Tuesday, March 09, 2021

Spring skiing in the beginning of a drought

 

 The only picture comes from one of my outdoor cameras as I set out.

Yesterday I went out into the big clear cut on the mountainside behind my house. Logging at different times has made access tricky, especially on skis, because saplings have choked the hillside close above my property line. In old growth -- or what passes for old growth around here -- a skier can pick a line to suit the snow texture. Some snow holds a better climbing angle. Add a dense thicket to the contours, and a skier has to thread the tangle as well as managing traction.

To complicate my routefinding, I have to cross a stream. In recent years it has flowed all year, because so many trees have been removed on the slopes of its watershed. Without vegetation taking up water, more of it flows into the channel. Even when it was more distinctly seasonal, the channel was well defined and rocky.

In my early years here, I could traverse up along the bank of the stream to where it dwindled to a damp indentation, but the landowner on that side has built a larger house and is there more often. They've never minded explorers, and haven't posted their land, but I always hate to be seen. I look for crossings that would be harder to observe. I don't mind respectful exploration of my own little patch, but it always gives me a bit of a jolt when I see the very rare signs of it. And if I see disrespectful incursion I don't take it well at all.

My preferred crossing has required threading one sapling hell that dates to the late 1990s. As the stand thins itself, I can break off dead saplings to enhance gaps. It's not bad for ascent, but too tight for a fast, flowing descent. Above the saplings is a big area of mature hemlock and other conifers. The snow cover is always thinner under the dense boughs of the evergreens, but they also shade out any undergrowth. The slope is mostly not steep. Various crossings work, usually with one wide step across the stream. Approaching the stream it often looks like the snow lies across it unbroken. Then you get to the edge and see the deep little cut where the water flows.

Aside from the few little storms we've gotten in the past month and a half, we're in a near drought. The lack of snow cover is going to have a seriously bad effect on ground water when everything thaws out. While a late big snowstorm often does less for skiing than you might think, snow is always better than rain for replenishing groundwater. March and the beginning of April can deliver some heavy snows, even after an otherwise lackluster winter. Or it could be like last year, and the whole thing just ends in brown dryness.

Yesterday, approaching the stream not far into the hemlock zone, it looked like the snow covered the stream completely. Based on long experience, I didn't believe it, so I bypassed the first crossing to go further up to where the far bank was a bit less tricky to climb. Looking back, though, I saw that the snow did indeed completely cover the watercourse. Since keeping the skis dry is always a good idea, I went for the sealed crossing and tackled the bushwhack on the other side as a better option than dealing with even the meager flow at a higher crossing.

I don't mind doing some ridiculous bushwhacking on skis. It's one major reason that I ski alone. No one else should be expected to put up with my taste for inconvenience, and hardly anyone wants or needs to learn how to do it. It still beats snowshoeing, though. Skis are long, but skinny. I can squeeze through spaces on skis that would be much more awkward with snowshoes.

I should have taken pictures, but I wanted to keep moving. The logger who stripped the acreage I was going into has been engaged in a long process with the town to try to subdivide two house lots and fill a wetland to get access to them off of a dirt road at the far end of the parcel. I wanted to see if I could get to the back side of those lots, just to check out how they relate to the rest of the piece. I've been bushwhacking around up there for 32 years. It looks some different without the trees.

The snow is not deep, but it's very dense. That's why it covered the stream. The fact that the stream is barely flowing allowed the snow to hold. Out on the mountainside, snow texture varied with exposure to the sun. For a south-facing slope it was still surprisingly well covered. But the surface varied from deep mush to slick crust. The snow was undermined in places, and they weren't always obvious. In fact, they were seldom obvious. Going up this just meant that I had to watch my traction and set edges carefully. Heading down, it meant that the skis could slow and stop abruptly when they suddenly dropped into unsupported snow. This was in addition to the stumps of various sizes, and granite reefs barely concealed until I planted a ski on them.

Heading out I traversed to my left and climbed gradually. This gained me more elevation than I needed, but I'd forgotten my topo map, so I didn't realize that I was above the maintained portion of the dirt road until I got home and checked. All I knew while I was out there was that I ran out of time before encountering the road or any survey markers. The terrain is marked by several deep furrows, steep, but not deep ravines that go all the way to the base of the mountain. I left the clearcut and entered old growth again as I made my way across these. In that area I made my turn to head back down.

With deeper snow I might have taken a few turn runs on the way back, but not on the unreliable surface yesterday. Under the old trees,the snow was still frozen. It was no place for smooth carving, and not worth the trouble of jump turns. I angled back out on a contour to hold elevation until I got back to the open slopes.

The return trip took an hour of careful maneuvering. A few places allowed for a couple or three turns, but the obstacles included the kind of little sapling stub that can impale you if you slam any part of yourself into it, whether it's your butt or your face. Not only do I have no health insurance, I have no one to come looking for me, and no desire to go into a facility where sick people gather. I'm way into not getting injured.

The next several days are going to be quite warm, pushing 60F one day (15.5C). That will melt off the cover. The forecast holds no precipitation, though.