2-inch winter

One thing I noticed when I moved here to New Hampshire in the late 1980s was that a little bit of snow really hangs around. The low sun angle from November into February keeps it from sizzling away thin cover the way it does further south. That, combined with trees and the shadows of the mountains themselves work together to help snow accumulate a little at a time. All you need is fairly consistent cold, dry weather between snowstorms. Warm wetness will destroy everything, as we saw when the early December delivery of three feet or more in places was obliterated by a hot downpour on Christmas.

Following the Christmas debacle, we settled into a series of small storms and long dry spells, with very little wet precipitation. The storm before last brought heavy sleet, which has a lot of body and helps fortify any additional snow that follows. It also creates a shear layer to increase the avalanche hazard on steep and open slopes, but at lower angles and elevations, on slopes stabilized by well-grown trees, the crusty and granular layer merely presents interesting footing.

For those of us who just poke around in the woods and don't make it out to the gnarlier and more video-worthy venues, the snow has added up a couple of inches at a time to a fairly usable depth. Given the sleet layer, I wouldn't let things rip on my long, skinny traditional skis, but on something wider that will turn in the powder and float above the crust you might find some sporty diversion in obscure glades and recent clearcuts.

Temperature swings are a problem. Last night we had a solid four inches of delightful powder. Today's high temperature surpassed 40 degrees (F) (4.4C) with some direct sun. We're knocking on the door of March here, although one day of February is like seven days in any other month. The sun is up higher, for longer. There's a reason that meteorologists consider March part of spring, and you really notice it once you start trying to use snow rather than just curse and shovel it. Even so, with the right conditions a modest depth of 2+2+2+2+2 with maybe a three and a five tucked in there somewhere can last quite a while where it hasn't been groomed.

The 2-inch winter has not been kind to groomed cross-country areas. In New Hampshire, the X-C areas are spread out far enough to have micro climates all their own, as well as getting hit -- or not -- by banding snows from storms that skim over a wide area and hose down a limited one. Wherever the ski area, grooming does wear away the snow, on top of whatever is naturally lost to thawing. Skier traffic shaves it down, and tilling cuts into what's left. Once the snow is too thin for the tiller to scrape up anything without hitting the dirt under it, you're left to depend on natural softening -- also reducing the snow day by day -- until there's nothing.

Ungroomed snow lasts longer, as long as the traffic isn't too heavy. A popular hiking trail will get packed down to something like porcelain, possibly pocked with postholes in places. But open woods that allow for bushwhacking, or unpopular trails that haven't been trampled will age better. It's a good time to practice those archaic map and compass skills, or other backwoods techniques of dead reckoning. On familiar terrain you can do it all by landmarks.

The massive clear cut on the mountainside behind my house has taken some of the fun out of going there, because you can see so far. I also feel very exposed and visible out there now. And it attracts motorheads. I don't really want to run into anyone when I'm out, but my least favorite is someone on a machine. That's why I don't ski on snow machine trails. If I stumble on a snow machine trail when I'm bushwhacking, I do my best either to cross it and vanish or find a way to go parallel if I happen to want to go in the direction that it does. The open logged area does offer some steep ski lines that used to be much more challenging when I had to dodge trees, but the rough ground still needs a lot of snow to fill it in enough to do more than pick your way cautiously. I wouldn't even go look on a sticky, sunny day with meager base depth.

March can bring some big snows, but the warmer, wetter consistency and stronger sun can make late-arriving large additions to shallow snow more of a hindrance than a gift. Sometimes a March storm can bring deep powder. You still need to pay attention to the temperature. One year I went out the morning after a March storm brought at least a foot of powder, and shredded a few glades until about noon. I got to the bottom of a run and noticed that spring had arrived in the last five minutes. I traversed out through the powder now turned to wet cement, and merged with the trail to get back down to my car.