Training Log Archive: CleverSky

Swampfox was posting some music he recorded a while back, and feet has been entertaining people with poetry lately. I wrote a short story a couple of months ago, and I might as well publish it here. Click on the discussion if you'd like to read it.

C • story 5

Down to the lake and back, In The Dark. Chilly (low 20s F), but I was dressed warmly enough and in fact took off my gloves after a while. I ventured out ont the lake to see if there had been enough snowmobile traffic to pack it down for skis or the ice bike. What I found was 8" or so of loose snow, with some snowmobile tracks, but under the snow there was an inch or two of slush. Very much unexpected, and not appealing at all. I'm confident the ice under the slush is safe, but I'll stay on land for now.

Snow dealings, round 6. Blowed the driveway and the mailbox of yesterday's 4", easy peasy. Also shoveled the path to the door.

Around, In The Dark. Kinda chilly out. I saw about a dozen cars, but never bothered to turn on my headlamp.

Across the street. The plan was to do Shorter Mystery Blazes ccw, assuming it had all been snowshoed in. But when it came time to leave Hickory Woods, there were no snowshoe tracks, just footprints. I followed them anyway, and after a bit realized was not actually on the SMB connector, but on some other trail that I didn't remember that connected to Mystery Blazes further north. On the way back, at the SMB junction there were footprints, so I must have missed the other end of it. Given that I was already off the standard course, I took the MB option to the brook instead of the Enigma Road, and skipped the loop around to the Waterline trail. Saw a coupe of fatbikers out there, and people on foot three or four times, most of those across the Mulpus from me. Light snow coming down, supposed to be more later on. Felt not very oomphful, but glad I was doing something that didn't involve my upper body after yesterday.

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.

Mass Ave., etc., and home, In The Dark, the first part with Nancy.

WBSW again, In The Dark, by myself this time, small snowshoes. Partially the same route that we did yesterday, in the opposite direction, but I added a loop up over the hill, breaking trail for most of that part. I encountered a young guy getting out of his car on Old City Road where we had thought about parking last night but it didn't look like there was enough room. He had what looked like carbon fiber snowshoes, reasonably large. I chatted with him for a minute or two about where we went yesterday and where I was thinking of going tonight. He said he had the same loop in mind but hadn't decided which direction to go. I didn't see him after that, and didn't see any indication of his tracks, either, so maybe he went the same way I did and just didn't catch up.

WBSW, In The Dark, with Nancy. The bigger snowshoes, breaking trail most of the way around, in "pretty deep" snow.