Yeah Long Weekends!

I gotta take more of these things.  Or maybe I should get really active on trying to get PSU to change to a 4 day work week with 10 hour days.  Although if I had three day weekends all the time I would probably die of exhaustion in about a month.  I can't stop once I start it stings!

I got all kinds of stuff in this weekend and was thoroughly wiped out by Tuesday morning, enough that riding into work ended up being a non-option.  Saturday I got in one of my new favorite past-times, Strava hunting.  Basically consists of trying to find a loop that hits a few local KOM segments and doing little segment intervals trying to clean them all up.  In the past I have always found it really hard to get myself to do intervals on the bike, they just aren't all that enjoyable.  But I enjoy racing my bike so voila! intervals by proxy.  And it turns out I really like that format of ride because you still get a great workout and I still get to enjoy the day and surroundings during the soft pedaling sections in between.  I was even able to snap a few pictures along the route:

PEMI

I had some other ones as well but as I'm typing this I'm realizing that lots of pictures on my phone have randomly disappeared and it looks like anything that I haven't Instagram'd is now missing from my phone...not cool Instagram, not cool.  The highlight was a sweet pic of my handlebars that was supposed to be a covered bridge.

The fitness portion of the ride went fairly well.  I was able to get 2 of the 4 targeted segments and the 2 I didn't get I knew were going to be tall orders.  Both are currently owned by a very strong rider and neither are really suited to me.  But I'm sure I rode both better than I ever have before and I think I can do both a bit faster with slightly cooler and less windy conditions than I had on Saturday.

Sunday we hit the new Agway over in Belmont which is huge and awesome and we doubled down on our garden a bit and did a bunch more planting as well as some serious yardwork, cleaning up and coming up with plans for some areas that we have put off for years.  Tough work but the payoff will be pretty sweet.  We are also contemplating buying some fruit trees that they have at that Agway for really reasonable prices but we have to do a bit more research to see if it really makes sense and how much work it would really be. Man would I love to be able to grab a nectarine from my yard though!

Monday Mike and I got after some of the smaller 'middle' Belknaps that are scattered in between Mt. Major and the rest of the larger peaks over by Belknap itself.  Mike is after the Belknap Range patch and needs to tag all 12.  After my jaunt a few years ago I am actually fairly close to getting all 12 as well.  I wasn't expecting much from these peaks but it was actually a really cool day.  The Quarry Trail was much more maintained than I was expecting and the terrain was interesting and there were still some really good views even though the summits weren't exactly really exposed.  I'm sure Mike will post a very thorough account so I will link that once it exists.  For now here is the raw data:

Off Trail 4 Lyfe

This past weekend was an exercise in bushwhacking.  Saturday Bill and I went on a mission to find some lines that have eluded us (until now) and Sunday was a recon mission for Central NH NEMBA to walk the possible future site of a new trail system.

You won't get much info here on our AT recon mission, unfortunately the more people that know about it the less awesome it becomes and this line isn't exactly 'ours' but I can go into the process a bit because it was sort of my first foray into wilderness navigation.

We had some decent beta heading into the trip and we had spent some time last year trying to find this route to no avail.  But through process of elimination we were fairly certain we knew where we were going this time around.  We actually made really short work of finding the line and we began hiking up to our 'backstop' (yeah navigation terminology!) which was a trail running along a ridge.  The line itself looks like it will be really fun.  Lots of natural terrain features, and its LONG.

At the time it was hard to pinpoint exactly where we were, we were hiking in a cloud so it was impossible to site any landmarks to try and pinpoint our location using bearings and I have come to the conclusion after this trip and Sunday's hiking around that I am currently a horrible judge of lateral distance traveled.  I always think I have gone about 10x farther than I actually have.  Gonna have to work on that.  It also became apparent how handy an accurate altimeter would be especially when navigating around mountainous terrain.  Much easier to narrow down your location if needed.  Too bad they are so damn expensive.

We topped out on the ridge and started making our way across two peaks, our plan was to traverse and descend the front side of another mountain to a car we had spotted instead of back tracking.  We had thought this traverse would be easy and would be the preferred method of accessing this line.  But we quickly came to the realization that this traverse would be hilarious in the winter and might even require some crampons and ropes in places depending on how it fills in.  Definitely going to be some adventuring this winter and I can't wait.

I took some pics but they got corrupted somehow, I think that crappy walmart camera has infected my SD card or something.  Or maybe some of the individuals who did most of the work on this line installed a motion triggered EMP that erased all my pics.  Hard tellin'.

I can be a bit more forthcoming with our trip on Sunday.  I am really excited about this one.  CNH NEMBA was recently contacted by the LRCT about a chunk of land that was donated to them.  They had no plans for it and wondered if we might want to build some trails there.  The land was owned by a private party and even has two cabins on the property that CNH NEMBA might eventually have access to.  Best estimates right now are the plot being somewhere between 300-500 acres, we are still working with the LRCT and the town to figure out property lines.

I met with Jesse and Mike to walk the land a bit.  We were trying to find property lines as well as identify if the terrain was workable and worth our time.



