skating on thick ice...

given the big snows we had after the initial freeze up, i was not expecting much of a skating season after the couple of heavenly black ice days we had back at thanksgiving. boy, was i wrong!


--and happy to be so.


last sunday i saw a flurry of texts that friends were going out on mascoma lake. i had heard the night before that conditions were prime. grabbing skates and some outerwear, i went to find them. jonie's and bob's house was the gathering spot, but i assumed they were already out on the ice as i could see a chair and a bag out a ways from shore.


i followed the boot tracks down and geared up. these folks were all using nordic skates--the same kind pam and i have--a ski boot and long blades mounted with ski bindings. the free heel setup and extra long blades, make perfect 'pond ice' skates.

way off in the distance, i spotted a half dozen tiny figures and headed toward them. amazingly, the ice was nearly as smooth as it had been before all the snow. with the wind at my back it was fast. that--the wind direction part, not the speed--surprised me as the prevailing wind is exactly the opposite, not today though. i ran into the group quickly, as they were pushing against the wind. i recognized all the women and figured the remaining skater still back by the bridge had to be billy, the guy in the group. i skated on to meet him.

we were all skating together toward the south end of the lake--against the wind. we ran into a wide swath, crossing the entire lake, where i saw the answer to why the ice was so nice. billy, who lives on the lake, explained that the warm, windy days had 'opened' things and the huge chunks had pushed to this end. last weeks cold refroze it all back up. now the south end was chunky and snowy. the rest, was nice and flat save for huge 'running' faults where water had come up and refroze into a bumpy white network--a lake size spider web.

if i had a drone, that would have made a good picture. instead of photographing, i kept skating. when the women went in billy and i made another end to end loop. we met some other skaters, who warned us we should have hand spikes incase we fell through. as we skated away, billy said he had a pair, somewhere--i gave mine away. billy went off toward his house and i made another big loop back to jonie's launch. as soon as i took off my skates, i remembered i should take a photo.

the 'pano' function, running left to right, would be looking north to the bridge, east toward cloud covered cardigan, and then south, where you can see a couple of houses at the shoreline. the white spider lines are barely visible as is a lone skater on the left, way off in the distance.

it was such a lovely day, i planned to go back. unfortunately, a small storm on monday, dropped a couple of inches of fairly wet snow. that did not promise well. the saving grace was a big drop in temperature and crazy strong winds all monday night. as i headed out the door tuesday, i had my skates with me, and the camera.

still trying to master the panoramic view, i tried for a repeat of sunday's image. obviously the ice is not as clean and hence wasn't as smooth. as i started pushing toward the bridge i noticed my skates were dull and could use a good sharpening. the prevailing winds today were back to northwest-southeast and as don mahler used to say, "the hawk was flying!"--i assumed that was a reference to colman hawkins, but never asked.

wind over ice is always stronger than on land. today, stronger was an understatement. but as i opened 'ttyol' with yesterday, "the hard, uncomfortable, slow struggle was more to my liking than the easy, comfortable, fast success." 

i found pam's spikes...

when i got to the bridge, i wanted badly to skate under and keep going all the way to the dam on the far north end. open water gave me pause enough that the wind literally turned my body and started me going back south. i went with the wind, prudence seemed a drier choice than valor. that and i didn't have any 'hand spikes'.

flying south, the chunky end came up quickly. when i turned, i stopped to take a picture looking up and down the lake. you can make out the chunky end of things behind my head.

heading back into the wind, i found my bag, took the blades off, and hiked back to the truck parked at drummonds. despite the diminished ice surface, the brutal wind, and my *dull skates--"like a pickle" *according to dick--it was indeed a grand day to be outside and playing!

ps--i went over today to skate a few laps and ran into two other skaters. going along and chatting, one of them casually noted "those skates are pretty old..." as i was agreeing and admitting they also needed to be sharpened--remember they were "dull as a pickle"--i realized it was jamie. 

jamie started the nordic skater where pam and i had gotten our skates way back at his original shop in downtown norwich. kerstin, a colby-sawyer professor, was skating with him. i had seen her on sunday, she was the one who suggested we have hand spikes. i noticed she wasn't wearing hers today.

after jamie had to leave, kerstin and i took another loop and discovered lots of connections. her "it's such a small world" let me know she was a kindred soul...

the annual winter harvest...

we have been cutting a christmas tree here on broadbeest farm since 1988...

soy, sitting on the tree so it won't get away--'91...

soy and i mid '90s            ...            sadie and i late '90s

all of us in the '00s...

bringing it home in the '10s...

this year it was fun to have sadie and otavio looking for theirs and sawyer joining the hunt and photographing the event. we missed hannah and her keen eye for trees!

note: in brazil, december is obviously summer!

