Rental Wrap-up

 The season appears to be winding down. Here it is, March 6, and the temperature is headed for the 50s by mid afternoon, The day began with drizzle and showers, which have given way to parting clouds and sunshine.

Average temperatures turn out to be higher than you might expect based on New England legend. Normal daytime highs go above freezing by the end of February in this part of New Hampshire. By March they're climbing through the 40s. We get cold snaps, and normally subfreezing nights, but the strong sun is joined by thawing temperatures at best.

Up north and up high, as well as micro-climates nearer by, will hold more snow, but of course climate change shifts all of those expectations. On our little touring center we are quite likely done for the year.

I mentioned at the beginning of winter that the Covid boom appeared to have ended. We have continued to get inquiries, but looking at our rental categories I note that the touring sector remained fairly strong, but skating ski and snowshoe rentals were way off last year's totals. It's not just because the shallower snow didn't really call for snowshoes, and the snow on the trails seemed to be a little soft for skating a lot of the time. Most renters don't know that. We weren't even getting asked.

As employment numbers have improved, people have less free time. They might still be interested, but lack the opportunity.

Interest in one form or another of locomotion on snow depends on exposure. Skate interest hasn't vanished. Renters might have bypassed us because they assumed that we didn't have usable conditions. Still, I'm surprised to see the steadily rising curve of interest in skate skiing level off so sharply even among the people who did show up here. Maybe their interest was dulled by hearing from a friend who rented the equipment and tried to master the technique with no instruction whatsoever. It can be exhausting if you don't absorb a couple of basic concepts. The experimenter comes away feeling like skating itself is too strenuous to pursue when it is actually no more fatiguing than classical on a nicely groomed surface. Do it wrong, though, and you will flounder miserably. Do it half right and you will still work way harder than you have to, and blame the technique in general rather than your own technique in particular.

You need to be fit to be fast, but you don't need to be fast to have fun. You can skate around at a touring pace without investing hours and hours in training. Or not. 

So now we're in that unclaimed territory in which we don't know whether to cram the ski rental stuff into its corner for the bike season or leave it out to take advantage of any late storm. Bike calls are picking up, and ski interest seems to be ending obligingly. Once the cover bakes off of critical links in our trail system, we can't groom it all anyway.

Beware of the Flying Starfish

 A beginner cross-country skier expressed concern about trying to control skinny skating skis on a downhill, especially if they were only on one ski, as he had seen some faster skiers doing.

Don't equate stability with control. This goes along with assuming that a wide ski will be better than a narrow one, but can appear as a separate problem to keep a beginner or intermediate skier from progressing.

I haven't been to a lift-served ski area since the late 1990s, but I'd be surprised if the Flying Starfish has become extinct. Flying starfish are skiers who only learned to control speed by making a wedge (pizza). When the wedge straightens out, accidentally or on purpose, the skier ends up in a wide stance that feels very stable laterally, but strands them with their center of mass hung between the skis. Their arms are usually held out from their sides at a downward angle. They manage to change direction somehow, but not in quick, linked turns.

The cross-country Flying Starfish comes in two basic forms. The touring starfish is just a version of the alpine starfish. It originates in the same insecurity, made worse by the detached heel of a Nordic binding, and the less substantial feeling of the gear overall. Whether you've been on alpine skis or not, cross-country skis seem like a really stupid invention when they start to accelerate under the influence of gravity and you don't know how to make them behave. Everyone tries to make that wedge, but that often leads to the wide stance as the skier bombs out of control, usually to end in a crater.

The ski-skater's Flying Starfish is also born of inexperience. The skating starfish is usually doing a V-1, which has a dominant and a non-dominant side, so both poles hit the snow at the same time as the right or left ski, depending on the individual's timing and whether they are right or left handed. To many skiers, a V-1 is skating. It's a visually obvious technique that's easy to grasp, but harder to understand and truly master. The starfish V-1 is also the common technique of sklassical skiers who like to mix techniques on their touring gear. It's the mythical "combi." 

The skating starfish holds the arms high, especially if the skier has gotten actual skating gear, with longer poles designed for the skate technique. Rather than keeping the hands close to the body (and face), the starfish holds the arms wide in imitation of the wide stance of the legs. It can even happen to experienced skiers when they are tired.

