Freedom of the snow

The invention of skiing did not wait for the invention of the groomer. Skiing developed in areas where it made sense, where the combination of terrain and snow type led to this device that slides through the snow rather than plodding on or in it. All of this happened so long ago that we have only some uncaptioned artifacts of the time, not explanatory accounts of the design development process. It's a pointy board. The front end curves up. Take it from there.

The boring cousin of the ski is what we now think of as a snowshoe. But the skiers of the 19th Century called their skis snowshoes. In written accounts of the time, you will see that term. Fridtjof Nansen used it in Farthest North when referring to the skis used by the expedition. Skis and snowshoes are answers to the same basic need: traveling in a snow-covered landscape with the least effort required.

Least effort may seem like an inappropriate term when bulldozing up a steep slope with either device on your feet. And the device we now call snowshoes never gives you the dividend of glide. You pick them up and put them down.

When the trail was the road, the winter trail would be packed by all of the travelers using it, from the buildup of the snow pack, through the heart of winter, all the way to the thaw. The thaw would isolate people much more than winter did, because travel would be exhaustingly slow or outright impossible as the winter's accumulation turned to a mire of granular soup. But during the heart of winter a traveler could branch out onto lesser-used trails, or through areas with no trail, using the versatile human-enhancing devices common in their culture. Later, when the ski had been introduced to many areas outside of its native range, it was added to the available toolkit. By then, of course, the Industrial Age was advancing, and travel by machine was becoming more and more of an option. But the initial diaspora happened early enough to make skis a practical part of life in areas without developed road systems.

All that was a long time ago. Almost no one now needs to depend on skis to get around. It's a lifestyle choice. You might manage to build yourself a life in which the ski becomes a necessary, practical tool, but only because you chose to go that way. For the rest of us, it's a matter of aesthetics. But that can cover a wide range of considerations.

Exercise is good. Exercises that demand a degree of coordination help to keep those parts of the brain engaged. One way to maintain balance is to use your balance. But long before one needs to think of the geriatric aspects of skiing it also offers unmatched versatility in dealing with a wide range of snow conditions.

Let's talk first about where it doesn't work well at all. Ice is the nemesis of skis. You can get ski crampons, but they're not as effective as a snowshoe with teeth on the bottom at dealing with crusty snow and ice. If you found yourself facing a limited area of iciness, or you had to extricate yourself from the wilderness after an ice storm blighted your multi-day backcountry ski tour, you would have to figure out how to use whatever tools you have at the time: metal edges, ski crampons, alternate footwear. It's all a matter of what you want to plan and carry tools to deal with.

The deeper and softer the snow, the larger the "boat" you need to float on it. You may be floating pretty low in it, on skis or snowshoes. But a touring ski is designed to plane upwards, whereas a snowshoe has to be lifted and set down in a more deliberate fashion.

All winter travelers in the human-powered era would look for conditions that were firm and fast. Even in a modern world, recreational snow travelers prefer to have a trail that has been packed and smoothed. This opens the door for such totally grooming-dependent users as fat bikes. And for skiers there's such a thing as too hard a trail. A well-used hiking trail that has been through some thaw and freeze transitions can be like undulating porcelain. A $250 set of snowshoes with a crampon, or a $250 set of studded tires on a $2,000 bike might find the going good on the porcelain trail. A ski not so much. Of those users, only the bike would be completely dependent on the trail, though. The ancestral snow devices -- skis and snowshoes -- have the option to bushwhack much more freely than the bike rider can ever consider.

When we got an early winter delivery of about 5 inches of snow here, I went out on my old faithful 200cm long, 60mm wide skis, with my rejuvenated 75mm boots, to slide around the woods. Parts of the state got ridiculous amounts of snow, upwards of two feet in places. Too much at once can be hard to manage, even for people who like snow and might make their living helping people to play on it. Five inches was just enough to cover most of the irregularities on my crudely defined trails. Much of the forest is open enough to make a trail more of a technical formality than a necessity.

