Srgt. Awesome

As of yesterday I didn't have much planned for today in the way of recreation, I wanted to get some things in order before our impending vacay so I wanted to get something in quick.  There was a line I had been eyeing for a bit this season not all that far from the house and it seemed tame enough for a solo mission so I went for it.

Absolutely beautiful day out, 40-45 and lots of sun.  I made my way to the trailhead and was at it by 10am.  Decent amount of cars in play but not too bad, I think it was a lot of people snowshoeing and walking dogs on trails that I wouldn't be on so it was all good.  I did bump into one other guy gearing up for a skin up...he asked me if I had ever skied this spot before and when I said no I could see a subtle wince, like he wished I hadn't found it but he warmed up and was actually friendly and we ended up meeting up about halfway up and he let me tag along a bit.  I will be very cryptic in this post as to where this locale is so that Mike will not bump into any other first timers (at least any that found out about it here).

 

going up...

Things started off with a haul up a road that is closed in winter.  Great place to get everything warmed up, unfortunately I hit it right when the sun was beating down perfectly on the path so it kind of warmed up a bit too much but it was manageable...and nice soaking up some sun.  I bumped into Mike again at the top of this road before we jumped into our line of choice.  It was really interesting terrain, undulating, with some cool features.

This obstacle was a bit sketchy

The skin up went fairly well, the snow was extremely variable.  Crusty in spots, spring corn in the sun, still a bit powdery up high and in the shade but all in all very skiable.  There were a few tricky spots due to some gullies and short steep pitches or some sort of buried feature to get around.  I was pleased with how steep things got towards the top, the last headwall was unskinable and I had to strap my poles to my pack and use the skis as anchors and boot up.  There were some big boulders but luckily enough snow to fill things in, almost looked like a spot that is probably some sort of frozen waterfall when there isnt enough snow...

 

looking back down from just over the last headwall

I topped out shortly after and transitioned for the down.  I rode pretty conservative due to the variable snow but that headwall could be amazing in light fluffy snow, very easy to turn it into a two or three stage pillow line as long as it was deep enough.  The rest of the ride out was fun, little features to jib and the snow was workable enough to get a good up/down rhythm going and stay moving.  Mike was even nice enough to share a bit more local knowledge when I bumped into him again towards the top on my way down so I will definitely be back again to check things out further.

gotta love it

Snowicane @Whiteface

Not sure about the whole 'snowicane' thing but it was definitely a weekend for the ages up in Lake Placid.  Planned months ago and somehow we lucked out and hit one of the best weekends of the season right on the head.  Lots of weather during the last week in New England had Whiteface covered in tons (literally) of wet heavy snow.

We arrived very early Friday morn with a full day of riding planned.  The weather was interesting to say the least.  Temps were actually on the high side, mountain was socked in a cloud most of the day and intermittently it would dump huge flakes of snow.  Later in the day the sun came out and it was full blown Spring skiing.  I've had a few 'full gamut' type days this year...I kinda like them.

 not too shabby

We maxed the terrain out for sure getting runs in all over the mountain.  I think the highlight for Friday were several runs down 'Lookout Below' a very sweet steep run off Lookout Mountain that had some great natural features and some fairly deep snow.  We got over there on first or second chair after they started the lift and got it early and often before it got tracked out.  Tre bien.

the local art scene is flourishing

The plan for Saturday had been up in the air going into the trip but after Friday it was quickly decided that shelling out for a day pass was more than worth it and we all manned up, got up early and hit the mountain again for another first/last chair day.  Temps had dropped, the existing snow had dried out a bit and there was even a few fresh inches to work with.  We got right to it again, getting in all the good trees and steeps.

We lucked out and Whiteface decided to open up the Slides on Saturday which from what I understand is a fairly rare occurance probably on par with the Tramline opening at Cannon...few and far between.  It was pretty gnarly terrain for 'in-bounds'...we did what we think were slides 2 and 4 (they are numbered lookers left to right across the face) but it was pretty foggy at the time and hard telling exactly where we were.  Whiteface screens any rider heading into the area but their criteria and their actual enforcement don't really match up.  We saw quite a few people who probably shouldn't have been on that terrain.

