"You'd think three feet of snow would do it."

 A customer discussing the current trail conditions began by saying, "I figured we were all set." He went on to say, "You'd think three feet of snow would do it."

You would only think that if you either hadn't been living in New England for very long, or hadn't been paying close attention for many years.

I moved here as an eager addict of winter mountain exploration. Summers were nice, but the real interest lay in the months governed by snow and ice. Having only lived in New England for three years of my childhood, in the mid 1960s, I had the usual outsider's impression that the place was close kin to the Arctic. The New England ski industry does its best to foster that illusion. Centuries of legend dating back to a period known as the Little Ice Age shaped the myth of New England. There was some truth to them for a couple of centuries, but various natural and man-made influences on climate have really undermined it in the past couple of decades.

Anyone who was here in New Hampshire in January, 1995, should remember what it was like to see an entire early winter's worth of snowpack vanish not only from the foothills and valleys but from the high peaks as well. Several days and nights of unseasonable warm temperatures, accompanied by heavy rain, turned the calendar back to November. Since that time we have seen similar, slightly less dramatic examples of the truth about New England's vulnerability to its actual latitude. Most of the region sits below the 45th Parallel, which marks the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. Central New Hampshire sits at the same latitude as the south of France. The south of France is warmed by the Mediterranean, and sits close to the Atlantic coast of Europe, so it receives warming influences from both of those water bodies. If you look at North America, parts of the west coast that sit north of New England's latitude have a much warmer climate because of the influence of the Pacific Ocean. Even during the Pleistocene glaciation -- the Ice Age -- the western part of  North America was ice-free all the way up to Alaska. Weather be weird.

As a lover of snow, I went through agonies in my early years here, waiting for the snow each winter, and watching the whims of weather take it away, or at least put it through temperature swings that turned it from passably soft to terrifyingly frozen in less than 24 hours. Hard-core skiers with the budget to do so will simply leave. They go to where powder is the norm. This conjures up all sorts of ethical questions regarding where your money comes from, and what are the environmental effects of unnecessary travel. Po' folks like me stay here and do what we can with what nature provides or inflicts. 

The pandemic brought an influx of people who might only know the place in summer mode. Many of them appear to bring with them the myth that the place will freeze solid and remain so until the glaciers retreat in late March or April. When was that true? The cliche about New England weather -- if you don't like it, wait a minute -- applies completely to the vagaries of winter. It's even more true with the changing climate bringing extremes like three feet of powder, followed in less than ten days by a deluge of warm rain that obliterates it entirely.

I do remember, just within my 33 years here, that the lakes used to freeze pretty reliably, but as early as the mid-1990s we saw years when the big lakes nearby -- Winnipesaukee and Sebago -- were open patches of startling blue in the white landscape of a winter cold enough to bring snow, but not cold enough to freeze deeper water bodies. Snowmobilers perfected their skimming techniques to the point where no one really watched anymore. They were just like winter jet skis churning up the bay in what had formerly seemed like an impossible feat.

On our groomed network, the groomer has managed to scrape up about three kilometers on what we call the Super Loop, a trail section with a very smooth and well-drained surface improved for summer use by sedate path bikes. Even there the frozen accumulation of snow and sleet is not deep enough to set a classic track. It's just combed out flat. The rest of the trail system is less refined, requiring deeper snow for the machine to get around. And the ungroomed wilds are full of obstacles, suitable only for hiking rather than skiing. We need to give it time and hope that winter delivers better conditions before it finally gives way to the raw, wet season we call springtime.

Welcome to New England.

There's snow and there's snow

October was cold and November has been snowy. It happens sometimes, even now in an era of warming average temperatures globally.

November 1989 was not only snowy, it was downright wintry. November and December were so cold that year that the ice in Wolfeboro Bay would support trucks and clusters of bobhouses before Christmas. But then January 1990 set what was at that time a record for average warmth. And the latter half of December had been very dry, even as it remained cold. We farmed our accumulated powder on the cross-country ski trails until January's warmth ruined it. By the middle of the month, winter precipitation had made its way back to us, but the winter was not epic.

