Backcountry skiing
This news just came into my inbox...
The Catamount Trail Association (CTA) is one of five finalists for a $50,000 grant that could help secure some 90 miles of unprotected sections of the 300-mile-long ski trail.
Catamount Trail officials are asking skiers to visit their home page for a link to where they can vote for CTA. And you can add a vote every day! So, go on and use a disposable e-mail address from Yahoo or Hotmail and log in to vote!
These funds would be a huge boost to CTA's...[Read more]
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Cross-country skiing
I got an e-mail from the Catamount Trail Association, the caretakers of the 300-mile-long ski trail that covers the length of the state of Vermont. They are asking people to fill out their online survey so that they can prioritize their activities for the coming season.
Members and non-members alike are invited to respond. It took me about five minutes to fill it out.
I've enjoyed skiing sections of the Catamount Trail and I've made good use of my membership discount booklet at Vermont...[Read more]
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Cross-country skiing
A short list of things that are 30 feet tall or long:
1. A 30-foot-tall scale model of the Sears Tower built with Jenga blocks at Northern Michigan University: faculty.nmu.edu/ims/sears1.htm
2. The meat-eating dinosaur called Torvosaurus cf. tanneri, a "Savage Lizard" found in western Colorado; 30 feet long, standing 8.5 feet tall at the hips, and tipping the scale at about 5,000 pounds:...[Read more]
Monday, April 14, 2008
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Filed in: Alpine skiing, Backcountry skiing, Jay Peak, Spring skiing, Stowe, Ticket discounts
The sun was deceiving on Saturday morning. If you looked at the calendar and the blue skies, you would have sworn it was going to be a spring skiing day. You would have also been wrong.
It was windy and downright cold in the mountains. At Bolton Valley ski resort, someone said it was zero degrees at the top of the lift early in the morning. Brrr.
While the Skimeister took to the lifts, I headed for Bolton's lower backcountry trails. I was intent on generating my own heat on this chilly day....[Read more]
Sunday, March 30, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley, Food, coffee & aprés
On the day before Easter, I wanted to try a new backcountry route. I convinced the Skimeister to drive to Montpelier, Vermont, and head north a bit to ski on the Middlesex Trail toward the summit of Mt. Hunger.
Saturday was a beautiful day: blue skies with mountains that were frosty-white on the top. It was windy, but it didn't bother me as I marched my way up the mountain through the snow. No one had been on the trail for some time, so we were breaking trail. In some places the wind packed...[Read more]
Monday, March 24, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Food, coffee & aprés, Mt. Hunger
Weird. That's the best way to describe today's ski tour on the backcountry trails at Bolton Valley today. Other words that come to mind are frozen, crusty and otherworldly.
While the high trails picked up some snow over the last week, they also got the deep-freeze treatment. Ice was everywhere. It coated trees at nearly an inch in thickness.
During our ski on Heavenly Highway, Birch Loop and Gardiner's Lane, the Skimeister and I navigated around many limbs and trees that were downed by the...[Read more]
Sunday, March 16, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley
I love checklists. It gives me great satisfaction to tick things off as I complete them. Yesterday I had the pleasure of checking off the Bolton-Trapp Trail on my skiing to-do list for this season. It was the first time I had done this backcountry excursion and it was tiring, but extra snowy and fun!
The Skimeister, his step-mom and I dropped a car on Nebraska Valley Road in Moscow (a section of Stowe), Vermont, before driving to our starting point at the Bolton Valley nordic center. The car...[Read more]
Sunday, March 2, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley, Trapp Family Lodge
Come and get it! Vermont just enjoyed a nice snowstorm this week with up to 16 inches of powder (so far) covering our cars, homes and mountains. Yeah!
I admit I love to sweep off my car after a snowstorm. Hey, I'm a skier!
I persuaded the Skimeister to take an hour break from his Web development work this afternoon to do a nordic tour at Red Rocks Park here in Burlington. It's a wooded park that is situated on a bluff overlooking Lake Champlain.
It's pretty amazing that you can be within...[Read more]
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
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Filed in: Alpine skiing, Backcountry skiing, Cross-country skiing
The Catamount Trail Association (CTA), the group that cares for the 300-mile trail that runs the length of Vermont, got some good press a couple of days ago in the Burlington Free Press.
The article is not online (sorry, the Free Press site is extremely lame) but it reported that the organization is hosting the most ski trips and events this winter than ever before. About 30 individuals are leading nearly 60 ski tours.
The tours are rated for different abilities and you must sign up in...[Read more]
Friday, February 22, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley, Trapp Family Lodge
I recently found a little treasure in my mailbox. The Skimeister and I received our Catamount Trail Association membership cards and the discount booklets that come with them.
The Catamount Trail is a 300-mile cross-country and backcountry ski trail that crosses the state of Vermont from head to toe. Many private land owners and ski resorts allow the trail to pass through their properties. What a terrific gift to all of us skiers.
Our membership money helps to maintain this trail. As an added...[Read more]
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Cross-country skiing, Ticket discounts
I've been wanting to ski Honey Hollow from Huntington for a couple of years. It's located near Camel's Hump—partially in Huntington and Bolton. I've snowshoed and even skied up a ways from the Duxbury Road parking lot a few times, but I've wanted to do a car shuttle to allow me to check out what lies above. Today was the day to do it.
After dropping the car in the appropriate spot on Duxbury Road in Bolton, near the Winooski River, the Skimeister and I headed for the Camel's Hump Skiers...[Read more]
Saturday, January 5, 2008
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing
It's days like today that I praise the snowgods, and my parents for buying me my favorite pair of mittens. We had a lovely backcountry tour today, but it was darn cold.
Fortunately, I'm someone who layers up and I know when to take out the big guns (the sheepskin mittens) when I need to.
Despite temps in the single digits, it didn't take much uphill shlogging to start generating some heat and a couple of times I had to take the mittens off to cool off my hands.
Let me tell you that I've...[Read more]
Saturday, December 15, 2007
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley, Ski gear
What a way to start the ski season. The Skimeister and I went up to Bolton Valley's backcountry trails today and found more than a foot of fluffy snow on the trails and weighing down the tree branches all around us. Gorgeous!
This is what skiing is all about. I love gliding quietly through the woods surrounded by snow. Skiing to a viewpoint is even better, but today the "Stowe View" was non-existent because of a snow squall. Not a problem, we said, before schussing on.
I'm still not great at...[Read more]
Saturday, December 8, 2007
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Bolton Valley
This just in: I earned my first turns of the season today!
There were about 12 inches of fluffy powder to sample on the CCC road on the western slopes of Mt. Mansfield. That dirt road is accessed via the Underhill State Park access road in Underhill, Vermont.
The trees were laden with snow — some of the lightest powder we every get here in the East, really — and the sky was mostly blue. What more could you ask for on the first ski run of the year?
My husband (the Skimeister)...[Read more]
Sunday, November 25, 2007
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing, Mt. Mansfield, Ski gear
I'm hot under the collar. I'm perturbed. I'm just plain miffed.
It's like when you were a kid riding the bus to a cool field trip and there were a couple of misbehaved classmates on the bus. Most of us were behaving fine, but those couple of bad apples would make the bus driver stop the bus on the side of the road and we'd all sit and have to wait until they straightened up their act. We all looked bad because of the two twits.
Such is the case with the two twits who unleashed their...[Read more]
Friday, November 23, 2007
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Filed in: Backcountry skiing
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