it's fun.
the sun setting over moose mountain as we headed back to the house, gave us quite a show--
--and made a strange roof melt sculpture as well. it was definitely another grand day, outside and playing! plus, there was a bonus in the forecast for some cold and snow tuesday and wednesday!!
and snow it did! on tuesday, it was a mostly all day event giving us 4-5-6~ish inches. the video above is the first minute of my commute. on the way home, i to clamber up onto the snow bank up against the bridge railing, hoping i wouldn't fall over into the river, while two plow trucks passed each other on the road. i didn't take a video. on our way to bed, we made a plan to get out on the snowshoe loop the next morning, before we went into work.
on wednesday, after our glorious morning loop with tuesday's snows slowing 'melting' off the trees, we got another 6-7-8~ish inches. only instead of tuesday's gentle all day snow, it came in two heavy squalls. proverbial, dumps!
the first, an honest to goodness whiteout, started soon after school let out and pam was driving back to work from the dentist--rather, trying to. the second, intensified a couple hours later, just after pam canceled her evening writing group and was again driving, this time home. the roads were horrendous.
on my walk home--i managed to time that between the heaviest snows--i passed a mile long line of cars waiting for a tow truck to pull a car out of the ditch. for me, that made getting across the bridge easy, but the police/fire traffic guy strongly suggested i walk home via goose pond road. for pam, the line was still there two hours later, and the police/fire traffic people were letting one car at a time go up the hill. she took goose pond road as well.
what made for terrible driving wednesday evening, gave us a thursday of heavenly powder. it was so good, i went out twice. the first trip was over to the shaker wildlife management area with a former student, justin, on break from college.
we had a grand tour, avoiding the glades and the steepest of the trails over there, as justin's gear was extra 'light'--read skate ski boots and fairly skinny skis. there is a lot to ski, no matter what you are looking for.
the day was still cold, even with the sun up high in a bluebird sky. but beautiful would have been an understatement given the snow conditions.
we had talked about hiking up cardigan to catch the sunset-moonrise after skiing, but after almost three hours in the shaker hills justin let his brother dirk, use the car to get to ski practice. i didn't mind as i could always go out the kitchen door and head up over town hill.
after a little snack and some tea, still hot in the thermos, i geared up again and went out. passing through the neighbor's stone wall 'gate' i built two years ago, i picked up a mostly filled-in snowshoe track neighbor bob must have made wednesday morning--before the squalls. he looped at the top of the hill, but i kept on and went down the east side, past the truck, over the 'porky trail', down my favorite pitch, down the smaller 'stone wall' pitch, through the 'pine gate' to hall road.
porky track's on the left, and koby tracks on the right. i discovered the lovely little critter hole in the middle, at the stone wall before 'pine gate'.
the trip back up the hill and down the west side, was sublime. coming out of the woods into the neighbor's field, i saw a tell tale white plume of snow blower and skied down to say hi to neighbor bob. he didn't see me until i got in front of his blower chute--"i'm hunting for powder!" we had a good chat, mostly on how sweet the snow up the hill was, with only a brief mention of the warm and rain forecasted for the weekend.
yuck, more yo-yoing! (if you look up yo-yoing in the urban dictionary, i am referencing the #2 definition.) if this is to be our winter weather of the future--my efforts to get pam to move north have not been successful--it is well we have days like wednesday to lift our winter loving spirits. going out to play! in such fluff is always good for a 'chilly' smile.
but, last week a warm, wet snow of 6-7-8~ish inches, blanketed everything--again--laying down a solid base we could ski on without hitting rock--mostly. as the storm passed, the temperatures fell to seasonal levels and the bulk of snow froze up. the next couple of snows were much drier and a 3-4-5~ish fluffy inches accumulated on top of the crust. this put me back in a wintery mood--again--and i pulled my skis back out.
i can't remember last friday for the life of me, but i don't think i was out skiing. it was predicted to get warmer saturday morning. it was definitely raining by then, even though the thermometer was holding at 30°F. desperate to get in some winter activity before we lost our 3rd 'blanket', i called skip and proposed a ski.
him: it's raining!
me: it's supposed to change to snow...
him: when? it's lunch-o-clock you know.
me: i realize. by the time you eat and we gain a little elevation it will be snow...i hope.
him: ok.
me: shaker wildlife management area or the road up to mowgli and firescrew?
him: firescrew! it will be snowier!
me: good choice. you eat. i'll be over.
sure enough, about an hour later, + a 1000 ft, that is a smile on a mostly dry skip as we headed up the mowgli trail toward firescrew. it was snowing!
conditions were good for going up, read we didn't need to hassle with skins. but as we came to a couple of steeper sections i started wondering aloud. this might get tricky going down, do you want to turn around here? i actually wrote about it in ttyol last sunday.