The snow this November has not been powder. Today's snow kept mixing with rain. The temperature remained above freezing, so the moisture content was high, but the snow did not get impressively deep. There's a layer of wet slush at the ground that could still be there in January...and beyond.

Deep early snow inhibits the freezing of the ground and insulates water in the depths of the snowpack. If we get sustained bitter cold, and the snow hasn't gotten too deep yet, the lower layers have a chance to set up. If, instead, we get more warm snow before any cold powder that might come our way, the ghost of autumn's rains will lurk in the hollows to ice your skis as you shuffle through the back country.

The sticky stuff is great for going uphill. It can also be a good friend when threading tight vegetation going down. Today I went out to look at some downed trees that had taken down a power line. It wasn't the power line that serves my part of the grid. That went down later. But it's near my house. Someone on a local social media page had mentioned it. So I bushwhacked over. The slow snow allowed me to maneuver through tangles of downed trees that date back to last October's roaring gale that dropped a 95-foot pitch pine on my property. That one fell conveniently between two buildings. It took out the power to my house for a week, but it didn't break walls or roofs.

The maximum height for a pitch pine is usually 75 feet. But the ones still battling here as the white pines take over are quite large. At least a couple of them form the largest part of the tangle I skied around today.

People who don't know any better see snow and assume that it's good for ski areas. Ski areas will make the best of it and take the money, but even downhill areas are dealing with lots of surface water, tough grooming conditions, and unfrozen ground. Cross-country trails have it even worse. Especially with a large percentage of skiers who depend on groomed surfaces, we spend a lot of time explaining things to impatient skaters. They're welcome to go out and experience it for themselves. And once someone does, no further explanation is needed.

Last week, snow that fell as heavy, barely movable cement dried out and fluffed up with a shot of bitterly cold air. It became genuine powder. It was great for gliding and pretty poor for climbing. And it wasn't deep enough to provide security going downhill at any speed. Believe me, I tried. Below that tempting white mantle was the forest floor: newly-fallen leaves, branches, stumps, sticks.

No shot of deep cold is poised to follow this most recent winter storm. Quite the opposite: temperatures headed for the upper 30s to 40. Daylight is near its shortest now, so the sun can't do much if it comes out at all, but 40 is still 40.

Statistically, snowy Novembers do not tend to usher in long, continuously snowy winters. That's not to say they can't, but they usually don't. It's good, in a way. Snow management turns into a serious full-time job when it keeps on dumping, week after week.

A trudge in Clumpland

Yesterday, cold, dry snow fell steadily all day. It was one of those days where the snow falls constantly, but piles up to only a couple of inches.

Below the top dressing, the previous snowfall had not reached its maximum predicted depth, and had ended with misty rain here, so about 6 inches of powder is topped with a breakable crust. That's better than a hard glazed crust, but it's grabby when you're skiing ungroomed trails. I went out on my traditional-length exploring skis, with heavy leather boots. I have about a kilometer of trail folded onto my little patch of forest. Because of logging and changes of ownership of the land around me, I can no longer flit easily into open woods to bushwhack up the mountain. A wall of saplings blocks me from the exit I used to use. I've found a way to wiggle through, but I have to be in the mood for it.

Before skiing, I shoveled some snow left over from the 6-incher. After skiing I did a little stretching. Aches I'd been nursing since the end of bike commuting miraculously diminished. What hadn't felt like much exercise had been enough to regain mobility lost to seasonal depression and sloth.

Through the afternoon and overnight, the temperature remained in the 20s. This morning it remained down there for quite a while, even though the forecast called for a high above 40. But when it headed up it didn't waste any time. It had gone above freezing by the time I finished clearing the new snow and put on the skis.

