currently, it is snowing! not raining!!

and yes, given the ups and downs of this winter temp-wise, that is indeed a good thing.

last week, thursday: it had been snowing most of the night and 6-8~ish inches of fresh, wet, but fresh snow, lay atop what i have been lamenting all winter as a sketchy base. area schools were all shuttered, so i called skip and arranged for him to stop in, with his skis, on his way home from the dentist. considering myself lucky that my teeth cleaning wasn't until tomorrow--post a forecasted heavy rain--i decided to go scout out conditions first. 

in no time i was over to the shaker wildlife management area clicking into my skis and sliding them up the trail. as i went along feeling some chunkiness underfoot, i devised a plan to test the 'potato run' first and depending on those results, head for either the 'little sherbie' or the 'glades'. 

the potato was fine, fast enough to be fun, but not at all furious. on and just off the main trail, coverage was adequate and there was enough base to keep things running smooth. every once in a while, turning on trail, i could definitely feel that frozen crunchiness where people had made tracks in their boots and it had frozen. staying in the fall line caused no problem, so on the way back up i weighed the choice: fast through the untracked trees, or fast down a potentially tracked road.

given the crazy run through the 'glades' last week, i made the choice to go down the road we call the 'little sherbie'. in spite of knowing better, i didn't expect things would get dangerous. about half way down when i started carving across the fall line to dump speed, i started thinking damn, this is whacked. with every turn, the frozen chunk took hold of my edges and only let go reluctantly, under brute force. it was an exciting descent.

only, when i got back home and skip showed up, he heard the story and chose to avoid any 'edgy' run, as well as the rain that was starting to fall. he went home. i went up town hill and made a last run for the day, zipping up & down, dooryard to dooryard--wet, but smiling.

friday morning: it was pretty depressing hearing rain hit the roof all night. i had made a date to hike cardigan with lisa and maybe dick, but after scraping a 1/4" of ice off pam's car and my truck windows, i wondered if i would see anybody. they both showed and brought benny too!


on the way up, rain kept falling, as frozen pellets, as super wet snow/drops. a front was due to blow in and drop temps. i was predicting we would see the precip turn to pure snow sooner or later--we were all hoping for sooner. 


up above treeline, the a cold wind started blow the wet and clouds into our faces. lisa's and dick's snow shoes kept them afloat, while had to pick my path carefully to keep from sinking into the soft snow below a 1/2" inch layer of ice. i had been thinking of bringing my skis up, but the solid crust made that idea seem ridiculous. dick called it "ankle breaking conditions"! none of us felt a need to summit, so we took a couple of pics at the quarter pipe rock and turned down. 




on the way down, the precip changed to all snow and got heavier and heavier, though back in the trees, without the wind, it was really pretty. by the time we got to the vehicles, we were all smiling.

saturday morning: the sun was shining brightly on the 3-4~ish inches of fresh powdery snow that the cold had wrung out of the clouds when the front blew through overnight. i was scheduled to guide snowshoe hikes over at swma at 1:00 and 3:00. two people, sharon and stu, showed up and we headed out. as we walked across the highway and went into the woods, i queried them some to get an idea of where to lead. 













they seemed game for just about anything, so i took them up the 'potato run' and turned up toward 'lost lake'--now with years of eutrophication, was barely a tiny pond. the stone dam though was still somewhat visible and offers a good path to walk over and get a 'local' view, as well as a picture.

sharon was really pleased coming down through the 'glades' but glad to be on snowshoes as opposed to skis. with the crazy, breakable crust just below the surface, i had to agree with her. given a decent snowfall, with no rain involved, i would certainly be back--with just as big a smile!



sunday morning: pam and i woke to another sunny day and after breakfast, we headed up town hill to stomp a trail through the crust. as i trailed behind the yellow jacket, i thought the snow in the trees, made for a nice picture especially with brilliant blue sky in the background.

we trooped up and over the other side and went on to the marsh. instead of stopping at our usual spot, the tiny beaver dam at the bottom of the road, i cut across the marsh over to the large damn and stopped for a picture.

with the nh primary in two days, pam had the clever idea we should track out a huge "WARREN FOR PRESIDENT" message in the white expanse of the marsh. i might have considered it if her name been shorter or more than just local pilots and birds been able to view it. for the sake of helping a women get elected, i should have been more motivated, and just stomped out "WARREN". anybody who actually saw it would have gotten the message.

someday, when i have something important to say--like 'go outside and play!'--i'll go back and stomp... until then, i am headed out to enjoy the big fluffy flakes of snow which are still falling and actually starting to bury last week's crust. and oh, did i mention, it is not raining?!

a fun five days--before some more yo-yoing!

yes!--i did ski five days in a row, but then it was back to the yo-yoing of winter weather.