We did a quick perimeter around probably 2/3 of the plot and I can safely say this place is going to be amazing when we are done.  Gonna be years in the making but the possibilities are pretty exciting.  LRCT seems pretty open to our ideas and we are looking forward to moving forward with development.  Hopefully we'll be back soon with better info on property lines so we can mark our boundaries all the way around and possibly begin work on a 'perimeter trail' that circumnavigates the entire plot to start.  Best guess is that trail alone will be 6-7 miles long.  We could be looking at 20+ miles of singletrack with plenty of vert and two cabins on the property.  I like getting the shakes for next year's awesome in early November.

Wylee gets DEEP

I decided to take a break from getting my own pow slashes and took a little hike with Gina and the Pooch at Hamlin-Eames. This also gave me an opportunity to try out and test some of my new toys and get some active recovery from yesterday...can't beat that!

Lots of new snow in the area so we strapped on our new MSR Denali's (thanks Mom & Dad!) and hit the trail. Took a few tries to really get the straps dialed in but once we figured them out they were pretty solid. I really like the weight and traction, float wasn't awesome but worked just fine for the conditions. Thats to be expected though, they have a modular design on purpose so you can add tails if you want better floatation but you don't have to pay the weight penalty if you don't need them. All in all I am very pleased and looking forward to getting in more miles with them, both farting around in the woods and possibly getting some vert as well when the terrain is a little too gnarly for skins.

quick family portraits are way harder in the winter

Wylee LOVES the snow and we had a hard time keeping up with her. Its fun to watch her tear around in the powder.

I also got a chance to try out my new winter hydration setup that I am planning on rocking on shorter AT days as well as some bigger days at Cannon now that I know it works decent. Gina got me an insulated hose for my Camelbak bladder and I am using my Burton AK pack that I have had forever for this purpose but have never actually really used until now. The pack has a slit cut in the top specifically for hydration and the insulated hose is the perfect length. Didn't have any freezing issues today, temps weren't really all that cold but I think it should work as long as I blow the water out of the tube after each drink and maybe use warmer water on really cold days.

Probably missed a pretty big pow day in the Notch today but I can't complain. Wylee got deep enough for both of us.

Hamlin-Eames Conservation Area

Gina, myself and the pooch went to scope out the Hamlin-Eames Conservation Area in Meredith Sunday. We wanted to get the lay of the land seeing as this trail network is within a mile of the house we are in agreement to buy. And after this little walk in the woods I am happy to say that, in my mind, the property value of of our potential new home just skyrocketed...and Wylee loved it too.

if she had opposable thumbs they would both be up.

As you can see here there are lots of little pond / marsh areas and some really cool ledge lookouts to Lake Wicwas. We hiked out to Crockett's Ledge and then came back via the Pond Loop trail. Biking here will be interesting, a decent amount of short steep climbs and it looks like most of the trails weren't really cut with biking in mind but it is permitted in the area so I will check things out once we get through mud season.

Crockett's Ledge

Big 'ole dead tree

In other hilarious news, I decided to get to this area by cutting through some back roads in the region we are moving into. I found out recently that we are moving into what the locals call 'Chemungville'. It is a small region bounded by Rt. 104 to the North, I-93 to the West, Lake Winnisquam to the East and Rt. 3 to the South. Once you get into Chemungville things get pretty remote pretty fast. They also get very less paved. If you will be visiting us in the Spring, bring your rally skills or your mudding jeep.

TURBO.

Dog Walk Data Analysis

So last post I promised my readers unparalleled access to every single one of my bike rides from here on out thanks to my new Garmin Edge 205. Conditions in NH are no longer lending themselves to ice biking, or much of anything outdoors for that matter, except for maybe taking the pooch for a walk in the woods.

And seeing as you can't buy a new toy and then just leave it on your coffee table to stare at for months I figured, hell, I want to know all the pertinent data about this walk in the woods. I mean how am I going to know how to pace myself on our next walk in the woods with Wylee if I don't have the 411? So I strapped the Edge to my backpack and hit Chamberlain Reynolds Memorial Forest.

I was really surprised with the accuracy, especially because the signal strength was 'poor' during the walk. Chamberlain Reynolds has some pretty dense tree cover. The speed kind of jumped around but we were moving pretty slow, I had to turn the auto pause off because it kept thinking we were stopped for a fraction of a second or so and it would pause and resume over and over. I don't think I'll have that issue on a bike though. I think I'm going to like this new tool very very much...

I'll let the DATA speak for itself.

Mt. Cardigan

I dont normally post about hikes but I have to expand the foot print of this blog because i'll be expecting my students to post regularly so I have to step it up as well...or I could just go with the old 'do as i say, not as i do' thing...i'll have to think that one over.

We cruised out to Canaan / Orange, NH to trek up Mt. Cardigan and get the pooch some exposure. I wanted to get Wylee above tree line to add to her "Gnar Rating". (**i dont know exactly what a gnar rating is or exactly how i want to quantify it because i just made that up... possibly more on this later**)


very dog friendly hike, 3 miles round trip...easy up easy down. Although Gina did not agree with my comment about the last .2 miles being easier mentally because you can see the top...she clarifies as easier mentally yes, but physically much steeper.


Wylee loves cliffs, chasing birds riding thermals and crapping in the woods. but then again who doesnt?

in closing: wind makes our hair sexy x 10