BACK IN WHITE
We’ve seen them every winter, maybe not as long and not accompanied by .68 inches of rain; but we get our December thaw, our January thaw and our February thaw every year. This year, December’s was OK, we’ll take it. January’s was a serious nightmare with the light rain wetting everything up and then a good coating of 7” of heavy snow. The snow stuck to the wet branches, twigs and needles. There were miles of snow-bent trees, turning the trails into literal walls of snow.
But our base was good, we’d done just enough work to survive the thaws and re-set everything.
Our February thaw was long, warm and wet enough to erode our 12” base and actually open spots on the trail where water can work its nefarious wont to dissolve snow.
Don’t get me going on our hard-working plow drivers who feel like they just have to plow when the streets and roads are essentially slush. All of our road crossings were slushed just hours before the arctic air rushed in from Athabaska (as it always does) and froze the crossings into castellated ice walls.
It took our trusty pulaskis to break down the crossings.
Then it’s time to try to salvage the tracks on a base that’s 2” thinner and re-frozen into un-troweled concrete. I mean, it’s still February. The best days are to come.
The tracks on Montreal went just fine. There were spots and sections that it seemed we were setting track in ice cubes after the 36 knives on our trail renovator passed through; but it was nice and skiable the next morning.
Uller? Oh boy, I don’t know. If we could find about 10 back country skiers, capable of carrying shovels on their backs, to ski 5 from Pence and 5 from Weber Lake and shovel the dozens of seeps, springs, drains and muck-holes I can think of off hand that have opened up, we’d take the two days and try and resurrect it. As of now, it’s back country; but back country with an old base and crazy good snow off-trail to cruise along in. Rock out-crops and spooky hemlock grottos a couple of chains off the trail can easily be explored on our boiler plate; places most folks just don’t want to break trail up to when things haven’t been thawed and re-frozen.
We’ll see what happens out on Uller. Like we say, Uller conditions are an act of the Great Creator.
Meanwhile, we’re back in white. There are some warm days coming along with some cold ones, there’s snow in the forecast. Don’t pull the golf clubs or fishing gear out quite yet. And don’t forget next Saturday’s Hygge Hike at Night! It looks like we might have excellent February weather. The past couple have been quite memorable.
Get out there. We hope to see you. Ski Freely. Z