thursday, january the 16th: it had been wet snowing all morning. at noon, i figured, better go out and enjoy it while it lasts. i loaded up and went toward the shaker hills. it was indeed wet, sticky enough--almost too much so--that i could scale--no skins needed--up the steeper 'little sherbie'. i was planning to turn around and going down my up, but the stickyness gave me the whacky idea that the 'glades' would be just about right.



by the time i got to the cutoff i was plenty warm, only a little wet, and smiling about that decision. it was still snowing some, so i wasn't even thinking about the minimal cover, from last week's big melt down. how bad could it be?turns out, fairly bad, though that's a relative term. see the previous post for pictures and details.


friday, the 17th: back to the shaker hills. the snow, still mighty thin, was indeed all dried out and fast. i made two loops, the 'little sherbie' and the main trail coming down from the 'potato field'. that second one, being a main trail and less steep, had seen some traffic.  a wide set of ski tracks turning every few feet, made me smile. who ever it was, i nicknamed mr/ms wiggle, for the obvious moves their butt would have been making had i been there to see it.

saturday, the 18th: having exhausted the trails of coverage over at the swma, i stayed close to home and skied up town hill. the run down the east side was indeed fast and took all my attention to avoid rocks and trees. coming down the west side to the house was wicked sweet, with plenty of variation available. when i got down to the house it was starting to snow as well. we were forecasted to get 5-7~ish inches of snow rather than an inch of rain!

sunday, the 19th: it was still spitting snow when i got out of bed, but i could see patches blue now and again as the clouds scudded by. i had arranged with cory to go up to his new house and adventure out his back door. i packed up and was in the truck heading to pomfret by 7:00a. when i got to cory's, the blue patches were getting bigger and the fresh powder on the hills looked very inviting.

cory must have been out shoveling early too as his driveway was also inviting. after a quick tour of all the new work he had gotten done inside, we booted up skied away outside. i had lent him my old tele gear and this trip was supposed to be a learning day. we started things off on a slight pitch and he was linking some turns. then when i came back from a top to bottom run, he was limping. he had tweaked his knee bad enough to hurt and switch us into touring mode.


cruising through the fields and into the woods seemed doable until we got to a steep sugar road with a downed pine sticking into the trail. cory decided to cut that out while i kept on to the top of that section and skied back down.


that worked out well enough, though even with the 5-7~ish inches of new snow, coverage was still thin. we opted to just head back and hit the hill behind his place.



that turned out to be a good idea as cory's knee was not getting any better. i got in a good set of turns until slowing down at the bottom i turned into some small brush and caught my edge. that easily tripped me up. as i was going over, i remember thinking about my knees--fortunately, i got back upright and unhurt. we were both smiling as we stomped off our boots and went inside.

monday, the 20th: it was martin luther king jr. day so skip had no school. i got over to his house and we went off to mt carr, thinking most likely nobody had skied that yet. surprise surprise, when we pulled up to the end of the road, a very big grapple skidder was dragging logs about a 10 acre landing. another sawyer was working a 'pincher' on the end of a long arm, moving huge logs into a cutoff saw. it was quite an operation, smack dab in the middle of the field we normal ski through.

we got our boots on and walked past the logging action to the ski trail where it enters the woods. no surprise, with all that activity, the snow was untracked. we clicked into the skis and slid away from all the noise.



maybe 2/3s of the way to where we usually turn, we stopped to cut out a major blowdown--we had both our saws working. the drainages, usually buried with snow, were getting more and more rocky~ish and would be a problem coming down with speed. i was pushing skip to consider losing the 'fun factor' if we didn't turn early. after about a 100 yards and three 'bumpy' drainages, he conceded. i think he was hungry. before he even took skins off, he was chowing down his sandwich.

i took off and made it through the rockiest of the washes without too much contact. skip was not quite as lucky. but eventually he made it down to me. i was filming as he skied by.

when he finally stopped, he took one of me going past him. just to be clear, that was the videographer shaking, not the earth!

it's a longstanding joke that skip's camera skills are sketchy at best. when i first saw this one, i thought he might actually need medical assistance. he was saying something about being hungry. i took out some stills to build a series. someday i am going to gather some of skip's "best videos ever!"




the rest of the slide out, was fairly smooth and uneventful. the turns got more and more mellow, until basically you'd ride one ski in the track, one off in the fluff, reverse, and repeat--sort of pretending to be turning. that brought us back to the log landing and the truck--with smiles!

and after i shared my pizza with him, skip agreed that it had been a pretty fine day to 'go outside and play!' i am happy to report that he was not shaking at all on the drive home.

ps--saturday, the 25th: .7 inches of rain! midweek: back below zero °F!!

more yo-yoing!

