It usually happens this time of year. The snow falls… somewhere else. I end up reading about people traveling to snowy destinations to get in some early skiing while I’m at home roller skiing or riding in the cold, dark woods... but no snow. This year was looking to be much the same until, as I sat looking out the window on Friday afternoon, several flakes of snow drifted by. That was it. Only ten flakes of snow fell in the capital but it was enough to motivate me that I wasn’t going riding this weekend. No roller skiing for me - time to strap on the boards!
Loaded up the car and drove to Lake Placid, which was enjoying it’s first dump of snow of the season. Word had it the Whiteface toll road was in good shape so I grabbed a few pairs of skis, two pairs of boots and several sets of poles so I’d be ready for any kind of conditions I’d meet. A lengthy discussion with the border guard (I am going skiing, yes there really is snow down there, No, I’m not part of an illicit ring of used ski importers) and I was off. Things started to look up. Traces of snow grew to inches of snow and then poorly plowed roads told me I was getting closer. Whiteface was completely enshrouded in clouds (more snow falling!) so it was hard to see what I would be in for but there was at least 6 inches of snow in the woods along the road so I was pretty excited.
At the closed toll road gate I found lots of snow and 8 cars parked along the road. I leapt out checked out the conditions, grabbed some skis and a pack of gear and started to charge up the mountain. For those of you familiar with the Whiteface toll road you won’t be surprised to hear that I stopped “charging” up the mountain about 200 meters along. This road goes up…. up, up, up. Once its done going up, it goes up some more. This is followed by a little more up before it gets down to some serious climbing. It's about 5 ½ miles long and climbs more than 2000 ft. There are no flats to recover anywhere. This can probably not be described as cross country skiing but more aptly "uphill skiing"….. but the operative word here is skiing - fantastic!!
That said I settled into a rhythm and started to enjoy the climb. The snow got deeper and deeper as I got higher – probably 2 foot deep near the top. Fortunately there were a few people ahead of me so a track had been well broken in. I skied steadily up to the final two long switchbacks where things turned decidedly more arctic. Here the tree cover is pretty minimal and it was blowing a gale so the –5C air temperature dropped to a pretty nasty windchill (-20's maybe?). Worse the snow was either drifted into soft cruddy drifts or scrapped right off the pavement entirely. I skied up through the switchback and on to the next - the “Wilmington” turn (the last turn before the top) - and decided to stop there. The road through the curve was bare pavement and the last 5–600 meters to the summit house was dead into a headwind so I opted to turn back here rather than turn into a popsicle on my first outing of the season. Views were limited but starting to open up. I grabbed a few shots and stopped to take a few more on the descent.
The ride down was a lot of fun. Not super fast but jumping into the “skied in” track allowed you to pick up some speed before leaping into the soft powder to crank some turns. Don’t think I’ve covered 5 miles so fast in my life. As I descended I came across more and more people… and a lot of dogs (with their people) out enjoying the snow. All the dogs were sporting very seasonally appropriate flash orange vests – clearly all the rage for the K9 set during the month of November. Back at the car I counted some 40 cars lining the roads… and lots of smiling faces on the skiers (mine was one of them) and I believe what appeared to be smiling dogs as well. First tracks of the season and well worth the trip. Back to roller skiing in Ottawa…. for now.
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I hope you told those snow clouds to send a couple of their relatives up north a hundred miles or so
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