one more time...

another cold night and still plenty of snow--why not.

skip and noah picked me up around 8:30 and we headed over to the glades at lasalette. i had brought my skins and smooth bottom skis hoping, they being faster than the ones with scales, i wouldn't have to worry about stickiness. and with skins, we could zip up the 'little sherburne'. 

'zip' was exactly how we went, up to the pond in practically no time and taking said skins off, buckling boots, and getting set for the down hill. i tucked in behind noah and followed his lead--no stops until almost the end. we both wondered where skip got to, maybe he got involved with that porcupine i found denning near the top, friday morning.

he finally showed up, with some story about a buried tree stopping him--one ski above, one ski below. he had a grin on, so we took him at his word and finished up smiling with him.

those smiles were for a few reasons: the snow was still deep and soft, the glades were a great place to enjoy such snow, and skiing with friends made it all the better! that, and as we got to the car, skip announced that there was more snow coming monday night...this skiing fresh powder could become a habit.




go outside and play!

another morning...

more soft, deep snow, but things were shifting toward the heavy and sticky--read skiing was getting pretty slow.

i called skip last night and asked if he would like to try lasalette in the morning. he was not sure as noah was supposed to be coming around noon. i figured i would hit it early and maybe go out again with them later. 

when i woke up it was down about 20˚F which made me smile. after breakfast i did a little shoveling and a compost run. the snow was still deep and soft which made me smile more. i packed up and took off.

it seemed warmer than friday morning and as i started skiing there was a fairly solid crust of the top snow layer, where the sun had warmed it in the afternoon. i was hopeful that that crust would disappear in the woods where the sun doesn't shine. to keep the glades for noah and skip if they did want to come out, i decided to go the big loop and finish on the 'little sherburne'.

going up was interesting in that sometimes i was on mostly buried snow shoe tracks and sometimes i was breaking trail. that was weird because i was following the main trail. whoever set the snowshoe track was following the beat of a different drummer. as i was figuring out their path, all of a sudden a fresh ski track joined the mix. i met the skier heading back down about 15 minutes later. he was a bit confused about trails so i gave him some options to further mess him up.



when i got to his 'high point' it was right where i thought it would be, a large-ish creek crossing. on the rest of the uphill after that point, the snow got really deep. i snapped another pole-average snow depth pic. it also seemed to be on the edge of sticky. i was hoping the downhill would still slide well.


i topped out soon after the picture and stopped to switch into downhill mode. after a little water out and water in, i pushed off. it was really slow and toward the bottom it got even slower as i had to go a bit off trail to avoid water in the trail. it was still beautiful, but i was looking for more steep. at what i call the 'upper junction', i went back to free pivot and turned right, headed toward the 'potato field'. i thought i would meet the snowshoe trail again, but i was breaking it out again.




i didn't see any potatoes in the field and the snow was still right on that sticky edge. i hit my uphill track from yesterday and instead of going back to the pond, i headed down the 'little sherburne'. making turns in and out of the old track was the only way to keep speed--it was almost grabby. a quarter mile past the 'lost pond' turn off, it finally got steep enough to leave my old track completely and ski all fresh. 


it's hard to see in the pic but the turns were sweet. i had left a wide open side, sticking to the far right on yesterday's uphill. the old road this trail is on has a number of water-bars pushed up and i took one as an opportunity to stop and look back uphill. when it is faster, and you time your hops right, you can even get a little air.


it wasn't that fast today. but it was steep enough to not be slow either. as i came to the last corner, i cast a look down a real narrow ditch i sometimes ski. it can be really tight and always has less snow than the wider-open parts. i saw a bunch of branches sticking out of the snow so i swung back to the road. at the next bend i cut off left into the woods headed toward another alternative route--'the spine'. the line follows a narrow path with a steep drop to the left and moderate one to the right. it is always exciting, especially at the end where it falls down to the main train all at once. if you land it right, it feels like you drop out of the sky back onto the trail--hopefully nobody is in the way.

nobody got hurt and i was down! as i slid out to the truck, i was thinking again, "if it gets cold tonight, maybe we can get one more day of deep and soft out of this--we meaning, i would have to drag skip out if he was at all reluctant. 

finding the fluff...