On a climb, particularly a long climb, most mere mortals will use a V-1 or even a diagonal V skate, which does require placing the skis in a wider V, and making sure that the poles stay clear of them. That's the entry by which a tired skier can fall into the starfish position by continuing to plod after the grade eases. If you remember to tighten everything back up, it is actually more efficient and speeds whatever recovery you're going to get.

On a descent, beginner and intermediate skiers may revert to the basics, trying to rely on the snowplow to keep speed in check. Note: the best way to control speed is not to get it in the first place. If a descent looks intimidating, move to the wedge early. You can stand still in the wedge at the top of the slope and then let up very gradually until the skis start to move, or you can let the skis run just a little and try to put the brakes on smoothly, but what often happens then is that you either stop and start in a jerky progression, or you lose control of the wedge, the skis straighten, and you're the Dive Bombing Starfish.

On touring center trails, especially when the loose snow on the surface has been ground up and combed out by a grooming machine, skiers descending in a wedge will scrape all of the loose snow out of the middle, creating a dandy bobsled run for anyone who comes along after them. Learning to ski on one ski at a time will get you down that luge course with a modicum of control. If you happen to get there while the granular snow is still well distributed over the whole width of the trail, being on one ski at a time will save that snow for skiers who come along later. They may never know to be grateful, but you will have made the world a better place. Take satisfaction in that.

Descending on one ski at a time doesn't have to be much faster than plowing down in a wedge. You simply continue the rhythm of skiing on the flats, but you set each ski at an angle across the slope, and don't stay on it for long. If the ski you're on starts to go in a direction you don't like, your other ski is available to set on a new course. If you were on both skis, you'd have to shift your weight to one ski anyway to free up the other one. It's better to get used to being on one ski at a time, most of the time. You can even be in the wedge stance, though not a really wide one, and just weight one ski at a time to set up a turning rhythm that also controls speed.

Winter's fragile skin

 If cross-country ski trail grooming was a competitive sport, our groomer Steve would own a permanent spot on the podium. But rather than a sport, grooming is an art.

In a winter like this one... and last one... and too many others in this era of winter's demise, grooming has been a delicate art. Our small touring center can't marshal an army of shovelers to move snow from where it might lie to where we need it. And it can only be pushed in by the grooming machine if it lies nearby and there's a clear path for it. But as long as there's a couple of inches of cover on a continuous loop, Steve can produce a usable trail. There are good groomers who don't ski, but Steve's art is elevated because he knows what he would like to see as a skier.

Last weekend we received eight or nine inches of light powder on top of bare dirt or yards and yards of solid ice. That packed down to two or three inches, not even enough to set a classic track. It was enough to open almost the entire 30K network, though. Renters flocked. Since the weekend, a couple of little clipper systems have brought a couple of inches at a time, which Steve has blended into the existing surface to produce a trail so nice that people are calling in to thank him. The weather has been cold enough, despite strengthening sun, to keep the system operating.

It all goes to hell on Saturday. The temperature is hopping up to the mid 30s, with sizzling sunshine. Sunday gets warmer and wetter, ushering in a week where the word "snow" does appear in many of each day's descriptions, but only as part of a mix, in temperatures well above freezing.

Right now I know that the little gladed knoll behind my house is covered with silky hero snow. I know this because I laid down a beautiful series of turns on it when I poked around out there on Tuesday. My town is a bit further north than the touring center, so I also got a little more snow out of the little clipper systems that have bustled through. The back yard looks inviting, but I have to go to work to earn money to buy cat food. The powder will be obliterated by the time my next days off come around.

Old winter has a fragile skin. Even in the accommodating powder on Tuesday I had to work around the fallen limbs and barely-covered rocks. I know the surface well, because it is literally my back yard. Further up, where the trees had been cleared and low growth has had a couple of seasons to get thicker, routefinding is trickier, with few opportunities to link turns on the descent. The little bits of powder aren't enough to fill in most of that, but I did find a few little pockets preserved by the strategic shade of trees, or a helpful fold in the contours.

Anyone living where the storms have been dumping will laugh at the idea that winter's hide is thin and delicate. It certainly varies from place to place and season to season -- or even week to week. 

March is considered a spring month by meteorologists. Although the daylight is less than 12 hours for more than half of the month in the northern hemisphere, the weather pattern definitely leans away from the cold and darkness of the real depths of winter. We do get big storms, but especially in recent years the snow they bring has been so heavy and sticky that it's often unusable. With a well-treated ski you might get around without forming big snowballs on your feet, but the grooming machine can't work with it unless the temperature goes down and stays down long enough to freeze-dry what's on the ground. And that has been increasingly rare.