The steeper slopes farther up the mountain -- or even at the back of my own patch -- need more snow to make descent controllable. It's never safe. You can move extremely methodically to reduce the risk of a mishap, and find yourself overtaken by darkness because you took so long to get down. This is highly unlikely when the total distance to home is less than 1,000 feet, but becomes a distinct possibility when the slope you can reach higher up has become a complex bushwhack including old-growth forest, steep, rocky slopes, new, large clear cuts, and dense thickets of saplings. Depending on when you start out, you have to watch how much time you expend on each part of the journey. That's true anywhere you go.

If you're unsure of snow conditions where you're going, the conservative choice is the snowshoe. You give up on glide, but you know you'll be able to trudge reliably. If you know that snow conditions will allow for it, and you have the skills and equipment, skis offer you the most freedom. Gliding liberates you from friction. Gravity becomes an asset and a plaything.

Nordic got run over by a fat bike

Think of the tune, "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer."

Cross-country skiing is dying, killed by climate change throughout its range. This is happening more rapidly in the lower 48 states of the USA than in Scandinavia, but all over the Nordic racing world events are being held more and more on manufactured snow. And that's only possible if temperature and humidity -- not to mention budgets -- allow for enough snow to be made and distributed over a trail system.

Racers will put up with incredible tedium to develop and maintain their fitness, and then submit to torture on a challenging course. Any skier might prefer more variety and free range, but the addicted competitor will go around and around and around and around and around and around a kilometer or two for the sake of race-ready strength and technique. They are not the majority of cross-country skiers, but they are the ones who will spend the most money on it per capita.

Tourists make up the vast majority of the small portion of the population that still skis cross-country. Tourists have a variety of motivations, fitness among them, and cheapness strongly evident. That's a major reason that the ski industry as a whole dislikes them. Frugality generates little profit compared to addiction.

It takes money to run a trail system. Cross-country ski centers have to maintain trails in the off season and groom them in the ski season. Since the widespread acceptance of skate skiing in the late 1980s and early 1990s, that calls for a machine that easily costs more than $100,000.00, requiring fuel, maintenance, repair, and a skilled driver. Larger areas need multiple machines and drivers. Any area also has to maintain the trails themselves in the face of erosion, encroaching vegetation, blowdowns, and abuse by unauthorized or destructive shared uses.

When Surly introduced the Pugsley as a complete bike in 2011, it launched the category as something people could buy "off the shelf." Our own shop and touring center pondered whether the bikes would make a worthy addition to our mix of users as a way to weather the increasingly irregular winter conditions that the changing climate had been bringing us. However, our early experiments discouraged us from trying to blend skiers and bike riders on a single trail system.

When the bike industry tried to make fat bikes the next big thing around 2015 there was an explosion of interest that looked like it might turn into a bit of a boom. But as the browsers browsed, most of them chose not to invest upwards of a thousand bucks in yet another bike. Various media outlets ran weirdo-news features on the nutty people riding goofy bikes on the snow(!), but the curiosity was not matched by significant sales. Meanwhile, in the bike industry's usual fashion, they mutated the bikes rapidly, challenging consumers and shops alike to keep up with the need for newer and ever more expensive tools and parts.

Once the tool of intrepid, self-reliant adventurers, fat bikes seem to have attracted a demographic that might view itself that way, but often presents itself as entitled whiners. Our small touring center has seen a determined assault by a handful of riders who have looked for any possible leverage to force us to allow them onto the trail system. They have also proudly posted pictures on social media of themselves poaching the trails. I believe that it's become an obsession with them that means nothing more than another notch on their bedpost. Their own representative has stated at meetings that most riders aren't looking for a 20-foot-wide trail like an interstate highway through the woods. Minimum width for a skate groomed cross-country ski trail is about 12 feet, but much more would be needed to accommodate bike traffic and ski traffic in busy periods.