a morning at shaker wildlife management area! 

thursday, as mentioned in the previous post, skip and i ended a great ski, slogging though some wicked sticky snow at the bottom of cardigan. i went to bed that night thinking the cold would dry things out and make friday morning even better than 'the best skiing ever'. 

i woke up early and excited, thinking after a quick breakfast i could get right out, up, down, and be at school by building class time. i put together the day's load, school stuff and a lunch curry to take up to ken's after class, and took off. i had my boots on and in the bindings, going across the big field before 7:00a. 





with all that early energy i choose the steep, 2nd left to get me up to lost pond even quicker. chugging uphill warmed me up and i stopped to snap a picture of the sun filtering through the snowy trees. i took a selfie so you could see how beautiful i am.








it didn't take too long to get up to the pond, even stopping to take another couple of pictures: one of a snow laden tree and another of my ski pole stuck upright to show snow depth. the black cam lock on the pole is at 21 inches. that particular spot seemed to be about average--i saw a few places where it was buried. 






the pond was beautiful, even with the sun behind the clouds...

i put my jacket, hat, and gloves on, buckled up my boots, switched bindings into downhill mode, and pushed off. the snow was about as delightful as one could hope for on the east coast. it was a grand day to be making tracks in the woods.



the only other tracks i saw were from animals of all sizes. mice and deer were the main ones, with occasional squirrels. but as i tipped down one hill i crossed a deep trench disappearing into a jumble of roots and downed trees. as i went by i remembered sawyer and colin's porcupine adventures, managed to stop and go back up to snap a picture.


the snow was only a day old so i figured the critter was in there somewhere sleeping off the storm. the toes on the tracks going in supported that notion. in any case, i was not going to crawl in there like sawyer did to get some face time with a porky. there was way too much snow to be had with almost all of it, going downhill. 








it was the right choice. i didn't stop until i thought one more picture might be good to show what 'the glades' looked like. it is one of my favorite places to ski. at one steep point i had snow flying off my front knee as i leaned into turns. by the time i stopped again at the bottom i was feeling like i had finally found the truth
in skip's adage, "best skiing ever!"


back at the truck, boots off, and skis stowed i was already thinking about doing this again tomorrow morning. we had another cold night coming, maybe things would stay--maybe skip could even join me.

some of the best skiing ever...

as we like to say--at least until we got most of the way down.

mascoma schools shut their doors yesterday at 3:00p and told everybody not to comeback until friday. that was fine with me what with the expected foot of snow we were scheduled for. when i "headed up the wooden mountain" as pam's dad used to call going to bed, up the stairs, we had a good six inches. i spent the night dreaming we would at least double that, with any luck triple it. that, and i wondered if skip's knee was finally fit enough to go up and down a mountain.

my dreams all came true--there was at least 18 inches in the morning and when i called skippy, he said yes, as long as the mountain was local. i put my moosilauke hopes back to bed, geared up, did a little shoveling, got the truck cleaned off, loaded, and went to get skip. we made it out of his dooryard soon enough, headed for cardigan.

after a couple of near death experiences on the cardigan road, one with a town snowplow, and another with a sliding car--the latter driven by mascoma's music teacher, involved a significant amount of folderol getting him out of the ditch as well as avoiding going in ourselves--we finally got our boots and skis on and "headed up the snowy mountain." skip's comment right at the first steep section was telling, "the snow is so deep, we're going to have to double pole to get through!" when you have to double pole downhill, you know it's deep.

breaking trail uphill through that deepness, we warmed up quickly. a delayering and water break gave us a chance to snap a couple of pictures.

























you can tell who hogs most of the covers in bed at night. that's ok, pam's nickname for me is "the furnace"... somewhere about here, we stuck our poles in and estimated 20" of fluff. this was boding well.

boding so well, we purposely tracked out our line, to give ourselves a bit of speed on the descent. being first to the fresh has lots of positives. when it is steep, it's good to be deep. but not so steep and too deep, it can get slow and at times you really do need to pole to keep moving. thankfully, there is plenty of steep on 'our side of the mtn.' and this fluffy stuff should let us glide right through--'like butta'.

