Still feels like winter... for now

So spring has (formally) arrived. As I write this its +12C outside and there is call for warm rain tonight. The skiing is still passable but with every day like this the snow pack dwindles. The last ski can’t be far off and warm days of summer are already coming to mind. A nice spring ski to Lac Richard I’ve tried to make the most of the last of the snow though. Since my trip to the Dixes – the last of the “winter” - I’ve welcomed spring with some nice spring skiing here in the park and a couple of trips to the Adirondacks. This ski season has been an interesting paradox. We probably got more snow than we’ve had in years… but that very snow led to a considerable amount of branches down and trails closed. The crews worked hard until the money ran out and sadly a fair number of trails never saw the light of day from the early season storm. I didn’t get much “practice” on the backcountry trails although I did get one run in on the Highland fling (so not all was lost). The trail out to McKinstry and the firetower was only cleared about 2/3 of the way out which felt… unfulfilling. Equally a few of my favorite little side trails never got cleared at all. Still, I am grateful for all the trails that did open up again. There will probably be a fair amount of trail work for the crews to clean up all the slash once the snows melt as well.. so that could change the cycling season in the park as well (maybe a longer closure of the parkway - for car free cycling!). Has this little guy been lonely this winter? With winter officially over I got a call from Pete to do a “winter” hike. By the time his winter schedule comes together he often seems to fall just outside of the official March 21 winter hiking limit. Fortunately the mountains don’t care what season you call it and are still pretty wintery well through April (and Pete isn't too particular either!). He wanted to try out some better snowshoes for the vertical pitches so we opted to do a hike out of the Loj where you can rent snowshoes for a reasonable fee. We picked Phelps to hike as it gave us a good climb, some nice views and enough time to get back with the snowshoes before the rental shop closed. As it turned out the views weren’t exactly stellar on this snowy (wintery) day… but all the rest of the pieces fit together. A good hike was had on what was clearly a popular trail. Through the whole of this winter I saw maybe 10 people on the trails on my hikes in the peaks. Today we must have seen 50 or more folks out enjoying the day. The views from Phelps were... elusive Finally, I decided to get back one more time to the peaks before the snow starts to melt in earnest. This past Saturday I went down to hike Cascade and Porter. I have struggled with winter boot options all winter often resulting in sore and blistered feet. On this trip I wanted to do something short and try out another pair of boots – my backcountry touring boots. Add to that I had often thought of climbing a peak to take in the sunrise or see a good sunset. Saturday looked like the ideal day so I hit the trail at the late hour of 4:45pm in hopes of getting up top in time for the sunset. Met a few stragglers hiking out but for the most part I had the trail to myself. It’s a nice little climb of about an hour to the main ridge. From there a short hop over to Porter and then I came back to Cascade to set up for the “show”. As it turns out, an incoming warm front brought a bank of clouds in to (slightly) spoil the sunset but I suppose that’s the risk you take in the “sunset photo” game. It was still nice with the alpenglow on the mountains and the rapidly changing colours. Once the sun finally set I packed up and headed back down under the beam of my headlamp. The ski boots worked pretty well too, though this short hike might not be conclusive. There are a few more "sunset photos" from that hike HERE for those interested. Alpenglow on the Great Range as everything goes pink! So was that sunset the end of winter. We’ll have to wait and see. Perhaps a few more skis in the park still. Maybe a hike or two on the smooth snowy carpet… but for the most part it’s time to start thinking about packing up the winter gear and moving on to spring.