Reports from the Small Town

Ski Report: Yesterday we went skiing again. Again to the flat ski trail (as I am not yet willing to do much hill work). By now I have investigated the length of the trail, just to see how far I actually CAN ski in one go. I had to use the Summer Trail Map, as there is no Winter Trail Map. Which is rather puzzling, as there are definitely metal signs bolted to posts that very clearly tell one which way for Snowshoeing, Hiking, and Skiing, both with and without a pet. I have seen several people obeying the signs, so I know I'm not the only one to wonder.

Anyways, using the Summer Trail Map, I figured out where the parking lot is, and where our Ski Trail starts. It follows a Summer Trail for quite a ways, then cuts off a portion that goes over a bridge. The Summer Trail is marked as 2.7 miles long. Going on a very vague scaling system, I very subjectively am figuring that our Ski Trail is approximately 2 miles long.

This means that on yesterday's outing, I skied 6 miles on the groomed trail, and then we went 1.5 miles on a trail that theoretically is usually groomed. This means that the snow was about 6" deep where the trail should be, so if one stops at all, one starts sinking down, which makes it that much more difficult for one to extricate one's self when one wishes to start forward movement again. In a nutshell, this is what happened to me - quite a lot in fact. We took this route in order to try a small hill, both up and down, to give me some practice. The up part took quite alot of work and reminded me again why I was not fast in skiing my race last year. The downhill part allowed me the chance to go "Whee!", and was over much too quickly.

In addition, we found a posted Trail Map at the bottom of the hill. Of course, it too was only a Summer Trail Map. Oh well, I guess an estimate is good enough for now.

Snow Report: After the ski outing, it began snowing again. And snowing and snowing. I think it ended up snowing at least 11" when it was all over. Then it started blowing. This meant that we had drifts of snow as tall as the hood on the cars.













It also meant that the snow was so high that it was taller than our snowblower! In fact, we are now over 14" of snow on the ground. Too high for the ruler, so out came the tape measure.

Our Small Town has rather efficient snowplows - they go by about once every two hours to try and clear the streets of the town. As a result, none of the streets are entirely plowed at an intersection. During our digging out process, we ran out of gas for the snowblower, and when I tried to go and get some, I managed to get one of the cars stuck twice in 2 blocks. Luckily I revved the engine some and popped over the snow bumps.

The efficiency of the snowplows also means that there is a Very Large pile of snow at the end of the driveway. At this point, thus far, this snow pile is almost as tall as I am! And it's only mid-December!