the snow cover helped fun the spirit of gathering the tree even though it was a warm-ish day. we found sadie's and otavio's "little" one first. after cutting it and a proud 'family' photo, i handed o the clippers with a warning, "careful." he didn't know what i meant until after snipping a couple of branches, a chorus of "whoa-s...stop-s...and no-s..." rang out.


the tradition of 'trimming' the tree, at least for the broadley side of the broadbeests, is restricted to hanging things on it, not cutting off unruly branches.


finding pam's and my tree, followed another broadley tradition, that of spotting about a half-dozen possibilities, tromping from one to another--and circumnavigating each--and debating their finer points. remember, these are 'wild' trees, growing under a much taller canopy, which pretty much means they will be fairly skimpy. a "charlie brown-er" as pam's dad used to call them.






this year, it didn't take too long to come to consensus on which tree would make 'the cut', so to speak. sawyer, creative with perspective again, caught the moment.









with trees on shoulders, we were hiking out of the woods in practically no time. we wrapped the one headed to windsor in a tarp while sadie figured out how to lower the seat between the trunk and back, so the bundle would fit in.


the happy couple waved as they drove off, dreaming of stringing lights and hanging decorations.

once i got our tree cut to size and into the stand, soy and i put the lights on after a bowl of soup. he and pam took up hanging decorations and soon enough the scene was set. not too much later sadie texted their version--canaan on the left, windsor to the right.

tis the season--to go outside and play! or in this case cut...

almost too good to be true...

at least for long--ie the whole winter--after all it is only the first of december.

i saw the forecast earlier in the week and figured friday was my window to get up and ski cardigan. plus, mr wilson had stopped in on thursday and reported that he was still cleaning out the 2 feet of snow they got up high in orange. that would mean there would be plenty of coverage up on the mountain.

the winter lot was mostly full when i got there around 10-ish. going up, i only met two folks coming down: a friendly hunter and a "f*^king unemployed carpenter" (his words). what i ran into a lot more were low hanging, snow laden branches and blowdowns. i got the saw out early and took a long time cutting things out and whacking at snow as i went. i kept my hood up.


one skier and one snowboarder had made tracks before me. probably josh who always gets out early, and adam who had emailed he had gotten a split kit. the snow was dense, deep, and best of all drier than it was on wednesday. that meant my skis were sliding smoothly rather than clumping and i needed to skin up as soon as i got to any steep.

it was incredibly beautiful. when i turned off the hiking trail, it was also trackless. the amount of snow only a week off thanksgiving was impressive. everything was filled in and then some.

('classic'--read old--picture)

well, almost everything. once i got up into the low spruce zone, at the east to amc sign,  wet, open holes were everywhere. up the hiking trail, a string of black, wet, stone patches at the bottom of each pit turned me onto the hurricane cutoff. i aimed for top of 'the chute'.


avoiding wet didn't seem like a bad idea, but the open spots were just as numerous going 'east to amc'. i press hard to the edges, often slipping down into the wet holes, catching pack straps on grabby trees, having to stop to adjust my binding after one of my skis fell off--finally, doubting that the chute would be worth it. as i passed the bottom of the chute, the lone snowshoe tracks going my way, turned up. i chose to stay on the trail going around to the top. the wet-bottomed pits and overhanging snow-heavy spruce got worse, but turning around would have been just as hard as going forward--i continued on.

soon enough i broke out onto the ledgy south east shoulder up by the fire warden's cabin and turned up to the top of the chute. i opted to skip the summit and took pictures looking up and down where i took off the skins.



looking down the snowed in chute, most of the snowshoe tracks were covered. looking up to the bald summit, there is a tower up there, beyond my bald head.

i was smiling still when with my boots buckled, skis locked, and my baldness covered up, i pushed off and dropped in over the cornice. i laughed aloud when a handful of turns later i 'face-planted'--big time--in a desperate attempt to avoid one more extremely deep, wet-bottomed hole. a little muscle and a good bit of vinyasa yoga, i extracted myself and slid on.



sliding more carefully, at least around the holes, i zipped past 'east to amc' and didn't stop until i got to the bottom of the next ski trail section. this was the last picture i snapped as the skiing took over.


at the bottom, still smiling, maybe even bigger now, i wheedled around the gate and  slid off the final snow bank and fell into the road at the winter lot. the guy getting into his car about to leave, was probably wondering what kind of fun is that?


with a last bit of yoga, i got out of my skis, picked myself up, and clomped over to my truck--wondering myself, what's not to love about 'going outside and playing!' 

smoother than a baby's bottom...

there was a very short skating season on canaan street last friday and saturday--thank goodness the pendletons called me.

of course the ice could come back, it has before, but when you get a really big wet snow, like we just had on tuesday, it is rare for all that to melt off and refreeze under normal winter conditions. ah, but what recent winter do you remember as being 'normal'?