Will there be busy periods? Between the decrease in natural snow and the daunting expense of buying a winter bike, both sports remain a small percentage of winter recreational activity, far outstripped by motorized activities and downhill sports using motor-driven chair lifts. So what happens next? People want to find a place that has bought a rental fleet of fat bikes for them, on top of expanding the trail system for this new user group. How many touring centers can afford to put together a fleet of expensive and complex bikes and maintain them in readiness for whoever might want to try them out? This situation is being forced on the cross-country ski business by an alien culture.

This isn't just as simple as the ski versus snowboard debate. It has elements of the skate versus classic debate, in the different ways that the user groups occupy space on the trail and flow through the terrain. Having skied both classical and skate, I can tell you that the two techniques can come into conflict when skiers of each type converge. Now throw in some bike riders. The skate skiers can at least bring their skis parallel and double pole through a pod of slow tourists. Skiers don't have 31-inch-wide handlebars. And riders with 31-inch-wide handlebars can't reduce that dimension for a courteous minute or two, even if they might want to.

Skiers also have their feet on the ground. If a skier has to stop, it's not that hard to step off the trail, or at least move to the very edge of it and stand in a way that leaves plenty of room to pass. It's not as easy when you come off the pedals and either need room and time to dismount or need to waddle along straddling the bike. Also, your 5-inch tire at 8 psi might not make much of a mark, but your big clodhopping feet do.

Life is full of inconveniences. We have to make allowances for each other. Motorists hate having to accommodate bicyclists on the roads, and make many arguments about the differences in speed and maneuverability between the various size motor vehicles and the ones being pedaled. The difference is that all of our taxes pay for the public right of way, and that we all have a right to travel freely. A trail system is not the public street. The idea that cross-country ski trails should be coerced into admitting fat bikes is fairly recent even in the short history of fat biking itself. The pioneering riders used things like snow machine trails, just as their ancestors did, way back in the 1990s, when winter riders on the mountain bikes of their era either bought or made studded tires to go ride on those trails or on frozen lakes, woods roads, and other open venues.

The group of fat bikers that set its sights on the trails in Wolfeboro saw trails already groomed and looked for a way to commandeer them. With absolutely no respect for the decades of time, effort, and non-governmental investment that went into the trails, they seized on a flimsy legal possibility to force their case. Since they opened this can of worms, other user groups have tried to present themselves at the same loophole to be allowed to walk their dogs on the trails. The grooming is not done by town employees using town equipment and town funds. If a dedicated non-profit organization had not devoted itself to maintaining the trail system in town, that system would not exist, and we wouldn't be having this discussion. The fat bikers would be riding on whatever was open, just like the poor kids do in towns that don't happen to have a well-established and once-respected ski association.

Buying my boots all over again

Late last season I noticed that the midsoles in my beloved Asolo Snowpines were crumbing into little cubes. These were some of the last telemark resoles done by Carl Limmer before he had to quit the business because he developed a glue allergy. They were kind of historical.

I switched to my Garmont Combi Plus boots, that I'd bought for lift service and ravine trips. They're also leather, but have an instep strap that holds the heel snugly during hard turning. They were also much newer than the Snowpines. I bought the Snowpines in 1990 and the Garmonts in 1996 or '97. Since I quit lift-served skiing by about 1999, they'd seen most of their use in the back country. It didn't seem like a lot of use.

Coming into the house after a trip up the back mountain I heard a funny slap noise with each step. The outsoles were coming off the Garmonts, and the midsoles had cracks in them. The cracks were far less drastic than the crumbling of the Asolos, but undeniably there.

A cheapskate would have tried to use Shoe Goo or some other contact cement to patch the boots together. I chose instead to consult a professional. I did try to stick the Asolos together with some glue, but when it obviously couldn't hold I quit. No sense in making a professional repair more expensive because I gummed up the works being a cheapass.