I knew what I was getting into. I hadn't put on F4. By keeping the skis in contact with the snow as much as possible I was able to dislodge the clumps over and over. I didn't care if I got a huge glide. The extra resistance actually helped me get more out of the short trail. A fine drizzle joined the plops of snow falling from the trees. I didn't want to stay out too long anyway. I don't even know how long it was. More than 30 minutes, but well under an hour, I'd guess. And yet it was enough to add to the gains from yesterday. Four days ago I felt like a candidate for a hip replacement. Three days ago, after some aggressive stretching, I'd managed to get the hip pain to move to other muscles nearby, but still felt it going up or down stairs. After two days of really minor skiing, everything is moving much more freely. A hard-core workout would probably have done less good.

The advice of experts often comes from hard-core adherents who push themselves to the limit over and over. But then a lot of those people seem to end up hurting themselves in scary ways, like atrial fibrillation, not to mention joint damage and other musculoskeletal issues related to heavy use and repetitive motion. Cross-country skiing involves no routine repetitive impacts (provided you miss the trees), but the dry-land training can get pretty intense among the driven types who like to excel at very strenuous activities. If a little is good, more is not necessarily better, if you happen to find yourself living past age 50. A more gradual approach helps in the long haul.

A little is better than nothing, think of it that way. And a little more from time to time is helpful. If you start getting drawn into the neurosis of competition, be prepared to spend money on medical interventions. If that's your bag, and you have the budget, have fun! I like to go fast once in a while, but an instinct kicks in when I start to feel like it's ripping my lungs out. I'm just a tourist at heart. I climb mountains for the scenery, not the glory. I ride a bike to get from place to place and enjoy the countryside. If this area had a comprehensive trail network that connected practical destinations, I would ski from place to place, too. But the snow has always been somewhat unreliable, and nowadays it's really unreliable.

A little bit of cross-country skiing is worth it. More can be nice, but a reliable little bit will help you a lot.

Alone with snow

After that last post on January 23, we lost everything well before spring arrived. The snow that fell later didn't restore conditions. Spring snow is lousy for spring skiing.

Our first big storm of the 2017-'18 season is delivering 6-10 inches of cold, dry powder. This is on top of about four inches from a couple of days ago. Because this is one of my normal days off, I was able to go out while the snow is still falling. It won't finish until late tonight or early tomorrow morning. With a La Nina and a big volcanic eruption in the Pacific, we may be looking at a cold, snowy winter.

All my life I have loved snow. When I lived in Miami I dallied with tropical languor, but it was just a fling. At the end of college I moved north and asked everyone who had been there, "What'd I miss?" I missed the Blizzard of 1978, for one thing. I missed the communal bond of everyone who faces frozen precipitation. Some hate it and can't get away fast enough. Others love it and won't hear a word spoken against it. I've always been more realistic, loving what I love, but acknowledging the challenge.

Snow should be shared. The fun should be taken with a friend or friends. The burden should be borne with a partner or a coalition. A snowy day invites outdoor play and indoor snuggling and warm treats.  Even the chores can be sociable if companions are available. I don't have them, but I recommend them.

I'll probably be up on my roof at least once during the season, thigh deep in snow, knowing that once I hurl it to the ground I will still have to move a lot of the compacted mass from where it landed. Every year, that gets harder. Beyond the tedium of a long, arduous chore is also a bone-deep fear that I won't be up to the task. Aging is part preparation, part genetics. The woman I know around here who shoveled her own roof until she was about 91 years old is a rare specimen. Longevity runs in my family but I take nothing for granted. Just because you're alive doesn't mean you're strong enough to get everything done the way you once did. And with every storm I have to get my driveway and doorways passable, while still getting to work somewhere in the vicinity of opening time.

Whatever difficulties I have are not snow's fault. It's still the same innocent killer it always was. You can sled on it, ski on it, build forts and snowball fight. You can wreck your car in it or get buried in an avalanche. It's nothing personal. I like that.

We've got you covered

Finally went out for a ski in the woods out back. What I found did not surprise me, though I marvel at it every time I encounter it.

