Snowshoeing
I also spent the winter of 1998 snow shoeing 3-4 times a week, as part of
a research study conducted by folks at UVM and sponsored by TUBBS, a neat company based in
Vermont that makes cool snow shoes (and lots of other things too, so I
hear). The study compared the fitness achievable by running (jogging
really) at your target heart rate with snow shoeing at your target heart
rate. It was fun to leave work, go muck around in the snow, take a hot
shower and return to work in the middle of the day. It's nice to have an
employer who is flexible enough to allow this sort of thing. Other than
the physiological measurement part, it was really fun. The
VO2max tests were awful, and the skin fold tests brought back
horrifying memories of middle school.. but I lived, and I got free snow
shoes at the end, which helped ease the agony a bit. We show shoed up a
trail at Underhill State Park, and later Mike and I went back, hiked up,
and sledded down. That was fun! Mike picked up a pair of snow
shoes this spring, and we plan on going frequently this winter, in our
back yard.
That's about it for this winter's recreation. I shovelled the driveway
this winter. *grin*
In the Spring of 1998, we've mostly been moving. We've tried to get out
on rollerblades or on our bikes, but have only managed it a few times. We
look forward to settling into a routine, once we finish moving. I have
noticed that working around the yard conveniently helps build upper body
strength! Turning over the garden and shovelling mud can do wonders..
In the summer and fall of 1998, most of our recreational opportunities
involved lovely things like mowing the lawn, cleaning and unpacking. We
went on a few bike rides and hiked around in our back yard a bunch, but
the routine I longed for above was never established, not surprisingly.
Mowing the lawn is a nice form of exercise though, I have to say. We
bought a cool reel lawn mower called a
"Scott's Classic".
Instead of having a "reel" on the back that drags on the ground, it has
two wheels, so it's really easy to push. It's cheap (no gas, no motor...),
quiet, and very safe. It's just about impossible to hurt yourself with
one, unless you find a way to push it while sticking your fingers or toes
into the reel (tough while walking). It's easy to maneuver and much
lighter than any moterized mower I've ever used. I love it.
We stayed in Taft Lodge on
the first night. Here is a picture of us
in the lodge the next morning.
On Sunday, we hiked along the ridgeline, and visited a cave. Here
are some cool
rocks that Jerry decided to take a picture of.
Other than that, we've been tromping around in our backyard in snow shoes
and cross country skiis, doing a bit of skiing and doing a lot of
shovelling. :-)
Well, we ended up finishing the winter up with quite a bit of skiing,
which was great fun. I made it onto a few intermediate trails looking
at least like a respectably ridiculous beginner, I think. My sister
Rachel took her first season of skiing lessons this winter, and we went
skiing with her one of the days. It's nice to have something to look
forward to in Winter.
This is a picture of our camp.
Here's a view of Mount
Washington, as we saw it from Jackson. The second night, we used
Mike's dad's shovel and carved a snow cave
out of the huge drift near the camp site. Here is a picture of the five of
us (Jim - Tracy - Mike - Jess- Jerry) before we headed out. We were
standing on the bank of snow with the snow cave, but it got cropped out of
the picture. Oh well!
The only memorable outside experience we had this summer was a trek to
Burton Island - wimp camping, as we call it. Let's see. Jim, Tracy and
Mike and I went shopping Friday after work. Muffins and coffee for
breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, a snack of hot dogs/yves spicy
hot(not)dogs in buns (with cheese), dinner was.. 2-Alarm chili made in
T/J's awesome dutch oven (more cheese), corn on the cob and potatoes
(cooked in foil) menu.. and smores. mm. oh, and gobs of lovely snack
food from Onion River food co-op, including sesame-honey crunches, lots of
dried fruit, chocolate covered pickled ginger, chocolate covered almonds,
and a few other yummy snacks.
The ferry ride was sunny and uneventful. We shared the boat with a large
family. We were quite concerned about getting a tent-site. There was one
left when we boarded the ferry, but someone took it when we were en route.
Luckily for us, another party cancelled on their lean-to shortly after,
and so we got a kick-*** private lean-to with a beautiful view of the lake
for the price of a tent site. We dropped our stuff and walked around the
island, waiting for the site to be open. We set up the tent just as it
started to drizzle. We got some firewood, played cards in the lean-to and
got chilly. We made a fire and roasted hot dogs. We started making
chili. The corn definitely took the prize for the most appreciated food.
yum yum. smores, fire, talking, drizzles..
We went to bed around 10pm. It rained the entire night. We were dry,
though there were pools of water on the awning - impressive tent! The
fire still had hot coals (AMAZING in my opinion) and a fire was quickly
started. Though we had fun with the fire, we decided to pack up to make
the 10am ferry and eat our cheezy eggs at home, rather than plan for the
2pm ferry and risk being stuck in the rain all afternoon.