Good for nothing weather (cross post from Citizen Rider)

 Wow! It's porn outside!

 Rain drummed on the roof. I heard the ice on the steep part shift as it moved closer to the edge. The temperature was 50 degrees (F), as it had been all night and for much of the previous day. The splashes in the driveway burst up almost on top of each other. What had been an almost unbroken layer of ice and compacted snow had turned to mud, except where it hadn't. As the temperature falls today, the remaining ice will set back up for the weekend. Within an hour, the sun had started to come out, but the air was still warm, and water flowed steadily from the roof.

This is Presidents' Day Weekend, the opening weekend of Massachusetts school vacation week. This is traditionally the biggest moneymaking period for New England ski areas if they didn't have a big Christmas week. Cross-country ski areas can't count on a big Christmas week the way downhill areas that have spent many thousands of dollar on snowmaking can. Our overhead is much lower, but we're at the mercy of the weather. In the past couple of decades, that weather has been increasingly merciless.

It all freezes up again this afternoon, but the damage is done. The trail system has been cut in too many places. The sections with usable snow are cut off by either bare ground or plates of ice that the tiller on the grooming machine can't reconstitute.

The fat bikers always pipe up about now to try to tell us that they are the answer. I will wearily dismantle that claim again as necessary. For instance: we might rent 30 or 40 sets of skis on a busy day. There is no way we could keep a fleet of 30 or 40 fat bikes. And our ski rental fleet is much larger than 30-40 sets. We have more than twice that many. The estimate of 30-40 pairs is a bit conservative. On a really crazy day we'll clear the rack and re-rent stuff wet to latecomers who are remarkably willing to put on boots that literally just came off of some stranger's sweaty feet.

The trail system can absorb far more skiers than bikers, as well. Skiers are much better equipped to slither past each other in a congested area, compared to rigid bicycles with 31-inch handlebars. So even if we flung the gates open wide and invited the bulbous crowd to cavort, it could look like the stampede scene from some movie about a cattle drive of longhorns.

Then there's cost: fat bikers who own their own will have shelled out somewhere in the neighborhood of $1,000 to $2,000 for their mounts, assuming that about half of them picked up a used one from some other rider who realized that it was more of an encumbrance than an asset and cut their losses. You can pay a lot more. In contrast, a new ski touring outfit costs about $400. Used stuff is almost as hard to find as new stuff with the ongoing pandemic disruptions, but if you do find something it could be quite cheap. And skis just lean quietly in a corner when you're not getting to use them. They take up little more room than a furled umbrella.

Snowshoeing remains an option, but the popular perception of snowshoeing is weird. A snowshoe is just a boat to float you on the snow. The size is calculated to keep you from slogging in your bare boots, anywhere from knee deep to waist deep. The addition of traction devices to the bottom is more recent, to make traversing hard frozen sections safer and more convenient. But once "snowshoeing" became a discrete activity performed for its own sake, rather than as part of the general category of winter hiking, people started using them on shallow snow and firm frozen trails that most of us with experience in winter hiking would see as just good footing without the encumbrance of snowshoes. Lots of rock and ice, and irregular ground, takes a toll on snowshoes. They're designed to be supported by a fairly uniform resistance from the snow beneath them.

In the "anything for a buck" mentality of winter rental, upper management will still say, "well, you can snowshoe," but anyone experienced already knows better. You will be better served to use Microspikes or a similar device. We don't rent those. Maybe we should.

Just on the basis of canceled reservations, we've lost hundreds of dollars. That may not seem like much in a world that considers an operation with 500 employees to be a "small business." but in the realm of really small businesses like ours, it's somebody's paycheck for a week. Along with that go retail sales we might have made from the group when they visited the shop to get their rentals or drop them off, and losses to other businesses in town if most of the prospective visitors decide not to come here at all. And we lose the walk-ins and same-day last minute reservation calls we typically get on a Saturday or Sunday morning. There aren't enough fat bikers in the world to equal that head count.

Indoor trainers laugh indulgently. They may not even look out a window from November to March. The super cool computerized systems feed them the virtual experience at whatever level they can afford to simulate. But indoor training depends on fantasy life. If you're like me, and have no fantasy life anymore, indoor training is just torment. All that ever propelled me through periods of indoor training were bright daydreams of the myriad ways I was going to use that fitness on pleasurable challenges.