Snow cover is very complete, even after many days with high temperatures solidly above freezing. The sun is so weak this time of year that the snow is actually dense and crunchy nearly everywhere.

With rain and warm temperatures, we don't have the full depth that 12 inches on Thanksgiving and a couple more storms with two to four would leave us if we'd gone into a real winter deep freeze. But the same weather pattern in late February would have melted the snow so fast you could practically hear it sizzle.

Warm water lies close to the surface in the saturated, unfrozen ground. You ski where you can, because you can, not because you have to. In a full-on winter with complete coverage of deep snow, a ramble in the woods would require skis or snowshoes. That's the kind of winter we hope for every year. Optional skiing is different. You get to slide and glide on thin cover rather than just trudge, but you could trudge if you had to. You can ski on snow so thin that snowshoes are ridiculously unnecessary, using the gliding qualities of the medium more than the flotation ability of the ski.

Looks like one more good day of this kind of skiing before another rainstorm. We're in the last shortening of the shortest daylight, so the snow cover may actually continue to hold up in a lot of places. But where it has been groomed it has been thinned and damaged by the machinery, making it more vulnerable to hostile weather.

Muscle Memory Encore

On Sunday another unusual opportunity to ski came up late in the day. To get the most out of the short time slot I used skating skis.

Skating isn't really harder than classical, but it uses the skiing muscles differently, which can feel harder when you're out of shape. In classical the skis stay together, parallel, so when you're reduced to trudging it feels more natural. The same plod on skating skis really feels like a pathetic waddle. So I went harder than I should, to try to stay in a speed range that flowed smoothly.

Almost the same distance I skied on Friday using classical skis took only two-thirds as long.

I was already stiff from the classical skiing. It tormented muscles that had been unmolested for more than a year. At my age the pain ramps up over a couple of days, so I was peaking when I went out to skate. Interestingly, the pain of skating decided not to wait. It detected the pain I was feeling from the classical outing and said, "hey! Me too!"

In spite of my stiffness, muscle memory provided accurate technique, as it had on Friday. I went through the motions. Fatigue made me sloppy, but I had no doubt about what I was trying to do.

Experience hurts at a time like this, because the body remembers moving at a certain speed. I wasn't trying for race pace, but I'm so deteriorated that even an easy pace was shredding me. I never had much patience for dry-land training. Back when I got out regularly I could fudge the dry-land phase and make it up in the early season. Now that I can't count on getting out there at all, let alone early, I would have to choke down a much longer period of dry-land alternatives to be almost ready for my chance at real skiing.

A longer period on classic skis would help. If more opportunities come along I will try to use the classic skis to regain some sort of fitness base. Skiing is absolutely the best exercise to get ready for skiing. Everything else you might do is simply to get you to the snow again.

The coming ski season

Cold winds and shortening days used to signal the approach of the winter fun season in New England. Whatever was lost of warmth and light was a positive step toward freezing the world to receive and retain the snow.

Into the steadily colder world we would go, training steadily to acclimate to winter conditions. You don't want wait until the snow arrives to start getting yourself in shape to get around on it.

Snow would accumulate all winter. The snowpack would consolidate. Thaws might reduce it, but almost never destroyed it completely.

Some people do an amazing job of maintaining their faith that this winter will be a good one. No matter how many times we get little or nothing, the true believers never falter. If it depended on belief alone we would never have a muddy winter. The Red Sox would always be in the World Series,  too.

I have always recommended versatility. If you have several winter activities that take advantage of different conditions you can shift among them as conditions require. But I have to say that raw, damp weather and mud provide the fewest opportunities.

When people try  to talk to me about the coming winter I change the subject or get out of the conversation as quickly as I can. That can be hard when I'm supposed to be selling skis. Since I no longer get to eat the steak it's hard enough already to sell the sizzle.

When I lived in Maryland,  I would watch a usable snowfall melt away in hours before I ever got to ski on it. Now the changing climate has brought the same kind of challenge to this place that seemed so far north when I arrived here. This picks off more potential time slots as more of them are icy or slushy. And that's if they're not open mud.