'normal' is definitely relative. when pam and i lived in bemidji minnesota, give or take a couple days, you could usually drive on the lakes. freezing that early doesn't seem so assured these days, probably not even in bemidji. with that in mind, on friday after the feast, sawyer and hannah stopped by canaan street to check out the ice. it must not have been to their liking as they didn't come rushing home with a call to grab your skates.

on saturday though, skip called about 10-ish and announced, "the ice is good. we're heading up shortly." just minutes before, i had gotten a call from our sakonnet friend billy, with his own announcement. "we are on our way home on I89 and will stop by in about an hour." like normal is relative, timing is crucial. long story short, i didn't lace up the skates until 4-ish as the sun was going down.





save for the grey-white freeze lines the wind pushes into place as the surface freezes--you can see them in both images above--the ice was crazy smooth. in some places it was even black ice, practically clear and about 3 inches thick. in the picture on the right, linda and skip are looking at a funny strip of black ice. we were puzzled by these when we spotted them here and there.


linda finally guessed that maybe it was an animal 'track' made just as things were going solid. when i found a couple of other spots, that seemed like the answer. the animal--a duck, a muskrat, something--was still in question.


skating over just these little lines made you hold your breath and think light thoughts as you went over them. going out on big areas of black ice can be downright  freaky. in years past skip used to send me out to "test" things. this year he was skating right out with me. personally, i love the magic of skating black ice! thank you cory for reminding me of this video.


we kept circling the lake until things got dark enough everything was starting to look like black ice. skip and i took a final quick rush across the lake and back. as we glided to a quiet stop,  we listened for the sound of linda's blades. she appeared out of the shadows and when she was close enough you could see her huge smile. as we changed into our boots she repeated something she had already mentioned as we were gliding along earlier, "if this is the only day we get to skate, it will be wonderful."







true that--it is always a joy to go outside and play!--ephemeral or otherwise. and if you are out with people you love...life is sweet.

a modified turkey trot...

a hike with sawyer, hannah, and pam up over town hill rather than on the AT back and forth to holt's ledge. 

since 2001, MOC has been gathering to hike from goose pond road to the top dartmouth skiway and back. it's only a couple of miles but it gains a good bit of elevation on the way over--and of course loses it on the way back.

the original idea was to go outside and play!, maybe burn off some of those extra calories from the feast, all the while hangout with friends you don't always get to see. we have had some pretty big crowds over the years, and then over the past five or six years, half of them had been just pam and i, maybe some pendletons.

this year, soy and han were psyched about hiking, hoping to see noah, eben, maybe andrew, colleen, and others. friday morning when i got up it was -8°F and a call from skip to let me know they would not be trotting, at least not in the morning. last night pam had mentioned that she was thinking of something less involved--like maybe town hill. when everybody finally made it out of bed and down stairs, we reprogrammed.


the kids went over to visit the pendletons, pam started her yearly holiday letter, i suited up to try skiing our trails up and over town hill.

the "bitter...record cold" greeted me as i started sliding up hill. having lived a few winters in northern minnesota and spent plenty of winter in the mountains, i can get pretty jazzed listening to the extreme verbiage hyping weather. i wrote a letter to NHPR pointing out particular hyperbole and questioning what sort of language might they use when it inevitably gets colder, windier, and snowier. the great thing about these two nights of below zero and days of brisk wind, it totally dried out the wet snow. that made skiing fairly fast!

fast enough to turn and yo-yo the 's curves' a couple of times, run up, then all the way down to bear pond road, climb back up and finish in one long slide home. i came in the door just as the kiddos and pam were suiting up to hike over the hill.

i stripped off my ski bibs and followed them following my ski tracks. hannah had her camera and took this series of pictures, the first one of sawyer on the other side of the gap i put in the stone wall between the broadbeests and jorgensens.

pam was zipping ahead on her snow shoes and we didn't catch her until just below the s curves where she stopped for a second. han was ready and snapped a partial family photo. i am particularly fond of the strip of sunlight along sawyer's leg and the side of my face.

pam scooted off again and in no time we were cresting the height of land. the third image captures the lineup.








it also has a great composition: the snow, people, and hill on the horizon fill the bottom third; the trees and their angled shadows accentuate the upright hikers; a spot of red with blue, again with a stripe of sunlight. it totally works for my eye.

what doesn't work is 'the truck', sitting in the middle of the trail for as long as we have lived here.











i have dreams of pulling it out of the woods someday. it will be a chore though as both axles are broken along with all the other things that would make dragging it away easier.

after the snow this week on tuesday, i am thinking we will have to wait a few seasons--i am throwing in mud, with winter and most of spring--to do anything like haul it out of the woods. that's fine with me, the more snow the merrier. and if it gets a little drier- fluffier than the last one i will be ecstatic!

whatever happens weather wise, it's always a pleasure to go outside and play!



ps--one of my 'other lovers' was out on the snow, up skiing the green woodlands. he took a photo looking at moosilauke in honor of my hike a couple weeks earlier. he also got a shot of his frosty, après ski smile!

thanks jay!!