We have the good fortune to have a real cobbler in the area. I sent the boots to Daub's, in Laconia. He got back to me with an estimate. Because I knew it would require the skilled labor of a human being, I was prepared to hear that it would be pretty pricey. I was even preparing to decide which pair to choose if the price was really staggering.

Technofascism afflicts skiing as much as bicycling. Most skiers would have junked the leather boots long ago for plastic, and maybe adopted a system binding for the touring skis. I flatter myself that I know better. Besides, the boots themselves are still sound. A well-made leather boot can last for decades, which is one reason that they are no longer widely available. My 1984 Fabiano hiking boots are on their second set of soles, but they're still comfortable and supportive, albeit rather heavy. We were used to heavy boots back then. A rugged boot was a comfort in rough country. The cobbler who resoled those used screws to reinforce the glue bond. And I wouldn't take them on a long trip anymore, but still on many a happy day hike.

Jim Daubenspeck (Daub) called to say that the boots would cost $160 each to repair. Because I had thought it might be far higher, and allowing for inflation, it seemed reasonable enough. I vacillated for a moment about whether to have just one pair done -- but which one? I said, "What the heck. Do them both." Then I did the math, of course, but dammit, the boots are irreplaceable in this modern plastic world, and they have provided my primary means of winter exercise. I paid wholesale for both pairs when they were new. I would pay wholesale now for a replacement, but I hate to junk something with life left in it just to have something new.

Each pair has its strengths. The Snowpine is an excellent heavy touring boot with turning capability. I learned on the groomed slopes using that boot and the typical skis of the time. The Garmont was my heavy artillery for driving a slightly wider ski in ungroomed conditions. Since I can get into those just by going out my back door and hiking uphill, let alone making the ten-minute drive to the other end of the small mountain range that forms the center of town, the boots are my lifeline to fitness and my treatment for winter depression.

This will guarantee that we don't have much snow this winter.

Out in the neighborhood

The day was sunny and too warm for the time of year. These things have always happened in New England, but they seem more significant now that we know what the Industrial Age has been doing to our atmosphere for decades.

The warm day made the snow very clingy and slow. It supported a high climbing angle, but the weight of it made progress slow. What I might gain in direct approach I lost in the methodical pace I had to maintain to keep a reasonable heart rate. But the grippy snow made my one little stream crossing very easy.

Above the sapling zone, I climbed through the logged clearings.

The snow has filled in more and more of the tortured surface left by heavy equipment, with stumps and slash thrown in. The rise of pellet stoves has made much of the slash a marketable commodity, so less of it is left behind, but there are still exposed roots and plenty of limbs and tops left over.

Going up I scouted the descent. The logging operation cleared hundreds of acres, but the property does not go to the summit. As I worked my way up and over, I also had to keep an eye on the snow cover, vegetation, and steepness of the upper reaches. The ridge divides into three smaller ridges on the southern end. You can waste a lot of energy if you try to go too straight up too soon. You already have to surmount steeper steps. I've developed a route that minimizes wasted effort by traversing to the left and then coming onto the summit plateau from a more westerly direction. I avoid frontal assaults.

The summit itself is a little bump on the ridge.

I took this picture looking back as I started down. In a sunny patch, I stopped to tighten my boot laces for the torque of turning in heavy snow.

From the climb I had determined that I wanted to keep my descent route to the right of my climbing track for the first few hundred feet of elevation loss. Some of the steepest terrain is still tree-covered, and this snow was not good for quick turns. As slow as the snow was overall, on a steep pitch it wouldn't provide much braking, while it still inhibited turning.

The first bit off the summit is pretty mild.

Not far beyond that, the slope drops off significantly,

Note the dropoff.

Once on the upper steep part, you get to see that it gets even steeper below you.

I stopped along here to eyeball the descent ahead of me. It's easy to get lured down too far in this part, and have to traverse out again. Time was short.

There's another dropoff. Deer tracks create the illusion of my own tracks, so I had to make sure I was shadowing my actual line, rather than following the herd.