Park and Ski ain't happening

My plans to try park-and-ski commuting have failed on the usual problem: When there's snow there's no place to park. Big G's failed on the fact that he would already have driven much further to get a reasonable ski distance from which to launch that phase, so it seemed kind of silly.

In any case, the places we hoped to hang cars do not get cleared because no one in the normal population uses them in the white months.

The white months themselves seem to be turning gray and brown again. We need a new plan. Probably several plans.

Winter lovers getting antsy

You have to ask yourself how much of the Old Farmer's Almanac prediction of a cold, snowy winter is based on ski area ad revenues in Yankee Magazine. "Secret formula" indeed. Sunspots. Precession of the Earth's axis. Woolly bear caterpillars. Full-page ads from Killington. Ka-ching! We have your prediction.

Every winter is going to be great until it turns out to be lousy. The progression goes like this:

1.  "Maybe it'll start early! If we get an early hard freeze and a good Nor'easter in November we could be on snow in early December and keep it going until April!"

2.  "It never really snows until late December at the earliest. We're still on schedule. Squirrels have been hiding a lot of nuts! Surely an animal known for dashing out in front of cars has powers of prediction beyond our comprehension."

3.  "It never REALLY snows until January. Skiing at Christmas time is more of a treat than a regular thing we can count on. We're fine."

4.  "The big stuff moves in in February. Just use your rock skis for now."

5.  "It could still turn around. You know it never really comes down deep until March."

6.   "There's probably enough for good spring skiing up high."

7.  "F*** this! Where's my bike?"

Whatever will be will be. But hard core skiers are not known for philosophical acceptance. Businesses that depend on their optimism can't afford to look casual about it either.

I'll be hiding in the back because I'm a lousy faker. I care, but I refuse to get all wound up over it.

Tedium

Sundays are so tedious they've started to slop over into Saturday.

Sundays have their own time warp. On a Sunday afternoon, a flurry of activity that would eat up an hour or two on another day will prove to have expended about 10 minutes at best when you check the clock after it ends. This extended boredom has started to attack Saturday as well.

The ground is bare. Hardly any cross-country ski areas have any open trails. The next storm is shaping up to be warm and wet, not deep and white. We lost Christmas week. Now we're fixing to lose Martin Luther King weekend. Our big winter earning periods are getting hammered.

Aside from a bit of maintenance on rental skates and one or two out-of-season bike repairs, we have little to do but brainstorm new directions for this business or new businesses in case this one is too damaged to survive.

If I had known that winter was going to die out in my lifetime, I would not have wasted time learning to ski. I enjoyed cross-country and backcountry skiing skiing immensely, but I would have put the time into bicycle-related skills and boating. I might not even have moved to New Hampshire, although I have enjoyed mountain hiking and rock climbing. For all that I get to do THAT I might as well have stayed on the immediate coast and stuck to maritime pursuits.

Chaos being chaos, you can't change one variable without affecting a whole slew of other ones. Parallel universes are fun to imagine sometimes, but I happen to be aware of only this one. So I chart my course from this point on.

One thing's for sure: this is a great year not to be at Jackson Ski Touring. While that's true of any year, it is particularly true in a year like this, that far exceeds even the disastrous season of 2005-'06. It was a major financial burden to maintain the inventory and staff that Jackson required on the off chance that we might get snow. Fortunately, that bad winter afflicted enough of the country to make the ski industry lenient about credit terms. Even so, the scars have lasted long enough to be considered permanent. This hideous winter only gouges deeper at the same injuries. The devastation of the ski business is once again widespread enough to keep our creditors from sending the leg-breakers after us, but that indulgence is little help when the changing climate seems well on the way to destroying our whole sport.

Cross-country skiing was a beautiful experience. I can't say that any of the memories make me feel like I'm back there doing it, but I can appreciate how much fun it was while it lasted. No single activity can equal it for full-body and full-mind exercise. Because of that, nothing can replace it and its skills cannot be applied to anything else. Parts can be applied to many things, but, without skiing to reinforce them, they will have to be maintained piecemeal.

