Where no skier has gone before, lately

 Untracked powder stretched before me. It's my own back yard, but a fresh snowfall makes it a new world. No one was going to break trail for me.

The storm had come on a Saturday night. It arrived later and left more quickly than the forecast had predicted, but left the maximum amount we'd been told we might expect. I'd cleared the the least amount necessary on Sunday morning to get out of the driveway and head to work. On Monday morning I had time to shovel away what was left around the house. It was light by New England standards, but heavier than airy fluff.

When I finally headed out, I made a wide sweep through pine woods, climbing very gradually, transitioning into hardwood forest as I went up. About 800 feet in from the road edge, the contour steepens all along this end of the small mountain range that forms the center of this end of town.

The town itself has no real center. It has little concentrations at various road junctions. The old town hall is about a mile from the Maine border, probably five miles in a straight line from the western corner of the town. Town House Road bisects the town, with the Green Mountain range filling the northern half, and a mixture of lower hills and glacial plain making up the southern half. It is mostly forested. A lot of it is wetland. It would be difficult to develop a lot of it because it's sensitive recharge area for the largest stratified drift aquifer in the state, and not well connected to transportation routes for heavy commercial loads. It's great.

When I moved here. the forest behind my house was relatively old growth pine and hardwood. From 1989 to 1998  I could bushwhack from my door to the other end of the range, about seven miles each way, and not see much sign of humans. Not recent ones, anyway. There were rock walls and some big stumps indicating that the forest had been cleared and regrown.

In 1998, an epic ice storm brought down the tops of many trees and dumped them into the formerly skiable spaces. The damage was widespread across thousands of square miles of the northeast USA and up into Canada. Around here, the damage was worst at about 800 feet above sea level and higher. While trees right down near my house at about 460 feet iced up and broke, the trees further up in what had been nice glades looked like they had been hit with a giant weed whacker.

A few years later, landowners on the big tracts above me started harvesting some timber. The clearings create unofficial ski trails, but they don't get maintained. New growth chokes them within a few years. By then, a lot of 1998 debris had cooked down, so a skier could climb and descend through the strips of older growth that the loggers had left.

New people have moved in. One built next to me at the back of the lot, pinching off what had been a leisurely line of ascent if I wanted to angle over toward a drainage with some steep lines through mostly pine and hemlock. On the other side, people who had a cabin in a hollow decided to put up a chateau on a plateau, bringing the threat of observation to what had been another set of great glades. They don't post their land, and seemed amenable to stealthy recreation (leave no trace), but I still feel awkward being seen.

Several years ago now, a landowner died who had kept his almost 200 acres undeveloped. His widow sold it to a strip-it-and-flip-it operation that mowed it almost completely, scraped off two lots on one of its pieces of road frontage, and left the scarred remains like a battlefield. I could ski up through it, but I really missed the comforting concealment of the old forest. And it's choked with briars and sweet fern now. The strips of older growth that they left were already bushy. Now they're almost impossible to connect. So my world keeps shrinking. But then so do my time and energy, it seems.

Last April, a heavy spring snowstorm really devastated the forest all over the area. A local logger rated it more damaging than 1998. Roads were blocked, power lines taken down, and lots and lots of trees bent and broke under the weight. That debris creates another giant obstacle course to negotiate.

Yesterday I only had an hour to poke around. The snow was like standing knee deep in baking soda. It didn't hold a steep climbing angle, but it held the skis firmly against gravity when I turned to descend. I grunted my way around and up to maybe 600 feet or a little higher before turning to trudge back down.

Because all of our snow this season has had very little moisture, there is no firm base. The last storm had a little more density, but still not a lot of structural strength. Supposedly it's a myth that the Inuit have 100 words for snow (or some similar amazing number), but I'll bet that they do have their own technical terms for all of the variations that different temperature and humidity can create.

The deer simulate ski lines as they follow each other through the glades. They also use my ski tracks if I get there first. Sometimes we see each other.