We endured a VERY long ferry ride with a very rich arrogant guy who talked
the entire time about how rich he was to a boat full of bored people.
After de-compressing in the car, we arrived at T/Js and enjoyed hot
coffee, lovely cheezy eggs and two very friendly kitties.
Wimp camping, but fun. We didn't even go swimming.. hmm.
As an attempt to redeem myself, we did spend a huge amount of energy
this summer gardening.. we hauled lots of compost and top soil, dug up
countless rocks, ripped up sod and created gardens, hauled boulders (they
were rocks until we tried to move them - then they became boulders) out of
our lawn, cut down some dying trees and chopped them, weeded, mowed, and
generally got grubby almost every weekend from May through August. You
could call it recreation. We took some digital photos of
some of our plants in 1998 and then in 1999.
This winter, we've made a conscious effort to go skiing more often. We have gone to Bolton once and
Smuggler's Notch several times. The season started off slow (no snow) but conditions improved
greatly. I'm at least starting to be able to parallel turn, sort of, and I can safely say that the
beginner slopes are actually easy now, or at least quite approachable. I used to think skiing took
a long time to learn, but I've changed my mind. I think skiing is incredibly easy to learn, it's
just that people typically spend very little time doing it. If you practiced a sport for only a few
days a year, it would take you a long time to improve.. and yet, I can feel myself improving every
time I get my skiis on. It's exciting. Too bad it's so expensive!
(pictures coming soon..)
After hiking another 600 miles or so, expecting at every turn to find a
nice, cozy hut, we finally traversed a swamp, and climbed the last
impossibly steep stretch to the hut, which overlooked the beautiful valley
we had just hiked through. Weary and tired and exhausted and sore (and
did I mention beat?), we cooked dinner and fell asleep early. There was
only one other person there - another Vermonter. The caretaker (Sean) was
cool. The hut was far more posh than I expected.. bunk beds with
mattresses and pillows, a wood stove in the kitchen area, a propane stove
with ovens, complete set of dishes and cookware, games, books, puzzles..
even little propane lanterns attached to the ceiling. My favorite part
were two boards with wooden pegs that were each cleverly suspended from
the ceiling by pulleys. They could be lowered, and any wet clothing could
be hung on them. With the heat of the wood stove, they were dry by the
next morning. I'm thinking of installing one of those in our house! :-)
The next day, we debated about whether to continue with the trip or not,
given the forecast, which seemed to get rainier by the minute.. and also
given our generally high level of soreness. We decided to hike up to Zee
Cliff, and then make a
decision there about whether to hike across the ridge to the Guyot tent
site, or down the cliff to the Ethan Pond tent site. In the afternoon, it
started pouring, so we decided to camp on the ridge between the cliff and
Zealand. It was fun, though I need to invest in some sort of waterproof
covering for my pack. All of my underwear got wet - eww!!. We shovelled
snow into flat spots, and tented in the trees, trying to be careful not to
damage any vegetation.
It rained until Midnight, but the next morning was beautiful. We ate
breakfast, melted some snow for water, went back to the cliff, and headed
back to the hut. Our orginal plan was to get to the guyot tent site the
second night, and spend the third day bopping around the peaks nearby,
tent again at the same spot, and head back to the hut on Monday night.
The weather called for gushing rain by Tuesday though, so we cut the trip
a day short and headed back to the hut on Sunday. We spent the afternoon
warming up, goofing off and playing hearts and other card games.
Monday, we packed up and hauled out. We decided to go over the col again,
and when we got to the spur to Avalon, we decided to hike up for the view.
It was fun. Then we took showers at the Crawford Notch hostel (Aahhh!!)
and went out for pizza. A very fun trip overall, even though we bagged no
4,000 foot peaks. Each of us learned a lot about our gear, our own
personalities, and our physical and psychological limits. I think we are
all excited to try again next year.
November 10-11, 2000. This was a warm-up trip for this season. We had
several trip options, and finally decided on this one when it became clear
that the weather was going to be truly rotten. We hicked up the Butler
Lodge trail to Butler lodge from Stevensville Rd. It was around 2 miles,
and we beat the book time, even though we had overnight packs on. This
surprised everyone. I think we were still mentally calibrated for the
pain and misery of our last trip over the col, so this seemed like cake.
As we gained elevation, we could peek through the leafless trees and see
towns and farms shrinking into the mist. By the time we reached the
lodge, we were enveloped in a misty hazy semi-rain cloud. It drizzled,
rained, and fogged off and on for the rest of the day (hence the lack of
pictures in this report).
It was there that the tragedy struck. Mike and I realized that we had
left our cheese and Yves chili dogs (veggie) in the fridge at home. I
offered to hike down and get them, but nobody wanted to come with me. It
was a sad lunch indeed, as Mike and I sat there, eating our whole wheat
tortillas with nothing in them. Jerry had sympathy on us and gave us each
a slab of his cheddar. Sigh. It was going to be a long trip.