In 2005-'06, bitter, paranoid and angry after the cowardly treachery of persons still unidentified in Jackson, I enjoyed the winter without skiing. I rode my bike while I watched the addicted skiers curdle with frustration. I felt as if nature itself had jumped in on my side. Now, as cross-country skiing seems to be lurching toward extinction, the fact that I don't get to do it simply merges with the way all cross-country skiers are having it stripped from their lives.

From a business standpoint it's a bitch that we're stuck with all the ski gear in our inventory. There's an investment we will never recoup if snow has really gone the way of the passenger pigeon and the dodo bird. If winter really is just another casualty of human folly, all business related to it will suffer.

I can build and repair bicycles. I can get used to having slow, quiet winters in which to prepare for busy, active summers, at least for as long as I am able to be active at all. I decided in 2005 that I could live without skiing. I still skied as much as I could, because it's fun and good for you, but I knew I could let it go when the time came. Has the time come? We shall see. It seems to have come for me, anyway, given the needs of the business and the rest of my life. Whatever I do with myself after whatever happens to the business where I currently work, I will not invest anything in the future of cross-country skiing. I don't think it has one. Not until the collapse of industrial society allows the climate to rebalance itself in however many hundreds or thousands of years that will take.

Mind you I will be content to let the winter make a fool of me by delivering commercial quantities of snow to save us. I still advise against investing heavily in cross-country skiing, though. I'm afraid it's really finished, for the most part.

Commercial Expertise

"You had some purple ski goggles with a picture of Lindsey Vonn on them. Did they get sold?" the customer asked.

The goggles had sold. The customer left the counter to browse around other displays.

It's only a matter of luck that I know who Lindsey Vonn is. I barely do. I just happen to recognize the name from some downhill ski coverage I caught somewhere along the line. It made me notice the difference between the expertise of real experience as opposed to commercial expertise: knowing the trends and buzz words your customers are likely to use before they come in and use them on you.

In my ideal life I would spend a lot of time actually skiing. At one time the ideal and the real coincided enough to give me a solid amount of experience I could use to help less experienced skiers make good choices selecting skis for groomed or off-trail use. This kind of expertise is almost useless in a commercial setting. This is the point the management of Jackson Ski Touring was trying to make when they kept trying to get me to spend a lot less time trying to educate customers and a lot more time separating them more quickly from their money and shoveling them out of the lodge. A boring expert, no matter how helpful, is a lot less attractive than a cheerful, fashion-conscious servant who knows exactly what the customer is talking about at any level and has a quick solution for a price, ready to deploy.

Mind you, in the heyday of the servant class their cheerful demeanor hid all manner of scheming. That almost did not matter to the ruling class as long as no one gave them any attitude. The commercial expert needs a touch more showmanship than a mere servant, but the facade is still more important than actual stick time with the product being sold.

Here in Wolfe City the clientele is a bit less high strung and the management is as woefully unfashionable as I am. We're all stupid enough to believe that actually skiing counts for a lot and that the truth often trumps the misleading presentations of the industry that feeds off of the activity. No doubt that explains a lot about our financial circumstances. The poor bastards hired someone to whom principle matters. You know THAT always leads to the poor house.

At this point no one is skiing much. One wonders whether we're seeing the quick end to the cross-country ski era in the United States. If we don't get some winter soon we might be better off making funky furniture out of the rack full of weird, colored sticks in the showroom and devoting ourselves to bicycling year-round. That's actually a diverse enough industry to support many points of view and it doesn't depend on a very narrow and increasingly rare range of conditions to survive.

When snow is bad

The October snowstorm clearly overloaded the forest before it was ready. The resulting damage disrupted human life for weeks afterward as many people waited for electric power to be restored.

The snow that falls now is just as useless, piling up on unfrozen ground to insulate it from freezing deeply to support the snow we hope to get when winter actually arrives.