February is as winter as it gets. The upcoming week, beginning with Presidents Day weekend, is the sweet spot for likely winter conditions combined with noticeably increasing daylight. The days are still short enough to feel like winter, but offer a little more leeway for judgment errors and longer marches. And speaking of March, that bright and cheery month is the reward for putting up with the darkness, deep cold, and general drudgery of mundane necessities in winter. The chickadees are already singing their territorial song.

"I'm not hurting anything"

 Trail damage has been a continual problem for Nordic touring centers for years. In the end of the 1980s and early 1990s, the interlopers on our system in Wolfeboro were usually snowmobilers and ATVers, or local kids postholing in to their log forts where they might hang out, smoke, or drink. Sometimes they would make campfires. Most of the motorized destruction took place on the section of the trails that is mostly on town land. Most of the posthole stompers were in Sewall Woods, before it was named that.

Because Wolfeboro Cross-Country Ski Association maintained landowner contact, the association took responsibility for keeping the terms of the permission to just cross-country skiing and snowshoeing on the trails that the association cut and maintained. To offer the best product to skiers, the association kept up with advances in trail grooming technology. This benefited the local skiers as well as attracting skiers from the surrounding area and tourists from all of the usual places. As the grooming went from good to great to highly superior, the ski area became a reliable resource for skiers of all abilities, including the UNH ski team. Recently, the Harvard XC team stopped off to put in a day of training in Wolfeboro on their way to a longer weekend of it in Jackson. They had high praise for Wolfeboro's trail conditions.

Once what had been the Lakeview Nordic Trails became the Lakes Region Conservation Trust's Sewall Woods Preserve, the portion of the network on that convenient patch of woods was safe from the threat of development. But that sharply increased the level of year-round use and created a sense of entitlement among users who had no idea that they owe the very existence of the place to the decades of responsible work by the Wolfeboro Cross-Country Ski Association.

In addition to bare-booted stompers with their dogs (but apparently no bags available to take away the dog feces), cross-country ski areas in general have had to deal with the persistent pressure of fat bikers who bought their machines sort of assuming that they would be welcome wherever snow is packed down. Fat bike riders include many who have never cross-country skied, or who did so at a very rudimentary level, often on trails that were sketchily groomed if at all. Interestingly, some fat bike riders have also been performance skiers, but seem to forget as soon as they stick that saddle between their legs how much they appreciated pristine grooming and a nice track. We hear constantly about how you can barely see their tracks, as if that was the only problem with opening trails to machines that take up at least 31 inches of trail width all the time, and move to very different rhythms compared to skiers.

I recently posted critical things on social media and on my cycling blog regarding fat bikers poaching trail in Sewall Woods when the cover was thin and fragile. We were just trying to eke out a few kilometers for skiers who didn't like the more challenging terrain on our snowmaking loop. I referred to fat bikers as not only inconsiderately destructive, but as a needy and whiny demographic. Within a day, a fat biker had complained about that to upper management at the shop.

As luck would have it, the storm pattern shifted slightly in our favor. Snowfalls haven't been lavish, but cold temperatures meant that we got to keep what fell. The barely adequate covering got a little deeper each time. We're not running on a foot or two of durable base, but we've finally got a set track on more than 60 percent of the 30 kilometers we groom. So along comes a dog-walking stomper whose lovable mutts left brown cairns that the owner must have thought would make good auxiliary trail markers.

That fat biker messaged me a picture.

He said something about how I was bitching about a few fat bike tracks, and now...

Dude: a worse offense doesn't make the previous offense inoffensive. Both offenses are an insult to the groomer's efforts and show a profound lack of understanding of the aesthetics of performance skiing. Sure, we can maneuver around track damage. In a big race or on a big weekend there will be gouges and divots from heavy-footed skaters and various people's butt craters and face plants. At least those people were on skis, trying to do it. They weren't thumbing their noses at the signs, confident in the moral justification of their theft of services.

Yep. It's an actual crime. It can seem a bit strained when applied to a cross-country ski area that doesn't own the land, but the association built the trails, maintains them year-round, has steadily improved them over the years, and provides the grooming. It's not a free-for-all where any user can drop in and enjoy trails magically groomed by fairies. 