as we got to 'east to amc' (this picture was in my portfolio from a cold run i took around christmas) i queried the master as to which way he desired to turn. no pressure, but i was glad he chose right to 'the chute', one of our favorite runs.

here is where our first tracks would have some negatives. hikers like to follow an established path. last year, if i got out later than i wanted, the chute would often be shot. snowshoers liked that route as much as we do. it's no wonder, it really is beautiful. this trip i snapped a picture at the bottom looking up, as well as the top looking down.




we de-skinned and had a snack. i scraped the skin glue off my skis for a little more fast. with boots buckled and bindings set for downhill, we dropped in. i convinced skip that if i went first--i had my no scale skis and they run faster than his scaled ones--his run would be smoother and he wouldn't go so slow. it seemed to work as the rest of the way down, he was urging me ahead.

like i mentioned earlier, until we got toward the bottom, it was really great skiing, fast enough in the steep, narrow spots to get your heart rate up, and smooth enough everywhere else to cut some sweet turns. we even both got a little air here and there off well placed rocks buried in the powder. at "go right--no, your other right"* creek i heard a little whoop behind me as skip launched off a fun drop.

shortly after that, as we got to the flats going by the shed, all the fun went out of it. the warming temp. and the moisture rich snow started getting super sticky. if you kept sliding, as flat-skied as possible, you wouldn't bog down too too much, but it was a slog the rest of the way to the truck. i experimented with going out of our tracks, but even in the fresh it was slow.









no matter, even though we did end up poling hard, it was some of "the best skiing ever" and we had smiles to prove it!










*it's a long story, but skip was yelling, aaron got confused, i was filming--if i can find the footage i will load it here.

found it--and it's a classic!

epic ice...

and much warmer/easier going up than coming down!

this year's crew--ten students and kendra our school social worker, made the MOC deepfreeze overnight up  smarts mtn.



it is always interesting to see what kids deem necessary for a winter trip to an unheated cabin on the top of a mountain. even the ones who have been there before, and/or pay any attention to the printed info i give out or advice they hear at a meeting, bring or forget things that surprise me. fortunately, nobody has repeated the axe body spray incident from a number years back--at least that horror story seems to work. and now that i think of it, there have been no alcohol, drug, or tobacco episodes in almost 10 years. but, every year peculiar items show up, some that make me smile, some that make me scratch my head.

this year was a big smile year! nick brought his drone and flew it up at lunch rocks, even filming us.

there were a few glitches on the scratch my head side of things, but the weather and our approach brought us back safe. we worked around the micro-spikes liz left at julia's when repacking. had we known, i actually had an extra pair in the truck. christian, thankfully you got by without the gloves you left in lincoln's car. and torey and jordan, what's the big deal about not having a bowl, spoon, or cup to eat and drink with--we are all friends, we can share. 



one thing that has never been a problem has been the sleeping gear. only once have i lent out the extra bag i bring along, just in case. this year was warm--record breaking even--than usual, but atop a mtn it is regularly colder than down in the valley, and then there is the wind. a crew of four decided that they wanted to brave the tower despite torey's story of a fairly sleepless, windy, frigid night last year. in the cabin at least we didn't have to worry about frozen water this year, but it did dip into the teens °F at the coldest part of the early morning. 


we got breakfast going around 7:00a and the tower sleepers came in soon after. everybody helped out with the morning tasks and soon enough we were packed, cleaned, and on the porch for the iconic cabin picture. dirk set up his GoPro and we all smiled--that's christian's best chernobyl smile.

the lower temps, hardened--and significantly slicked up--yesterday's soft ice making for an epic decent. while the agile, be-spiked among us made it down in good time, it took quite a bit longer for the slow and cautious. since last night, i was wondering what the river crossing would be like and hoped the lead group would scout out a decent crossing. 

when kendra got to open water, she smiled big, "this is so awesome!" 

downstream of this picture, with a good stretch for her smaller inseam, we made it across without falling in. 










from the river out, it is a mile and a half slog, only this time with ice. fresh snow falling, step by slippery step, we made it to the truck. dirk and justin had left early with their parents, which made me happy considering the missed-pickup last year. another group had left with julia. the final group pulled out just ahead of kendra and me. 

everybody seemed pretty satisfied with our 'going out and playing!'