When I came to New Hampshire in 1987,  the locals I met felt that winter arriving on Thanksgiving was normal. Since I had come to enjoy winter, I was ready to give all of December to snow season. But in 1987, the weather had been cold for at least a few weeks. The ground was frozen. The snow might as well fall, because everything certainly looked and felt like winter.

With the shift in climate, the ground sometimes does not freeze deeply all winter. If we get these early, heavy snowstorms they keep the earth warm enough to harbor flowing water and eat away the snow cover from beneath. What looks like an early ski season is just a treacherous plod. The snow sticks to everything. Later, when the sun arcs higher in March, the warmth from above meets the warmth from below to eat away the snow pack.

We make the best of it because we have no choice.

Really early season

Eight inches of snow fell here in Effingham on Saturday night, October 29. On Sunday morning the sun hit the wet, clumpy mess. It didn't look like it would be any fun at all. I tried to ignore it and hoped it would go away, except for the three-ton berm I shoveled out of the mouth of the driveway where the plow had blocked it. I knew I had to get rid of that before it set up during the cold night to come.

Monday's sun melted some more of the ground cover, but an amazing amount remained. We didn't get anything like the dumping some towns got, with more than 20 inches in some places. I'm just as glad, since the ground has not frozen and the leaves are still on about half the trees.

This morning the coverage was holding up too well to ignore any longer. I wasn't going to get a bike ride. I might as well seize the novelty and go out on skis. I used my trusty Trak Edge traditional-length skis with a partial edge. They were Trak's clone of the Karhu Kodiak from the early 1990s. For boots and bindings I have Asolo Snowpine 75 mm boots and Rottefella Super Tele bindings.

The surface was still slightly crunchy when I set out. In places it was actually almost fast. These were actually some of the better ungroomed conditions I've been on in the past couple of years. A lot of our snow storms have been warm and sticky even in the real season. The timing of freeze and thaw has not been very convenient for me even when the weather has gotten cold enough to freeze wet glop solid. So I had a surprisingly good time. It wasn't time to lay down a bunch of turns through the trees, but it was a sporty shuffle in places.

The skis I used have served me well for this sort of skiing, whether I go for a half-hour or most of a day. The industry has promoted a different approach, but I've seen glimmers that the simple, durable touring ski is not dead. Madshus has one or two models. I haven't poked around to see what else might be out there. And 75 mm staged a bit of a comeback a few years ago after almost drowning in the tide of system bindings pushed by Rottefella and its allies, and by Salomon. In its thick-soled back country version it provides the best control of a heavier ski with the simplest, most durable binding. It would feel like trudging toil on a good groomed trail, but the ski setup for a good groomed trail would feel like a flimsy toy in rough, ungroomed conditions.

That being said, there's no guarantee that 75 mm will be around next year or the year after that. If someone figures out how to get people to dump money into Nordic the way they do into Alpine, the race will be on to get all the cheap-ass bark-eaters to update all their gear. But I guess that's true of any industrialized activity.

In the past decade I have seen a lot of furrowed brows out on the trails as people try to work with the mutating winter conditions in the northeast United States. Even in the mythic old days winter could take some odd twists in this region. Now it's downright wacky. It makes a mess of any regular training system. Now it's even reaching out to cramp the end of bike commuting more than the typical heavy flurries or sleet might have done. It pays to be creative and versatile. Unfortunately not everyone can bend their routines to accommodate the whims of weather. That's what keeps various kinds of indoor fitness center in business. I just don't have that kind of discipline or sociability.

Ski season approaches

As part of our preparation for ski rental season I cleaned up the high performance rental boots and freshened up their size markings.

A Freebie that's Actually Worth It

I have hated the "free hot wax with purchase of new skis" for many years. In its original form I still do. One quickie ironed-in layer is a waste of everyone's time.

We've entered a new era. At Nordic Skier we now offer school ski team racers who purchase new skis a free hotbox treatment.