Even with all that snow there were still some hidden nasties just below the surface that required attention and on slide 4 there were some semi-mandatory airs and some really cool features.  Very cool terrain that I wish we had available at Cannon to shred.

Towards the end of the day we also got into Sugar Valley Glades, a 1mile + drainage with perfectly spaced trees.  Most of us commented on its natural playground, Narnia feel. 

i mean come on, just look at that.

My memories from riding Whiteface as a kid definitely leaned towards it being a racer's mountain, probably because I was one then.  That has definitely changed now, there is some pretty sweet stuff to be had, enough to fill two full days thats for sure.  I highly recommend checking it out if you have the means ($74 day pass...)

There are lots of other pics and vids floating around from some of the other guys.  In the next day or two I will get a bit more organized and share them here.

Dustin and Adam making some turns http://vimeo.com/9816066

Afternoon in the Shed

Gina's on a ladies afternoon/night out at a show down in Boston so I of course headed straight to the shed for some project time. I have a few things going right now and its been a while since I've spent some time tinkering. So I grabbed my little space heater, a homebrew, and set up shop!

Bikes, Skis, Homemade Beer, Win

I recently bought some 'dirt drop' bars for my old commuter bike in an attempt to turn it into a more viable off road/touring machine. Dirt drops are a little bit more swept and have less actual drop than road bars. The drops bars I had on previously were old school road bars and didn't really work that well with the geometry of the frame. Worked fine for commuting but I would like to take this bike more places now. I went with the Midge by On One. Dirt drops are surprisingly hard to find, even online. I ended up going with the Midge because its one of the first bars of its kind and it takes bar end shifters (something that a lot of the other bars don't, which I find odd).

I think this new setup is going to work pretty well...I haven't had a chance to really get a feel for the cockpit yet because I still need to get a new saddle but the various hand positions all feel like they will be pretty solid and useful just standing over the bike. I think this bike will turn into a solid/fun back up trail bike.

Tomac would be proud. Drops on dirt, no suspension.

I also decided to get back into actually tuning/taking care of my skis again. I was always on top of things back when I bashed gates and even through college but since I have just bought cheap skis, beat the crap out of them and moved on...wasn't really worth the time. But I like working in the shop and I spend a lot of time maintaining my bikes, might as well suck it up and show my boards the same love. So I stopped into Home Depot and outfitted myself somewhat ghetto and brought out some of my old tuning gear.

Bought a standard 10in bastard file, 1in spring clamp and a simple corner brace for a file guide for edging along with a whetstone for deburring. Granted, at the current time I am just polishing a turd with my current skis, they are basically beyond repair in the big picture but I have a big riding weekend coming up so why not throw whatever edge I can get on there and give em a hot wax?

Then I took quite possibly the funniest / most intense self portrait with a timer I have ever taken. Somehow it framed up in a very dramatic fashion and the look on my face is classic, so intent. It's almost as if I'm sharpening the edges just with my gaze. Enjoy.

What Off Season?

Haven't been able to get on the slopes in far too long so it was time to regroup, shift gears and take advantage of the crap skiing conditions as best I could. The best part is these particular crap skiing conditions are excellent ice biking conditions!

I couldn't find any ride partners to join me for a jaunt out onto some actual frozen water but that is probably a good thing because it was another cold and breezy one today and while sunny it probably would have been pretty brutal all exposed out on the ice. I was able however to meet up last second with Mike, a local rider who I have ridden with once or twice before, for some trail riding at Franklin Falls.

It was definitely a cold one in the parking lot at FFD (which they have expanded by the way, almost twice as many parking spots now. Probably due mostly to CNH NEMBA's efforts to expand the trail system and the resulting spike in use) but once we got into the woods it was actually kinda nice.

this was the only pic my camera could handle before the cold shut it down for the day

The chopper is still going strong (amazingly). In its 5th or 6th incarnation it is currently still SS, although in this pic it looks geared buts its not. I didn't have any cassette spacers to just run one cog so instead I took the 9 speed cassette I had on the bench from my 9 speed and the old partially broken X7 that I busted at Pat's Peak to experiment a bit.