I do look forward to commuting season. Driving sucks. But it's hard to maintain a lot of trainer enthusiasm just based on that. I can nip out for a few base mile rides when actual commuting season seems imminent, and be good to go. Maybe I'll get on the rollers a couple or three times for old times' sake before that.

The economics of long-term survival

"Are there any alpine shops in town?" I've lost count of how many times I've answered that question. The answer is no.

For a few years in the 1990s, the answer was yes, because a sport shop from across the lake tried to open a branch here in town, and that shop spun off another tiny, independent shop that tried to do just about everything. The big competitor found that there wasn't as much money in town as they'd thought. The small, independent guy scraped by in several different locations before shutting down in the first decade of this century.

Meanwhile, our cross-country ski shop is still here. It opened in 1972. It has never sold alpine equipment. We don't do the high-ticket sales that alpine shops do, but we don't have the overhead or the money tied up in expensive inventory.

Cross-country skiing started thousands of years ago, yet I saw one article describe it as "an off-shoot of downhill skiing." That's some ignorant, uninformed bullcrap right there. The fact is, if the economy collapsed tomorrow, people would still be able to -- and perhaps need to -- cross-country ski.

Well short of total societal and economic collapse, cross-country skiing is much more affordable for the skier and the trail provider, accepting natural snow as your standard. Going back to the natural origins of skiing, it developed in snowy areas as a way to get around in them with the least human effort, long before motorized assistance. Wherever snow remains, skiers will be able to cross country, with or without grooming equipment to make it more convenient or allow for specialized techniques like ski skating.

In areas like New England, where the snow type always varied widely, and tended more to the heavy and dense or outright frozen solid, skiing without the benefit of grooming is less reliable, which may be why the native population in this part of the world came up with the snowshoe instead. As the variations get wider and wilder in the changing climate, snowshoes provide reliable traction at the expense of glide. Cross-country skis and snowshoes are kin. They're ancestral ways to address the same problem of winter travel under your own power. With access to both, you can decide on any given day which one fits the conditions. Either way, you have many more opportunities to use the equipment than you have with a heavy, expensive set of alpine skis.

Regardless of the heavy cost of equipment, lift tickets, transportation, accommodations, and the operating of ski areas themselves, downhill skiing remains far and away the more popular form -- so much so that it is referred to as "normal skiing," "real skiing," "actual skiing," or simply "skiing." But in spite of that, an alpine shop has never managed to hang on here. The people with the real money mostly don't spend winters here. The dedicated alpiners got in the habit of shopping out of town long ago. And most skiers don't seem to update their equipment often enough to keep a shop afloat in a marginal economy like semi-rural New Hampshire.

 The alpine shops that have survived nearby are in places like the Mount Washington Valley, or the Laconia-Gilford area near the Gunstock Ski Area, or near other major downhill areas. One outlier is Ski Works in West Ossipee, which used to be near a ski area (Whittier), and managed to hang on after the ski area went belly-up in the late 1980s. It's right on Route 16, the trade route to the ski areas of the eastern part of the state, and also serves the school teams nearby. It survives on its reputation and tradition, drawing from a wide enough area without viable competition. Most of the rest of downhill ski commerce takes place near population centers that may be far removed from actual ski country.

Less expensive doesn't mean free. Cross-country ski areas today depend on motorized grooming equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well as smaller machines for lower snow depths, that still cost tens of thousands. Machinery like that requires off-season trail construction and maintenance to keep the surface wide enough and smooth enough to provide skiing with minimal snow, and a corridor clear enough to let the big machine get through when the snow might be feet deep. But all that grew from trails that were hand cut to the width of one or two people, with a track set by the passage of actual skiers working together to make it neat.

Downhill in the American northeast evolved similarly, because the first downhillers were cross-country skiers already, but they soon realized that they needed a lot more elbow room to go bombing down the steeps in a dense New England forest. Alpine skiing as we know it began in the actual Alps, where dodging trees is not the primary challenge. Transplanting the schussing thrills to the mountains of New England took more than gravity and snow. The amount of terrain and forest alteration needed to make alpine skiing relatively carefree cost a lot more than trimming out basic, old-style cross-country trails, and it's a tiny fraction of the cost of providing dependable manufactured snow.

Snowmaking came along later, as the subtly shifting climate exacerbated New England's already variable snow conditions. Lots of small ski areas either made the change too late or didn't make it at all, and disappeared. The survivors are generally large, sprawling complexes that have to draw skiers from hundreds of miles away. Like prehistoric megafauna, eventually they will leave only their bones for explorers to contemplate. The small and nimble mammals will still roam the forest.

