Starting the Ski Season 2023-2024

 It's the first day out of a new ski season.  Yes, Alex & Monica were out on Wachusett Opening Day (Friday after Thanksgiving), but it was much more crowded that day and I'm only a few days behind.  I'm ok with that.  I parked in Row #0.

It's a bluebird day in the 20's this morning with very good conditions.  Still only Conifer open from the top and three other trails elsewhere.  They are blowing snow like crazy.  I had to raise my skis going up the lift to avoid getting sticky snow on them.  See the Strava link for details.

Best of all, I saw "Nicole" who does the daily snow report.  She told me to make a few turns and I would make it into the video.  See below from 1:06 to 1:12.  That's six whole seconds of fame!

It was a great outing:  6 runs (on Conifer Connection), 5600 vertical, over 10 miles in just 59 minutes.  And I made it back in time for my 10:30am meeting.  Woo-hoo!

Stramski with Friends

What happened to this paddling season.  Well, for one thing, it rained.  A lot.  But we finally have a sunny Saturday to squeeze in a paddling adventure.  We set out from Stramski Beach in Marblehead, a place we've launched from numerous times in the past.  How far can we go?  We are in the mood for ice cream.  Can we paddle that far?   Unfortunately, we do have a time constraint today.  so perhaps Marblehead Harbor is a stretch.  Hmm.

 So we turn around when we get a good view of the harbor so we can meeting our time requirements. We paddled back, loaded up and still had time for ice cream.  Priorities are priorities.  

Very strange no to have pictures this trip.  We were busy enjoying the day.

• Distance

  3.99 mi
• Speed

  2.5 mi/h
• Time

  1h 52m

Trustees - Jewell Hill

It's Sunday in the summertime.  Betsy is busy, but my mom is available, so I encourage her to join me on a hike at a local Trustees area that I have been wanting to go to for a long time:  Jewell Hill in Ashburnham.  As we're driving up the rather challenging country roads, my Mom inquires:  "Have you been here before?"  My response, "What's the fun in that?"

We check the map.  It's not overly challenging, so we should be able to make it to the top of the hill.

This property is an old farm with lots of wide open fields.
Following the trail map, we choose the most gradual ascent to the summit of Jewell Hill.

Near the top, the trees are a little shorting giving a fine view to the north.

To the east, the view is even better.

Mom takes in the view from a bench conveniently located at the top.

Here's the requisite shot to show I was actually hiking here, too.  Note the trail condition is very good.

It is very common to find stone walls in the middle of the woods in Central Massachusetts,   
This hails back to the 19th century where the entire landscape was cleared as farmland.

Coming down the mountain, we heard "machine noises". 
This tractor was mowing the grasses of the surrounding fields.
Big circles.

Almost made it back.  Look this is almost the same picture as the one at the beginning, except that there are trees in the background, not farm buildings.

Here are today's stats.  A nice walk, with a nice view, on a nice day.

• Distance

  1.45 mi
• Elev Gain

  271 ft
• Time

  34m 19s

AMC Paddle: Contookcook River

I always enjoy the Spring run down the Contoocook River, just north of Peterborough, NH.  Check out the last time I did it in April 2018 for comparison.   Today's trip was unlike any of my previous experiences on this river.  Yes, we had the same great leader and some of the same people, but it was the river itself that made for a different experience.  

To start with, the weather was looking a bit showery.  As I listened to the updated weather forecast on the drive up, I actually thought that the raindrops might hold off until we would be finished.  Not to be.  This caused a couple participants to cancel at the last minute.  We still had a good contingent however:  8 people in 4 canoes and 3 kayaks.

What made this excursion a bit more challenging were the portages we had to overcome.  There were two.  The first one was quite complicated caused by a huge log jam in the main part of the river.  The second was not as impressive and more typical, although we used a chain saw to push our way through some of the denser brush.  Read on for more details.

We meet the EMS main store on Vose Farm Road, just off NH 124, but then headed south to the put-in to drop gear, and shuttle cars.

The trip starts off simply enough.  Load up the boats and pull them down to the river.
I always take my yellow Pungo on the rivers for better maneuverability.

Looking upriver, we have a bit of current, but nothing unexpected.  There was no actual rain, until the minute we started paddling.  Good timing.

One in our number warned of a big tree down on the river that almost completely spanned the river.  As it turned out, we managed to squeeze by hugging the right bank very closely.  No mishaps.  Yay.

Our next challenge was that huge lug jam I mentioned, just another 15 minutes downstream.  Here is a picture of it from the other side (after the portage).

To give you a little better idea of how big this log jam was, here's more map detail.  
The "squiggles" in the lower right shows our trapsing back and forth to extract boats from the river and deposit them past a sand bar into more "free" water.

The actual log jam is directly across the water from where these guys are portaging the boats.

We pulled the boats across the brush the this sand bar.  We will be able to put back in here in the shallow water and follow the river around to the left.

But first we have to run back and forth a couple more times to get all the boats.

So once we're around that corner, we're free and clear, right?  Not so fast.  There are still smaller trees that we have to cross over, but with a little speed, they're not to bad.

Past that, it looks like we are ready to resume our trip.  But wait, this is our lunch stop, just a couple hundred feet after we put it (see map again).

After lunch, we're ready to go again. 
Our leader assures us that the rest of the trip should be "less eventful."

Well, maybe "less" but not devoid of events to be sure.  If you take one more look at the closeup map, you can see that we had a second portage right after navigating the oxbow in the river (additional "squiggles" in the lower left).

Here we go again, hauling the boats overland.  I thought the point of paddling was to stay on the water?

Finally, it looks like we're finally have some easier going.  Every once is while a rock still peeks up from beneath the water's surface, but for the most part, it actually is "less eventful."

I was thinking that we were more than half done by this point, but as it turns out all the "events' happened in the first third of the trip.  There was a lot of paddling yet to do.

Connie was running "sweep".  Thank  you for this shot that proves
it really is me paddling down the river.

It rained intermittently on this trip, but only while we were on the water.  A couple of times the skies actually brightened and it almost looked like it was going to get sunny.  Almost.

I love the stats for this excursion.  The significant difference between the "moving time" and "elapsed time" tells it all.  Portages really slow you down.

• Distance:  8.19 miles
• Moving time:  2:40
• Average speed:  3.1mph
• Max speed:  7.4 mph
• Elapsed time:  4:30