I tried to capture the steepness in a picture, by sticking my ski pole down a couple of feet below me. You have to look at it a while, and have looked at similar prospects yourself, to begin to see it. Photos flatten everything out.

This tree was worth a small detour. I don't know which windstorm brought it down, but I bet it made a noise.

A few more careful turns brought me to the top of the open area again.

Geological landmarks like this boulder have been hidden by the forest. They're quite noticeable now.

To the left of the boulder I could scan cleared areas that go higher. If shredding the clearings was the goal, it would make sense to go up over there. I did ascend through some of that to begin my traverse of the upper zone on the way to the summit. But the descent lines through the remaining forest above that were not good. Okay for climbing, gnarly to thread on the way down.

Looking the other way from the big boulder, even steeper possibilities beckon, in the face of a stunning panorama of the Ossipee Range, Ossipee Lake, and more mountains beyond.

Again the photo flattens the steepness. You really have to look at the perspective for a while, unlike in person, where the depth of it pulls you in.

From here I traversed left to pick up my ascent line again. I'd mentally flagged the most promising looking swaths to ski down as I passed them on the way up. The heavy snow required some experience to manage speed control and turns. Most of the time, I had to aim pretty straight down, with the skis already in a narrow telemark stance, and then start to angulate as soon as I reached a moderate speed. But it was easy to suddenly over-turn as the heavy snow pulled the leading ski tip around. If that didn't happen, I might just go railing straight ahead. Then I'd have to either torque harder on the old boots or jump out of the cement to plant the skis on a new heading.

Sometimes I got results like this:

The sun was definitely getting low, and I still had to negotiate the bushwhack through sapling hell to get back to my own old-growth woods. Depression has always sunk its hooks into me at the end of an outing, even if I want to get home. The setting sun imparts urgency to the need to get back to easy territory. Sure, I had a headlamp, but I really didn't want to be groping through a steep thicket in the dark. It wasn't a strong possibility, but it could happen.

One fall reminded me of how stupid little mishaps can really mess up your life. I skied over a fallen log, and it washed my skis out from under me. I fell hard on my right elbow. The jolt went straight up my humerus to my neck. The snow cushioned the elbow, so it didn't get a real crack, and the pain in my neck was momentary, but I could imagine it being worse, with me out alone. I don't mind the idea of dying from my own stupidity, alone in a beautiful setting, but not right now. Less dire than that, but more probable, I could see giving my neck such a tweak that I have to wear one of those collars for weeks. Indeed, it did stiffen up a bit in the evening, and hurt when I awoke this morning.

Alpenglow settled across the mountain as I entered the sapling bushwhack. A layer of cloud to the west created a false sunset a few minutes ahead of the actual sunset.

The sun disappeared into the cloud for a little while before emerging below it to set for real behind the Ossipee Range. I squinted gratefully into it as I followed my track to the house.

Hot boxing: What it will do. What it won't do.

Many skiers like to have their skis saturated with glide wax using the “hot box” method. This has led to a lot of misunderstanding about what it does for the skis and the skier.

Hot boxing began as a way to speed up the saturation process on new skis, and increase the absorption of glide wax after a routine waxing. Early experimenters believed that keeping the skis warm for a while after regular iron-in waxing made more wax go into the base material. Extended, gentle warming does seem to help saturate new bases more quickly than applying dozens of coats of ironed-in wax. That's the beginning and end of it right there. You might also like to do it at the beginning or end of a season to refresh wax in the base, but the procedure is most useful to put a quick charge into new bases that have not been waxed at all.

Hot boxing is not a wax job to last you all season. You will need to iron on some glide wax after skiing a few times. Because your skis have been initially saturated, they will absorb and retain wax better than skis that have only had meager coats of wax at long intervals, but you still need to renew the surface. Cold, hard conditions are abrasive. Warmer, moist conditions often bring debris to the surface, which is also abrasive.