The Boom is Bust

 Last winter, our shop and ski area saw interest at levels we hadn't seen since the 1980s and '90s. And even in the 1990s the trend was downward. But lots of people had schedule flexibility, and strong incentives to find something fun to do outdoors. 

This winter has not seen anything close to the same level of interest. A fair number of people seem to be looking for new or used gear to purchase, but rental business has pulled back to a moderate level on weekends and holidays. I say holidays, but we've only had the one so far. Christmas Week saw some pretty heavy rental business at the start of the week, but nothing like the frenzies that formed when we had skiable conditions last year.

Weather is a minor factor. The snow has been thin when we have it at all. It's sufficient to keep a few kilometers going for anyone who is really interested, but it's not a big white canvas on which the prospective skier can paint fantasy landscapes of the tour they hope to have.

Last weekend, we laid on extra help to deal with anticipated crowds and let them head home by 11 a.m. because no one had showed up.

We could have sold more ski sets this season if we could have gotten more product. The same goes for snowshoes, although in both categories the inquiries have tapered off.

Just as weather is not climate, so we might get what looks like "normal" weather during an overall shifting trend, so might we have busy days in rental or retail. But the boom has busted, as we knew it would. At least I hope that whoever is in charge of production knows it, because otherwise they will pump out product two seasons too late. On the plus side, it will mean closeouts and discounts like we haven't seen since the last century. On the minus side, the suppliers can't afford to take a hit like that, and it will create in the public's mind the impression that we really could be selling our wares for far less all the time.

We'll cross that snow bridge when we come to it. But remember that I said it.

If you don't care about others, at least think of yourself

 In one significant way, the winter of 2020-2021 was much better than the one we're in now. We had stringent pandemic precautions in place, and people abided by them or they didn't get to come in. We had enough people on staff to deal with the huge volume of rental business. The snow cover wasn't great, which is a new trend in the changing climate, but it was good enough for us to operate. The main issue was crowd control, and we had that well organized.

Last winter, there was no vaccine yet. The consequences of infection could be severe enough that we could make a case and make it stick. No doubt we lost some business, and invited some ridicule, but we're all still here. 

Over the summer, we relaxed our protocols as everyone else did. For a few months we even went maskless, until the Delta surge. When I had a close call with exposure through my position on the zoning board I serve on, we all started covering up again. We didn't go to the full system of baffles we'd used during the uncontrolled phase of the illness. We did not re-institute our mask mandate for incoming customers. But I really appreciated any customers who wore one anyway, and I appreciate them vastly more now.

The omicron variant has created a new realm of anxiety, aggravated by the fact that we now have fewer employees to run the business. Ideally, the staff should be no less than three. Most days we only have two. Because of that, I can't do service work as efficiently during business hours, because I have to drop it to deal with direct customer service needs on the retail floor and in rental, as well as covering the front while the other guy tries to shove down some food.

The other guy -- who actually owns the place -- is also the groomer. Get him sick, and we not only have to close the shop, you also don't get any groomed trails until he's off the disabled list. So, even if you aren't afraid of the illness, think it's trivial, and believe that we should all just snuffle each other's snot and get it over with, remember that your good time at our ski area depends on us being there to serve you. If you get us sick, we may not be dead or dying, but we're not at work.

Mask up, keep your distance, and don't be a jerk. It's called enlightened self interest.

Origins

Our lesson area is not right next to the entry point for the easy end of our trail system. I don't know how the other instructors feel about this, but it has always seemed a little awkward to me that we had to teach total beginners how to get up a hill just to get the to the ski school. When we relocated the lesson area to a better field, the traditional approach became even longer, with more climbing. But the new area sits conveniently near a satellite parking area, which became my preferred approach.

Discussing a lesson scheduled for this morning, I suggested that the two beginners use this alternate entrance. The shop owner disagreed. He felt that the main entrance provides more of a focal point, offsetting the difficulty and inconvenience of the inescapable climb. 

"It's all part of learning to ski," he said. Silently I disagreed with the idea that we should throw them in at the deep end, but then I considered my own start, which not only launched a long-term interest in the activity, but has ended up providing the bulk of my meager income. Life is what happens when you think you're working on something else.

