Monday, February 23, 2009

Skiing at Bradbury


After yesterday's run, D was in the mood for a mellow day, and I couldn't complain. We decided that due to the copious new snow and impending wind, that it would be best to no be in any open fields, and the thought of skiing across the fields at Pineland Farms wasn't really appealing. So, we grabbed our backcountry skis and headed to Bradbury.

The result was an awesome time in the woods, but it was also the slowest 5k ever. It took us almost 1:40 to ski 3 miles. The snow was plentiful, deep and slooooooow. Plus, the heavy snow had caused a lot of drooping trees. In many places, they were completely blocking the trail. We headed onto the east side trails, and within the first thirty seconds, it was clear that this ski quickly went from a workout into an adventure. And, in the spirit of adventure we decided to veer off the snowmobile trail onto the Lanzo trail. We were able to follow the faint snowshoe tracks of this singletrack trail for the most part. We crossed the old road and continued on Ragan. Somewhere in here we got lost. We wandered around for a bit before we decided our best course of action was to backtrack. No need to find ourselves the subject of a search and rescue. Once we got back to the old road, I had the brilliant idea to ski up it. Well, it being an old road, it has less consistent tree cover, hence, deeper snowpack. Or not packed in this case. I lead the way, and eventually we reached the Snowmobile Trail. Even though we had just run on it yesterday, it was completely unrecognizable. We freed as many trees as we could, and eventually made it back to the Link Trail.

When we reached the road, D announced that we had covered a total of 3.18 miles. I couldn't believe that's all we skied. Nonetheless, it was really fun to be out on the trails. It was a great way to mix it up, and a lot of fun. Oh, and I almost forgot: it was beautiful out there.



More pics here.




1 comment:

middle.professor said...

And if you had brought your groomer skis to Pineland you'd be trying to find fresh tracks like me. BC was the way to go yesterday. Good stuff! Great pictures!