Hot boxing is only worth it on a high performance base. Performance skis have sintered bases. Sintered bases are made by pressing particles of base material into a layer in a sort of dry process, compared to extruding the plastic in a liquid or semi-liquid form. Extruded bases do not have the porous structure that sintered bases do. The pores are what hold the wax. Ski wax is more than just a polish. This isn't your kitchen floor, or your car.

Not all sintered bases are created equal. Cheaper racing skis, and many touring skis, use high-density sintered bases. These will not retain wax as well as lower-density base, but their microporous structure appears to interact better with the adhesives used in ski construction, making them somewhat more resistant to delamination than skis using extruded bases. Some of you may have experienced the tragic loss of a good old Trak or Karhu ski because the base material peeled off. Those companies used extruded bases because that technique was the best for producing the beloved Omnitrak waxless pattern. But plastic is notoriously hard to glue. Smooth plastic presents the greatest challenge to long-term adhesion. While high-density sintered bases are not immune to delamination, the material appears to give the glues a better grip. This is purely a field observation, unsupported by any kind of formal experimental proof.

If you do decide to iron a glide wax on a high-density sintered base, understand that you will have to re-wax at least as frequently as someone lovingly caring for a higher-end racing ski. The harder base material is more resistant to abuse, but also to hot wax.

Cheap skate skis will have higher density bases than more expensive skis will have.

Smear-on wax is not your friend. Almost no one likes to wax. If someone invented a magic wand that you could wave over the ski base to leave it perfectly waxed, skiers would say, “Awwww! Do we actually have to WAVE it?” Many skiers seem willing to believe that the smear-on potions made for extruded and high-density bases are good enough to get by with on their performance skis. Not only are smear-ons inadequate for more than a minute or two, they will actually leave residues that inhibit the absorption of ironed-in wax. Interestingly, super-expensive fluoro racing waxes in all forms will also leave residues in the base material that need to be cleaned out with expensive special fluoro remover so that you, the performance addict, can properly iron in some wax to nourish the inner structure of the base material.

Damaged bases will not absorb wax. Bases are most commonly damaged by using too hot an iron. A hot enough iron will fuse the sintered material, sealing the surface so that melted wax cannot soak in. If the damage isn't too deep, it can be scraped away using various methods, from razor scrapers, wire brushes, and abrasive pads like Fibertex, all the way up to a stone grind. Portions of the base can also be sort of mashed flat if you have skied them dry, or with too soft a wax, over very hard conditions. This damage can also be opened up again with brushes, scrapers, or Fibertex. This is more likely on a high-end ski with a low-density base. Low density bases are designed not only with plenty of porosity to absorb wax, but with the idea that a performance skier will want to imprint temporary structure into the base to deal with warmer, wetter conditions. The base material in its naked state is noticeably softer than on a ski designed to withstand neglect and abuse. And, as mentioned above, smear-ons and fluoros in general will fill the base pores with sludge. Expensive sludge, but sludge, nonetheless.

That white stuff isn't necessarily oxidation. Whiteness on a black ski base is commonly identified as “oxidation.” This is true often enough, as skiers neglect proper waxing, but even a careful and diligent waxer will see some whitened areas at times. Abrasive conditions can roughen an area, and cold conditions can cause wax to squeeze out of the base pores as the material contracts. Waxing guides mention that the skis should be cooled to air temperature and brushed out a few times as excess wax comes to the surface. Before hitting the panic button and insisting that your skis have been inadequately waxed, hit them with the horsehair brush for about ten strokes and see if the color improves. After a while you will develop the ability to look at the base after brushing to determine whether the whiteness was really oxidation. And of course you can never go wrong by waxing your skis one more time. But a good brushing may save you the trouble.

A note about skin skis: In the past couple of years, skin grip inserts – formerly known as mohair – have made a comeback. They first reappeared on classical racing skis to cover a temperature range and snow conditions in which kick waxing was basically impossible. “Zero” skis address the narrow heart of that range, but mohair offers a wider effective range. Now most companies offer mohair bases on multiple touring models as well.