and at least a few of days, winter is again involved--for which i am grateful.

in my last yo-yoing post, i left off with a forecast of "warm and rain" as justin and i were skiing about the swma at a good clip, just to stay warm. from the glorious sun but downright chilly low teens of that adventure it did indeed warm, into the damned balmy 50s! and it rained close to an inch over the weekend. a change of 40° is something you notice along with the ice that forms from a 'big melt'.

on friday, as the thaw started, pam and i trucked up and over town hill, she on snowshoes and me-s on skis! to say it was sticky was an understatement. i distracted myself with trying out her phone's pan mode, shooting for a caterpillar effect. i got mixed results, but this one was close. i especially like the 'missing' body up at the front of the line.

we were headed down to the beaver dam where i took the 'thumby' in the 'happy new day' post--i avoided my phalanges in this one. the snow coverage was still looking significant, but it was not to last.

nor was it fast skiing. going uphill was right this side of maddening. while sometimes i could kick slide my skis to dump the huge clump of snow sticking to the bottom, it was not a sure thing, and it was way more work than i was looking to do. the only positive was my favorite short pitch was slow enough that pam was able to get a video.

saturday was a washout. i got in a good amount of reading--ironically getting to the part on new orleans' crazy flooding with katrina in sarah broom's outstanding memoir the yellow house.

sunday, i convinced skip we should run up cardigan without skis, as opposed to his idea to skin up and ski down the 'shuttered' whaleback. with all the rain and melt water, the ice was sure to be building on the shady parts of the trail. like at the bottom of that steep section on south ridge.



for those who follow goap! religiously--and have a good memory--'just another sunny day' posted last march captured a very similar moment. while it was "windy" that day too, it was probably not blowing like it was when we summited sunday. the two other hikers snugged into the lee side of the tower structure--former students and at least diane, featured now and again in goap!--greeted skip and i excitedly. the wind was making quite a racket blowing over things and when we dug out the anemometer, john predicted in the 50s.

we took the gauge around the corner and saw it top out, with gusts above the 50mph reading. had i been with it, i would have taken a picture of skip 'leaning into' the blasts at some pretty low angles. i did remember to snap a memory of the three before we took off downhill.

at turn around rock we put the micro-spikes back on and made a quick decent stopping only to disrobe some when we got out of the wind. oh and one other time on an upper portion of the ski trail where the ice always builds. it was a good chance for me to practice my recent obsession with taking photo series--with the less than ideal camera again.



amazingly, about 100 yards below this section, skip stopped and pointed out how the deep the snow was--easily up to our wastes.

monday and tuesday remained mild enough, and with partial sun, the snow coverage fell way back. at some point on wednesday though it went cold enough again to start snowing. that lasted through the night and was 5-6-7~ish inches thursday morning. the 'cold enough' to snow all night meant school was on a delayed opening schedule to let the plows clean up somewhat. it had to be tough to move, as it was some of the best packing snow i have ever made into a snowball. when i went by the high school they were mostly done as students were starting to arrive.

i was headed over to the shaker hills thinking that area would have enough coverage to not scrape off the bottoms of my skis. and it did, barely, and at that clumpiest of temperatures. it was a slog going up, but i didn't have to use skins.

unaware of what might be on our as yet un-skied 'glade' section, i locked things down and pointed the tips into the fall line winding through the trees. it was an adventure. not quite fast but even so, nearly furious with all the debris, as yet uncovered. i took off into the woods a couple times to avoid some major blowdowns that i would have to bring skip along to help clear out.

at the bottom, i opted to park the boards for the coming cold and wind. i figured that the snow would completely dry out and friday, might be almost heavenly. without snow, the coverage would still be thin, but in a yo-yoing season, beggars can't be choosers! that and i figured i would stop in at drummond's and help them set up for their yearly party.

i had brought along a telemark kit for cory too, in hopes that this weekend we would get the promised snow. the skis were my old karhu guides and would need inserts to keep the bindings on, but i figured we could get that done before sunday--our planned outing.

on friday, we woke to below~ish 0°F and some stiff winds. after breakfast and helping pam sweep & scrape her car getting her off for the day, i loaded the skis back into the truck and went over to the shaker hills again. the snow was magically fluffy powder again and very enjoyable to ski through, albeit 'thin'. a long~ish run from the potato field down was smooth and quick so a trip back up to try the 'little sherbie' was in order. i was rewarded, or at least i thought so. it was fun rushing by my yesterday's going-up tracks.




all in all, even with the radical up and down of temps and snow coverage, it has been a fine time to 'go outside and play!' i try and wear a smile no matter the weather.

ps--time to stop here, and gear up for a quick run up town hill with pam. later!

yo-yoing back into winter!

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.