Hotboxing takes the place of the time-consuming multi-layer prep jobs we used to sell. A hotbox more effectively heats the ski over a period of hours to soak the prep wax deeper into the base. The procedure actually takes MORE of my time than a singler ironed-on layer, but I feel like it doesn't WASTE my time, so it doesn't bother me at all.

The issue with me was never the time. It was the illusion that we had actually done something and the impression we created that glide waxing was some trivial thing that could be thrown in. Too often, that token splash of wax was all that ski ever saw for the rest of its life.

Even if the recipient of a free hotbox treatment never does any more to the bases, at least we know that a respectable amount of wax went in on that first day. Anyone who does not develop good waxing habits is being wantonly wasteful of their investment in gear. To encourage skiers to take up better waxing habits, the hotboxed ski will reward them with better glide. You absolutely cannot say the same for the one that got the token rub with an iron and a block of whatever was handy.

School team members who already purchased their skis somewhere else can still bring them to Nordic Skier for a $5 discount on any of the hotbox treatments the shop offers.

Another Slither

Went out for my once-weekly exercise today. The snow cover is thin. The surface is crusty or loose granular.

My skis had great grip in the glide phase and were nice and slippery in the kick. Still, it was good to get out and abuse myself. Eventually I'll get into a regular routine again.

For almost an hour I could forget about everything but getting myself out and back again along the trail.

Skiing, of all things

On Sunday, George and I took tag-outs. He checked out the Homologated Race Course up around the Eagle and Wave neighborhood. I went to the South Hall.

I just love the feelings of sickness, age and decrepitude that have come to mark my early-season forays for the past couple of years. I quit being relentlessly athletic about three years ago. No more obsessive weight training and dutiful use of indoor equipment to bridge the gaps between cycling and skiing, and to maintain upper body muscle in cycling season if I didn't get to paddle a kayak enough to keep it that way. I have more time for creative efforts, but the neglect has caught up with my body.

I mention this just to set the scene.

My car dealt handily with the snowy drive up Green Hill Road. Not so smoothly did I trudge onto the groomed wet snow on some waxless semi-compact skis with my old touring boots.

I switched to Race Classic Salomon boots several years ago as I took up higher-performance skis. My touring boots felt too stiff and heavy on skinny, responsive skis. I started to notice things about boot and binding flexibility that had not mattered to me before. This will happen to anyone who skis long enough. You may not be able to identify what you're feeling, but you'll know there's something, and it will affect your ability to get the most out of your skis.

On Sunday I only noticed that my old boots chewed the crap out of the back of one heel. I needed a newer sock to help me fill the volume around my somewhat narrow heel. Even though I used The Wonderknot, my heel could still shift a little.

I also nursed the secret hope that my sore shoulder would decide it had only been waiting for the beneficial motion of poling to heal itself. I noticed no immediate benefit, but there seems to be some residual effect today. Maybe it will help. The pain seems to stem from muscle tension. Nothing is more relaxing than a good Nordic ski workout.

I need that relaxation in the strange little world I inhabit in the winter.

On Snow

One storm of wonderslush that freezes up, followed by a couple of one- to three- inch dustings and suddenly we're on snow.

Nothing points out the inadequacy of your dry-land training like actual skiing. Nordic skiing is a full-body activity. Isolating muscles with specific exercises does not work them in the same integrated way that skiing does. Even roller skiing presents different challenges to balance and steering. Snow gives way laterally in ways that a rolling wheel does not.

The variable movements an experienced skier makes for stability and fine steering control are automatic. Because they follow no pattern, you can't train for them. They are what tires you in the first few outings.

Coordinating even strong muscles requires a period of adaptation. I'm out there today, double poling, wondering where my power went. In my case, just not enough devotion to training. Aerobically okay, generally fit, but poling adds another whole level.

The thing is, when you finish, the whole body feels flushed out. Every muscle has contributed, so every muscle has been refreshed. The metabolic glow lasts a long time and the peace will saturate you.