The very first time I put on any kind of ski was in 1984, when I was already 27. I'd bought waxing skis, because I'd read that the good skiers used them. I'd bought what passed for a wide ski at the time, because I knew I was interested in exploring on them. But wide in those days was 56mm, and the traditional fitting system put me on a 205cm ski. The boots were the basic EMS 75mm, three-pin bowling shoes with no lateral stiffness. The snow was old and transformed. I'd been handed a red "hard" wax that was like melted gum, because the clerks at EMS who brought me the ski set I had pre-ordered by phone knew by my stupid questions and rookie requests that I would never be able to handle klister.

The group I came with from the Baltimore area would traditionally take the first part of the week attempting a fully-loaded traverse of the Presidential Range, and then do a ski tour to a hut to close out the week before driving straight through back to Maryland in the same clothes. In 1984, there were seven of us as I recall. I was the only one who had never been on skis at all. Two other XC rookies had downhill experience.

I've written before about how it took me about half an hour to get my second ski fastened, as we stood beside the forest road on the approach to the trail to Zealand Falls Hut. Well, the other people stood. I fell over again and again as I tried to capture that second binding. The group wisely left me there. I left a melted out crater from the fireball of profanity that I had generated as I thrashed in frustration. But, once I had both skis on, something about the phrase "kick and glide" clicked in my mind. I rapidly caught up to the group and churned past them. The thing about marginal wax is that once you get moving, you want to keep moving, because the grip is tenuous. All I knew at the time was that I needed to keep stomping.

Once the trail entered the woods and narrowed, I needed to do other things that I'd read about: herringboning and side-stepping on the steeper bits where a firm stomp wouldn't set the kick zone enough. I started looking outside the trail for angling traverses I could use to let me climb without using the tiring techniques of direct assault. Doing a herringbone on traditional long skis, with floppy boots, really takes it out of you.

On the short downhill bits that interrupted the steady climb I tried to turn the skis and control my speed by snowplowing as much as the trail width would allow. So I hit a few trees. Nothing serious, but I had skinned knuckles and a lot of bark in my hair by the time we arrived at the hut.

I was hooked. No idea why. I was bruised, abraded, sweaty, sore. But I'd felt the possibilities.

Not every beginner will have the same unaccountable desire to master the skills of cross-country skiing in a wide range of conditions. Thus is makes some sense to baby the students until we have a better idea of their determination. There's nothing wrong with being a fair weather skier who only likes groomed terrain. It's better than the expensive and much more mechanized downhill-only skiing and riding, or any motorized recreation. Cross-country skiing provides freedom through its variety. You can ski on snow-covered frozen lakes and ponds. You can ski uphill and down with no trail at all. You can go around and around a course of your own devising, to set a track the way tracks were set for thousands of years before grooming machines were invented. You can take advantage of the modern advancements on machine-groomed trail systems designed for you. You can teach yourself or seek professional instruction.

If you want to get better, you will have to learn from others, who also learned from others. Techniques have been distilled over time, even if they are fairly new compared to the thousands of years that basic cross-country skiing has been around. Different skiers will have different ways of expressing a concept, so you can take in a lot of different versions until you find the one that suits you. It doesn't have to come through official formal lessons. It can even come from overheard conversation. Experienced instructors will collect different metaphors and comparisons to match different learning styles. You can also read, and watch videos.

Practical skiing

 

Early winter has brought an awkward amount of snow to this part of New Hampshire. The temperature has kept undulating above and below freezing. The ground is barely frozen where it is frozen at all. But in some areas, notably the ones I have to cross on routine errands around the house, it's deep enough to make skiing on it more appealing than trudging through it. Not that it would slow me down much if I just stomped through it, but there's plenty to support a ski track, and a ski track ages better than a bunch of boot prints. It takes barely longer to lace up the ski boots and snap into skis than to put on ordinary boots and go make a stompy mess.

Skis are also useful for gathering kindling and emergency or supplemental firewood from the dead saplings and dried lower branches of the pines. A little bit of well-dried pine gets a fire going quickly.

Down in Wolfe City, the meager amount of snow was still enough to provide some sort of sliding conditions for skiers who had the time during the recent holiday week, as well as the usual determined locals who get their daily dose in the mornings before work. Grooming and heavier traffic both damage the snow, so there's barely enough for passage now, even on the best substrate, but it managed to survive, even with some warm drizzle soaked into it by storm systems at the end of the week. It's too thin to till up now that the temperature has dropped. Perhaps we will get a refreshing few inches on Friday.