On the plus side, I can report that chocolate covered graham crackers are
great hiking food. They hold together really well and taste mighty
good.
We hung out in the hut for the rest of the day, played cards, talked and
ate. We were considering heading up to the forehead with day packs, when a
guy and his sopping wet dog came down from that direction. He said that
it was cold, sleeting, and so gusty and windy that he thought his dog
would be blown off the mountain. We decided to bag it and stay in the
hut.
We met a gear tester from Backpacker magazine who was really cool (and
from Jericho!). We swapped some stories and talked about gear a bit. She
gave Jim a tip on folding up his stove. We were surprised to hear that
the average subscriber hikes/backpacks less frequently than we do. I
guess we consider ourselves novices, but perhaps we're not so bad after
all.
The Lodge was nice - it was built well - very comfortable. The outhouse
was nice too (though the trip down to it was a bit treacherous). The
clouds cleared out late that night, and we could see city lights
flickering from the hut balcony. I was glad not to be there.
The next day, we had a leisurely breakfast and headed down the mountain in
the drizzle. On the way down, we met a group of 12 people hiking up with
no water, food or rain gear. eek! A hot shower and an evening in front of
the wood stove with the cats was a nice finale to the day.
We got about 2 feet of snow dumped on us over new years weekend this
year, and took the opportunity to build a sledding ramp down our
driveway. We spent about 4 hours the first night building the
thing. We started off with a simple ramp (thanks to our snowblower, we
piled a ton of snow on our front steps), and then bit by bit, added
corrective snow piles to the course to keep from zooming off into the
woods. Each run we would get faster, so by the "end", our corrective snow
had become large ramps, sending us richocheting back and forth. It was a
bummer to drive through it to work on Tuesday.. but with some minor
repairs, it should be usable right acros the tire tracks. We took some
pictures of the snow storm and the ramps.
Yardwork
Mt. Mansfield, 1998
On the weekend of October 17-18, 1998, Jim, Jerry, Mike and I went on a
backpacking trip up Mount Mansfield in VT. Tracy was planning on going,
but became surprisingly and completely sick just before we left. Although
I'd been up Camel's hump a number of times, I had never climbed Mansfield
on foot. I had driven to the summit a few times with family, but that
certainly didn't count.
Mt. Hunger
Our recreational activities have been decidedly dull this winter. I did
go on a great hike (in December 1998) up Mount Hunger with Mike, his dad
and the Green Mountain Club. I took a picture from the summit - it looked
much clearer in person, but it still makes a nice background. :-) It was
a great trip - just above freezing, sunny, but very windy at the summit.
The descent was slippery sloppy because all of the snow and ice was
melting, but it was still great fun.
Skiing
Mt. Jackson
On the weekend of March 26-28, Tracy, Jim, Jerry, Mike and I embarked on
another backpacking trip - this time in NH. We hiked up Mount Jackson and
visited some places I forgot the name of. More later! :-)
Burton Island
1999, Year of the Compost
Mt. Mansfield, 1999
One warm, perfect weekend in October 1999, Jim, Tracy, Mike and I went on a
day hike up Mt. Mansfield. We went up the Sunset Ridge Trail and down another
steeper trail, named after some guy's wife (ok, I forgot). We can see the
Sunset Ridge line every day when we come home from work, but I'd never been up
it. We stopped at Canteliever rock too - it was cool, but I haven't had time
to scan a photo in yet. :-) The weather was remarkably similar to our
overnight trip the previous year - unseasonably mild and sunny.. beautiful.
We had a great time, in spite of having several almost uncontrollable urges to
throw thoughtless hikers (and their parents!) off of the summit when they
tromped all over the fragile plants.
Skiing
Four Day Backpacking Trip in the White Mountains, NH
After work on Thursday, March 23rd, Jim, Tracy, Mike and I headed down to
the Crawford Notch again. In spite of trying to get an early start, we
didn't end up leaving Burlington until around 4, so Jerry decided to meet
us at the Notch the next morning, rather than driving at night. We got to
Crawford and slept in the hostel overnight. The next morning, we packed
up our stuff, cooked a quick instant breakfast (the first of many), and
headed up toward the A-Z trail. We hiked over the Col (I think it should
be the "cull", because it culls out all but the most determined
backpackers!), and stopped at the top for lunch. We had entertained the
idea of dropping our packs for a quick hike up Mt. Tom, but when we got
there, we were beat and decided to try for it on our way back. We trudged
on, aiming for the Zealand Falls Hut. I had NO idea it was so far
away.
Overnight in Butler Lodge on Mount Mansfield (VT)
Cool sledding ramp down our driveway, 2001
by
Jessica
Dion
