nordic skiing (woods) 1:42:55 [3] 9.39 km (10:58 / km) +131m 10:15 / km
WBW. This worked out better than I had feared. Sunny day, almost 40F, windy, but not in the woods. I had it in my mind that I had no Nordic ski gear at all, but I looked in the garage and found that I still had some stuff that's 75% unsuitable for any purpose (my poles are completely legit). So I bolstered one broken binding with some heavy duty double-sided tape, and headed out. I figured I might be limited to an out and back on the unpaved part of Vinton Pond Road, but then I tried a snowshoed-in trail, and kept on going. This was a mixture of ski tracks, snowshoe tracks, breaking trail in undisturbed snow, and snowmobile tracks. The skis had no kick wax, but that wasn't too terrible. Much of the climb was too twisty to be able to slide at all, I was more or less walking on skis. I only saw two snowmobiles, and those were at a distance. I chatted with an old guy ("old" maybe meaning not much older than me) getting back in his car at Fort Hill Road, who proudly annnounced that he had hiked all the way to Pearl Hill and back, including "around the circle" (which I'm guessing means the campground loop) in 4 hours 45 minutes. Roughly my start and end points, but presumably via a more direct route. No falls on the high-speed descent (though I did fall a few times other places), and I was able to do some improbable skating on the snowmobile trails (no glide wax, either). I did notice fairly far into this that a foot or more of the base on one of the skis is delaminating at the tail (flap flap). I may glue it back on in case I want to go out again before winter is over, but at the end of the season I really should cut the skis up into small enough pieces and put them and the awful ebay boots in the trash can.