Crunchiness is the defining sound of New England snow. The ungroomed snow around my house absorbed enough free water to freeze into a breakable crust over a variable few inches of frozen base. It's not full concrete, but it's not cooperative. With no particular hope or expectation, I set out to patrol my borders and read the news in footprints.

The deer herd has settled into its winter routine, which brings them to the woods near the house. They work this whole southwest-facing mountain slope. The extensive logging on the upper middle slopes has given them places to bask as the sun grows stronger. The uncut forest on my land provides cover in a storm. They also scuffle up fallen acorns and beech nuts, and bed down in the leaves. I saw lots of tracks as I crunched and clattered my way around the perimeter.

I wasn't planning to gain much elevation, but curiosity led me to start picking my way up the steeper rise at the back of the lot. This brought me to a line of boot prints. I seldom see human tracks. I don't post the land, because I like the tradition of zero-impact, exploratory trespassing. Once in a great while I see that someone has tried to enter on a motorized vehicle. That's when I pile brush and small saplings across the trails at entry points, just to give the hint. And the hint has always been taken. But any tracks alarm me a little bit, in case they're the first entry by someone who might not have that zero-impact ethic.

 New people bought a property with road frontage two lots away, but a back section that abuts my land. They have hosted ATV parties on the main part of their land, but have -- so far -- ignored the piece that would really bother me if they added trails to it for noisy, stinky, gratuitously Earth-raping toys. Between our properties lies another homestead, on a lot only subdivided in the last ten years. Those people have played from time to time with both ATVs and explosives, so I'm a bit on edge.

  When I first moved here, the forest was all well-grown, from the road edge to the far summit of Green Mountain, several miles away at the far end of the range. All of the houses were close enough to the road that I could go less than a thousand feet straight into the woods and then start a casually climbing traverse to the left, to make a broad, meandering climb to the nearest summit without seeing or bothering anyone. Now there's a house at the back of one lot, and a large cleared area on the next lot over. And something alarmed the nearest neighbor so that he put "no trespassing" signs around his entire perimeter, which I respect because I would want similar deference if I ever felt the need to bar entry to my land.

I don't own any camo, but I do dress in drab colors and try to stay near cover when possible. That's very difficult on the wide-open shaved areas of the upper middle slopes. The forest is uncut on the uppermost slopes, but you have to get there. I'm pretty sure that the neighbors on the other side are sympathetic to exploration. They have not posted their frontage. But they did build an impressive chalet up high. One of the most impressive things about it is how invisible it is. It's almost like a magic castle in the way that you can almost walk right into the side of it before you realize it's there. That's really nice, because it doesn't dominate the view the way the vanity mansions of many ridge-dwellers tend to do. But it means that I have to be extra-careful to find a climbing line that takes advantage of their uncut forest cover without letting them see me.

I didn't get into any of that yesterday, on the treacherous snow. I even took my skis off to track the boot prints, stepping into their tracks to obscure my own. I determined that the hiker had come from the side that I consider the safer bet that they will come and go quietly. Then I continued to carry my skis as I bushwhacked up along the stream to take a peek at the clear cut. Up there I saw a lot more deer tracks, but also bobcat, weasel, and possibly coyote. The possible canid tracks were mixed in with the deer tracks of similar size, and everything was a bit melted out. Two wild turkeys kept a wary eye on me from a hundred yards up the slope.

For the descent, I made my way back to the stream and across it on foot before putting skis back on. I was tired of carrying my skis, because I'd forgotten the strap to fasten them together. Skiing down was delicate, but still smoother than just crunching along on foot. I did a lot of stemming and sideslipping, but those are important techniques for the New England back-country explorer, especially alone.

Skiing leaves tracks in the snow, but the natural deviations that a skier makes will help obscure the trail if anyone is trying to track me. And on yesterday's crust I didn't leave much of a mark in a lot of places. The deviations were very wide, because the snow was too hazardous to get anywhere close to the fall line. The part I came down through is still thick with saplings from earlier logging regrowth, so the track at best is quite serpentine.

If we ever get good snow, the clear cuts beg for a some turns, but the cover has to be very good to cover the rough ground churned by massive skidders, and the slash and stumps, sweet fern and brambles. Since I'm always alone, any injury would be serious. In addition, I can't miss work. So I ski like a wuss. It's a great excuse, since I would ski like a wuss anyway. I hate getting banged up.