"skip and i kept going higher and higher on a narrower and narrower, steeper and steeper trail. ...the snow was thick & heavy, ie wicked hard to turn in, at least smoothly. i dropped a few hints that perhaps we should turn around here...or here...or maybe here. he kept mentioning something about it "leveling off" and "let's make this a tour." i guess i'm an easy sell. thank god for that knee high blowdown signaling further progress would be downright dangerous on a decent.
as we locked down boots and bindings and looked downhill, i thought i heard skip agree that maybe we shouldn't have come so high up. ...i quickly calculated that taking any more of [time] before dropping in would only [help] me...visualize disaster. at that thought, i pointed my tips down the fall line."
back out at the road, i found a vantage point to practice my recent fascination with series shots--the kind you can click on and toggle through like a flip book.
yeah, i know, i need a lot more practice. but despite the old 'camera' camera, we had a grand day going outside and playing! nobody melted--or bashed any trees either, hop turning though the thick, cement-like snow.
and speaking of practice, pam and i looped around our snowshoe trail sunday at sunset. this time i used her phone camera. the quicker recovery time, makes for a much 'neater' series.
the two series above are uncropped. the one below i cropped to look like she is entering and leaving the frame. click and toggle through--it's fun.
the sun setting over moose mountain as we headed back to the house, gave us quite a show--
--and made a strange roof melt sculpture as well. it was definitely another grand day, outside and playing! plus, there was a bonus in the forecast for some cold and snow tuesday and wednesday!!
and snow it did! on tuesday, it was a mostly all day event giving us 4-5-6~ish inches. the video above is the first minute of my commute. on the way home, i to clamber up onto the snow bank up against the bridge railing, hoping i wouldn't fall over into the river, while two plow trucks passed each other on the road. i didn't take a video. on our way to bed, we made a plan to get out on the snowshoe loop the next morning, before we went into work.
on wednesday, after our glorious morning loop with tuesday's snows slowing 'melting' off the trees, we got another 6-7-8~ish inches. only instead of tuesday's gentle all day snow, it came in two heavy squalls. proverbial, dumps!
the first, an honest to goodness whiteout, started soon after school let out and pam was driving back to work from the dentist--rather, trying to. the second, intensified a couple hours later, just after pam canceled her evening writing group and was again driving, this time home. the roads were horrendous.
on my walk home--i managed to time that between the heaviest snows--i passed a mile long line of cars waiting for a tow truck to pull a car out of the ditch. for me, that made getting across the bridge easy, but the police/fire traffic guy strongly suggested i walk home via goose pond road. for pam, the line was still there two hours later, and the police/fire traffic people were letting one car at a time go up the hill. she took goose pond road as well.
what made for terrible driving wednesday evening, gave us a thursday of heavenly powder. it was so good, i went out twice. the first trip was over to the shaker wildlife management area with a former student, justin, on break from college.
we had a grand tour, avoiding the glades and the steepest of the trails over there, as justin's gear was extra 'light'--read skate ski boots and fairly skinny skis. there is a lot to ski, no matter what you are looking for.
the day was still cold, even with the sun up high in a bluebird sky. but beautiful would have been an understatement given the snow conditions.
we had talked about hiking up cardigan to catch the sunset-moonrise after skiing, but after almost three hours in the shaker hills justin let his brother dirk, use the car to get to ski practice. i didn't mind as i could always go out the kitchen door and head up over town hill.
after a little snack and some tea, still hot in the thermos, i geared up again and went out. passing through the neighbor's stone wall 'gate' i built two years ago, i picked up a mostly filled-in snowshoe track neighbor bob must have made wednesday morning--before the squalls. he looped at the top of the hill, but i kept on and went down the east side, past the truck, over the 'porky trail', down my favorite pitch, down the smaller 'stone wall' pitch, through the 'pine gate' to hall road.
porky track's on the left, and koby tracks on the right. i discovered the lovely little critter hole in the middle, at the stone wall before 'pine gate'.
the trip back up the hill and down the west side, was sublime. coming out of the woods into the neighbor's field, i saw a tell tale white plume of snow blower and skied down to say hi to neighbor bob. he didn't see me until i got in front of his blower chute--"i'm hunting for powder!" we had a good chat, mostly on how sweet the snow up the hill was, with only a brief mention of the warm and rain forecasted for the weekend.
