I almost missed a great sight the other night as I had my nose glued to the computer! But Rich mentioned it and I turned my head to the left to see

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont is in the midst of “sugarin'” season when the sap is flowing and sugarmakers everywhere are boiling one of Vermont’s trademark products. The local paper, Burlington Free Press has some stories, a video and a slide show of sugarin’ and boilin’ on their site today.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Is winter back? Well, it’s pretty but I can’t go out and ski in the woods even though we got lots of fluffy snow overnight and this morning. My skis would just go right down to the rocks and grass. Oh well. Bad for the maple syrup makers right now but its still early. They require cold nights and warm days for the sap to flow (up to the top when it warms up, down to the roots when it cools down…. each pass is a chance for the sap to flow out of the taps). But we had days and days of warm days and warm nights and now cold nights and cold days. Neither is the right combination! I did see the thick plumes of smoke coming out of a sugarhouse on monday. I wanted o stop and roll down my window so I could smell the sweet sugary smoke, but it wasn’t an option at the time. Did you know that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup?

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

After the long awaited beauiful dump of snow this weekend and then enjoying the great skiing in the woods, it was time to get some use from our weekday season pass at Mad River Glen yesterday. Another glorious blue sky day.

Most of these are from the chair lift as I was too busy skiing to take pictures.

Rich and I went in the afternoon and headed right to the single which would take us up to the tippy top.

This might be the oldest running chairlift in the country. It was christened in 1949 and is a landmark and a treasure of Vermont ski history. It’s the same chair I got stuck in for 2 1/2 hours a few winters ago, but they have done lots of great work on it since then.

We were excited to see some beautiful tracks in the snow below. Granted this photo is of a section of trail that was closed off so yes, it had some nice powder.

The higher you get the better the views are! You have to be willing to swivel around in that little chair though, to see them. First you start seeing awesome views of the Green Mountains behind you but then the White Mountains, further off in NH appear. The view is way better than this photo whenyou get to the top, but I had put my camera away by then.

I took this picture just for Chris Kinsman. The green blob is part of the chair. The rest is a big huge vertical rock with water ice on it. Notice all of the ski tracks going over it. This is why the slogan for Mad River is “ski it if you can”.

This is typical too at Mad River. And don’t think this is all powder. We were surprised to discover that all the new pow had been skiid off over the weekend and the whole place was just icey! We didn’t mind though. We hoped it meant awesome ticket sales for Mad River. They needed it after this dreadful season.

At the very top of the single, a great reward on a clear day – a view of the Adirondacks to the west.

This is something I have always wanted to take a picture of. The top of the chairlift is a winter wonderland after it snows.

A few more. Rich loves skiing in the trees and on this day that’s where all the snow was. I have had my magic moments of just going with the flow in the trees but mostly I just get too scared and just slide stop turn slide stop turn. Oh well. It’ somethng I need to do many times during the ski season to get my confidence back. But this was the first time I had been in the trees in over a year.

Here’s Rich taking off his boots before we headed home. The base lodge at Mad River is old-fashioned, very homey and loved by all.

After an incredibly disappointing (relatively snowless) winter, we got a nice little 1 1/2 foot dump yesterday and to add to this grand event, today was a beautiful sunny day. Don Kiely asked for pictures, so I took my camera with me when Rich and I went out on a 3 hour back country ski. We ski right out from our back yard to the Green Mt. State Forest!

Here is just in our back yard as we enter our woods. Our woods connect with those of all of our neighbors up and down our road and extend through to the next road over, giving us about 100 acres of private land with great trails that we all work to maintain for hiking, snow shoeing and skiing.

A little way into the woods I have hung a small section of Tibetan Prayer Flags on two trees that have always felt like a gateway. The flags remind me to leave all of my worries behind as I enter our woods and on the way home, to be mindful not to let those worries affect me and those around me. Not always successful, but I try, I really try.

