Oct 11

Gear Giveaway – Oct/Nov: Name These Mountains

Congrats! to Pennie Rand, of Richmond, VT, for being the first and only one to correctly guess the name of the ski trail featured in the Aug/Sept contest. The trail featured was the historic Bruce Trail descending the east side of Vermont’s Mount Mansfield. The image was captured from a rare perspective on the trail while skiing in Vermont’s Ranch Valley. Thanks to everyone else for your great guesses. A few of you were pretty close!

For October/November’s giveaway, we have a nice pair of ski gloves from Black Diamond to award to the first person to guess the name of the three northeastern mountains featured in the photo below. (Click on photo to zoom) Please leave your unique guesses in the comments area below – one guess per person. Good luck and thanks! – Brian and Emily

Oct 07

Photo of the Week: Dirt Road Skiing

There’s no better way to get in shape for the upcoming season of skiing adventures, than to go skiing. And if you haven’t before rocked a pair of dirt-road friendly roller skis on your favorite back roads, they are worth checking out. Known to most as a pavement-based training tool for serious and competitive nordic skiers, roller-skiing takes you far beyond the realm of training when practiced along your favorite network of quiet and scenic dirt roads. Throw in some climbs and curving downhills (make sure to really practice your braking!), and be prepared for some fun and a rather humbling skiing adventure.
– Brian

Oct 01

First Snowflakes of the Season?

Although the higher elevations of NH’s Whites and NY’s Dacks received a dusting of frozen precipitation (some would call it snow) back in mid-September (does anyone have any photos to share?), we have yet to witness the first real accumulation of snowflakes over our northeastern mountains this season. We could see the snowflakes flying this weekend, however, as the coldest air since May will move in and potentially interact with some lingering moisture over the mountains on Saturday. Most forecasts are calling for only a touch of wet snow, if anything, but if we’re lucky, there might be a skiable carpet of snow up there on Sunday morning. Still, I wouldn’t call off your plans to go bike riding or sailing or hiking with your friends. And if you’ve got a garden, you might want to spend some time on Sunday harvesting your most cold-sensitive crops before the frosty air reaches the low elevations, too, Sunday night into Monday morning.
-Brian

Sep 29

Photo of the Week: Really Cool Handmade Skis

Brianna Morse – the niece of our friend Pennie Rand and a student at Middlebury College in Vermont – designed and built these beautiful skis as part of her high school senior project in Colorado last spring. Vermont-based designer Poppy Gall, recently featured these skis on her blog. Check out the larger story behind the skis, more photos, the folk art that adorns them and their creator, on Poppy’s blog HERE. Thanks to Pennie Rand for sharing the photos.

Sep 20

Photo of the Week: Hurricane Powder?

For more than a week, Hurricane Igor, which developed from a small tropical weather system spinning off the coast of Saharan Africa, has been gradually working its way northward through the north Atlantic. Igor has filled the north Atlantic with massive swells, picked a serious fight with the small island of Bermuda (which is coping with the storm relatively well) and has amazed weather scientists with its great size and impressive form. Let’s just imagine for a second that Igor is a winter storm parked off the coast of the northeast US – and moisture from the storm is streaming in from the ocean and falling as snow over our northeastern mountains. If a storm of this caliber sat and spun off our coast for just twenty four hours, some meteorologists predict that 5-6+ feet of snow could easily fall upon our mountains. Forty eight hours? How about 10-12+ feet of fresh snow.

Just imagine.

(Satellite image of Igor: NASA)