It is currently locked in at 32-20 with the high limit screw and theoretically I could back that screw off a bit and change to a slightly harder gear on the fly and the derailleur would eat up the chain slack. I would probably never want to do that because riding in snow/ice requires a bit more torque and smaller gears are a bit nicer but its an interesting way to do SS especially for longer touring rides where picking that one gear can be problematic.

I thought it might have some issues with bouncing around and jumping gears a bit on me but that was not the case. Never even skipped once.

Mike and I did a few loops and some poking around to see what was riding well and what wasn't. Most everything was riding awesome, there were a few trails towards the north end of the park that hadn't seen enough traffic that we avoided but we got in about 6 miles before my rear tire went soft.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/24170334

The downside to riding home made studded tires...they grip awesome (better then commercial studs, Mike slipped out a few times while mine were holding strong) but this is my second flat in as many rides, granted the other was last season but I think I may either need to reevaluate my liner to protect the tubes better or maybe look into buying the real deal. They are kind of expensive so I think I'll probably take a down day and try and whip up a better more robust liner.

It would be nice if we got some snow though so I don't have to worry about that fix for awhile....

This is not Cardigan

Original plan was to check out Cardigan this weekend but we found out last second (thanks to a friendly poster at timefortuckerman) that the NH chapter of AMC was having their winter weekend there this weekend and there was going to be LOTS of people on trail skinning, snowshoeing, etc.

So luckily we were able to avoid the traffic jam and we had been thinking about a trip in roughly the same area anyway so we did some last minute research and put it together.

Again I had high hopes based on my research that we were gonna find some really good stuff and also based on some inklings of things we could see when we spotted my car. But yet again navigation is much harder once you are actually up in the woods and you can miss lines by 3 feet and never know its there. But this trip def went much better than last time around and I think there is much more potential for this area and now that we know right where certain things are we will be much more efficient.

you know its gonna be good when you are gearing up at a playground

We hit trail around 10am and the skin up was nice and gradual. Weather was absolutely perfect for hiking, sunny and mid 20's. We made quick work of the skin up with only a few tricky spots around and over drainage streams.


On the way up we noticed all kinds of gladed lines that looked very doable that were completely untouched. I will def be back exploring more in the future. We eventually hit the ridge line and topped out for a bit of lunch in the sun.


There was a fairly steep headwall just off the front of this face that could very well have nice stuff in the trees but it was just a bit too steep for us to take a peek without fully committing and our plans were slightly different for this day so we decided to continue on but again something I will need to check out in the future.

We skinned a little bit further to check out the first descent we were thinking about. It looked pretty good, decent snow but the bottom half of the run was much more flat than we had anticipated and the run out looked pretty boring so we decided on checking out the other line on the itinerary.

We were fairly sure based on sat images where we needed to head into the woods to attempt to find it so we fanned out a bit and started bushwhacking. Things looked promising at first but things never completely thinned back out to where we needed them to really link turns nicely. You could definitely tell that there was at one time something where we were but it had grown back in with enough little sapplings that you couldn't go more than 10ft or so without getting whipped in the face or catching a tip.

So after our first run of extremely tight glade skiing we re-skinned and headed back up the other side trying to find something a bit nicer. The second skin up was a bit more aggressive but nice because we topped back out in under 30 mins. On the way up we spotted a nice little line through the trees that hadnt been touched and we were fairly sure we could find it from where we were at the top so we gave it a go...and finally some success!

the goods

Nothing overly amazing, but pretty deep. It served up some fun bouncy powder turns and actually dumped us right down at the car we spotted, perfect!

So again I wouldn't call our expedition 'epic' by any means but another good recon mission and learning experience. I now feel way more coordinated when it comes to de-skinning and re-skinning on trail. I've got the routine down to under 5 mins now. Unfortunately this might be it for skiing for a bit with lots of rain on the forecast for tonight and tomorrow...next report might be from the ice bike.