Mohair was fairly common in the 1970s. It's the same material as climbing skins. As a grip base, it is held in with temperature-sensitive glue, similar to what is used to hold grips and baskets on poles. It is purposely intended to come off with the application of heat, so that worn out inserts can be easily replaced. This is generally not much warmer than the hot box temperature, so hot boxing of skin-base skis is not recommended. You need to be careful enough just ironing around a hair insert because you don't want melted wax to flow into the hair.

Space travel

Small to medium snowstorms over the past couple of weeks have left a dense base of snow in the woods around my neighborhood. It's not a deep base, but it is very substantial, allowing for some easy travel and careful turning on a couple of inches of the top layer. At least that was true when I took this picture:

That was a week ago. A small storm had dropped 2-3 inches of powder on top of the firm base. A bigger storm arrived the next day, bringing about 7 inches of much wetter, denser snow. That set up firmly when the temperature dropped to overnight lows just above and below zero.

A week ago, I ventured far into the logged area up the back mountain. The loggers had finished cutting, so the only noise and activity came from their loading area down by the road. The little powder layer offered surprisingly good turning, although the deep skidder ruts, and reefs of logging slash kept me from letting my speed build up. And I still have to thread dense saplings to get clear of my little patch of mature forest to make my way to the clearings.

Bushwhacking on skis isn't just a matter of slithering through the first gap you see, or even the widest gap you see. The consistency of the snow determines how steeply you can climb. Slope angle is the primary factor in route finding. Even if the snow has good density and moisture for climbing, slope angle determines how hard you will work to gain elevation. It's always easier to proceed obliquely than it is to charge straight up the fall line. Within the general angle of a slope you will find lots of micro terrain around which to shape your course.

I'm not one to want to get all sweaty and out of breath when I'm not on a groomed trail. On the groomies I will act more like I'm on my road bike, pushing things aerobically for a specific length of time. Trail conditions are usually consistent, and the way is clear. Out in the woods, I'm usually alone, and obstacles may be anywhere.

Coming down last week, I could link a few turns at a time before I had to work around slash, ruts, stumps, or rocks, mostly buried in the base snow.

Today, with the benefit of more than half a foot of added base depth, more surface obstacles were covered. But the higher water content made a breakable crust that was stiff to turn in. Below the crust, the snow was granular, so it didn't support a high climbing angle. In addition, once I got out into the logged area, the sun made the top layer clumpy. This really surprised me after three nights near or below zero, and daytime highs that stayed well below freezing. It was a good reminder that New England is not as far north as it acts. The sun is already starting to climb higher each day, and apparently can exert quite a bit of power, even through bits of high, thin cloud that kept the day from being completely dazzling.

Last week, even descending through the sapling cover I was able to fit in a few turns here and there. This week, that would have been an invitation to multiple injuries. But up in the open I was able to link a few.

There were still snags to avoid. With more snow due in a couple of approaching storms, the open spaces will offer more and more freedom just to carve it up. But the reward of bushwhacking is not just the skiing itself. It is also the quiet and the chance to peek at nature. I saw a porcupine dozing in a sunny treetop on my way up, and saw the tracks of deer and bobcat in the clearings.

Back down in the woods, the snow was even crustier because it had dripped from the trees for a couple of days after the storm was over. That wet mess refroze, making a fast surface. The firm crust resisted turning. Progress was a bit jerky, but it was still more fun than snowshoeing. If I had a firm objective, like a mountain summit, snowshoes would be a better choice. It's a plod on snowshoes, but a reliable plod.

Every time you go out on skis you learn a little more about what works. If you get to cover even an extra foot per stride, that's distance you would not have gotten "for free" on snowshoes. You may have to average out your gains with a bit of extra effort or ingenuity, threading the gaps and working the angles, but it's fun trying.