The "cheap" low-snow Gator grooming machine cost probably ten grand. A really nice PistenBully 100 costs anywhere from $60,000 for a used one to north of $100,000 for a new one. And then there's the 3-6 hours the groomer puts in nearly every morning from three or four a.m. until it's done. Then he's off to his day job for eight hours. Reward him with a few tire tracks or stomping footprints and a frozen dog turd. Aren't you special?

The Wolfeboro Cross-Country Ski Association may not survive its founders. They're getting older and tireder, and younger generations don't seem to have the same drive to operate organizations like it. A lot of factors contribute. When it's gone, it will be gone for good. The large expanses of land will remain, and some grooming might get done. So everyone can jump in there and throw elbows to defend their space at any given time. Just be patient. You won't have anyone to complain to, but no one will be telling you how to behave, either. Just don't bother to bring your fast skis. That will be done and gone.

Fake it until you break it

 My opportunities to ski classical on performance equipment have been very limited for a couple of years. Last season I got out a few times on our snowmaking loop. At least once ( I think it was more) I was testing various klister combinations to see if I could get that perfect catch-and-release of fast classical skiing. I never did.

On the sales floor, I will often describe and demonstrate some of the differences between a comfortable touring shuffle and a precise technical stride as I lay out the options for a customer trying to pick out their next ski set. But sliding on snow cannot be simulated on dry land. One move flows into the next. You can freeze a frame at a time, but the action on snow must proceed without breaks between one phase and the next.

Walking or running might seem to flow in the same way, but you can usually stop and start again at any time. Skate skiing is easier to interrupt and resume, because each ski does not have to stop for a precise instant. If you stop at some random point and just glide, you can resume skating just by angling your skis properly and digging in. But in performance classical you need to be right on top of the kick zone of one ski at a time, and punch it down at the precise instant that it passes under you. At the same instant, your other ski is sliding through and out in front of you. Your weight has to go completely from the stopped ski to the sliding ski in that moment.

A properly fitted performance classic ski will have a camber stiff enough to allow you to glide with all of your weight on one ski, only sticking the kick zone when you unload the muscles on that side of your body, from just above the hip all the way down through the foot. It's something that you never do while walking or running. It is completely unique to performance classical skiing.

Touring on a nice soft ski demands none of this. You can drive the hip to get a little more oomph out of your stride, but you don't have to. You probably don't even want to, because it takes way more effort to drive a soft ski faster than it was meant to go.

Each style of skiing has its place. I was doing a lot of classical skiing on my exploring skis, using their secure climbing and easy turning to poke around in the woods with no particular need for a trail as such. With deep enough snow, I can take the same setup to trails and glades on the other end of the home mountain range, to link a few more turns. It's still not full-on single-camber turn hunting. None of that helps a lot when I finally get onto a well set track and try to use sportier skis.

As this season developed, conditions allowed for a little more reasonable kick waxing. But I had to reassemble all the broken pieces of the stride. You have to become aware of them individually before you can forget about them again.

To complicate matters, advancing through my late 60s, I have to deal with the losses of age. Genetics and regular conditioning can only do so much. You will lose strength, and some coordination. Joints aren't as smooth as they used to be. Adjust accordingly. My average coffee consumption is probably a little higher than optimal, but even without that an older athlete needs to pay attention to the hardworking heart. I wax a little longer.

While I was wobbling around like a puppet I also thought about how ski machines like the Nordic Trak were bad for technique. They worked the same large muscles through the same general motions, but completely lacked the nuance of kick timing, or an accurate simulation of the way you apply force through the poles. And resistance was increased through the skis themselves, and the rope system to which the hand grips were attached. This is not how skiing in the real world gets harder or easier. On snow, the resistance to the skis changes very little, usually based on hardness or softness of the snow. Exertion goes up or down as the skier moves body mass up or down, climbing, cruising on the level, or descending. You'd do as well running stairs to train for climbing on skis.

The storm pattern has favored getting and keeping snow for the past two or three storms. February and March usually bring whatever larger storms we get around here. Nothing is usual in the climate as it changes, but when the Arctic airmass shifts our way we can still get some of the weather that we used to take for granted. Cover may improve on the whole groomed system for a while.