We have some nice ski tracks already thanks to Rich and I first packing down the trail yesterday afternoon with our big old wooden snowshoes and then our own skiing and our neighbors’ as well. Luckily nobody postholes our trails in our own woods!

After winding our way through the woods for about a mile, we come out onto our neighbors land and ski along the fencing for their livestock towards the entrance to the Beane Trail. This is where we enter the forest and can head up to the Long Trail if we want. I did this the other day on snowshoes with my neice.

My happy happy skis. These are back country skis. Much fatter than x-country skis, with flex, free-heels (I have leather boots and 3-pin bindings) and metal edges. Lighter weight than my tele equipment. Perfect for woods skiing that’s not too steep. I’m not great on these – I can turn somewhat but have to rely on snowplowing to ensure I don’t kill myself. When I ski somewhere that I need more control, I go for the tele gear.

This is on the logging road that is part of the Beane Trail. It’s a public trail so we were lucky that it just had a nice ski tracks and the snowshoers had kept to the side (and the postholers* had stayed home). At the beginning it is nearly flat, with just a slight incline. After about 1/2 mile you can head up the mountain on the trail proper (but definitely not on skis), or continue out on the logging road that goes through the woods and up the mountain. We did that for about another mile. We are now in the realm of thousands of acres of public land. Yippee. Another option in this direction is to head to the Catamount trail which is a 300 mile long ski trail that goes from one end of the state to the other.

Up up up we went. It was a BLAST coming down.

On the way home, we took a detour out to another neighbor’s field before we headed back into our woods. What a gorgeous day! And mild temps too, about 30 degrees.

The end. Hope you liked it, Don. 🙂

*Post-holers – people who trash a ski trail by walking in boots. Skis and showshoes are good etiquette in the winter.

We woke up this morning to the sound of the snow plow going up our road. There was about a foot of new snow  – big fluffy powder snow – that had fallen overnight and it was still snowing!! It is now 9:30 and it is STILL snowing heavily. We have been waiting for this for 3 months! It is so beautiful out. Just like the Vermont we have always known and loved. Today I plan to go out in the woods twice. First we will go out on our old-fashioned wooden snowshoes and pack down the trail. Then I will put on my back country skis and go do what I love best! Yippeeeee!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

How cool is this? Here is a college kid at Champlain College in Burlington who started an Ipod accessory company and is making it big! (And he’s probably all of 19 years old, now.)

Mophie is a developer of innovative, value-added solutions for the digital lifestyle accessory market The Company was founded in March of 2005 by an 18 year-old optimist with a head full of ideas and a renegade marketing consultant with an arm full of tattoos. Our goal was to create a funky product development firm built around good people and great ideas.

The products start with a base case to put your ipod in and then is extended by a variety of forms that the base case fits into.

I’m sure all of the big cities in the Northeast that are getting seriously dumped on today would gladly send their snow here if they could. And we would be happy to have it. Once again, the big dump has missed us completely. Countless ski resorts will suffer greatly this season which will also have a big negative impact on Vermont’s economy.

It’s not even snowing here. And this picture from Charles’ window in Manhattan just makes my wanna cry. It reminds me of a magical moonlit night out in Prospect Park (Brooklyn) after a huge snow storm nearly 15 years ago. I went out there with my dog and there were hundreds of people out there walking and even cross country skiing. Of course, normally, going to a NYC park at night is unheard of.

This is what many of us live for here in Vermont. But alas, there are only about 3 inches of snow in my front yard and no base underneath. It is so bad that we can’t even use our “rock skis” in the woods. Just a pair of regular hiking boots will suffice.

Well, good day to continue getting through my myriad commitments that keep me in front of the computer.

One of the big factors that drew us to move to Vermont in 1999 was the skiing. We can ski out our back door to the back country or drive 7 miles to our favorite lift-serve ski area: Mad River Glen.

But what is this?

I took this on Jan 21 out my front window

and this one I took 5 minutes ago

It’s their 47th b-day.

http://www.sugarbush.com/summarystats.aspx

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org