The towel is thrown

The Wolfeboro Cross-country Ski Association picked a good year to institute snowmaking. But it wasn't a great year. Atmospheric conditions were so poor for snowmaking during December that we had nothing to offer during the Christmas vacation period, which is one of two major blocs of income for the ski business in the northeast US. Downhill areas fared somewhat better, particularly ones a bit farther north, with more elevation to augment the less than ideal temperature and humidity. And then we had record-setting rains in January that caused flood damage to trails for every winter activity.

By February we had the snowmaking loop up and running, but it hasn't survived the first week of March. Snowmaking isn't magic, and key sections of it lost cover in the warm weather that has dominated the winter. The trails are closed and the shop has gone to spring hours. Even if we get a late March blizzard, it will be falling onto bare, saturated ground in many areas.

In a strange twist, I had more opportunities to get out for a concentrated workout in prime time this winter because of the wretched conditions. I haven't come into a bike commuting season with this good a fitness base since we shut down the shop at Jackson Ski Touring in 2009. Up there, with trails right outside the door and a narrower scope of operations, it was much more convenient to rotate each of us out on many days to get that beneficial shot of conditioning. It enhanced our efficiency and kept our credentials fresh, while also providing a great launching pad for the next season's riding.

The ski/bike alternation changes muscle use in ways that help the cyclist more than a year-round cycling routine would. But in the transition from one to the other, you notice what you're missing. At the start of skiing I would have to build upper body strength and all of the steering and stability muscles that take the rest of the year off. At the other end, going back to the bike, I find myself in the lower portions of a hill climb with only my legs to propel the machine, carrying all of the muscles used to push the ski poles now providing mostly non-functional weight.

In addition to the ski sessions, I got out once or twice a week to climb the neighborhood mountain. The trail is listed in an old Appalachian Mountain Club guidebook as 1.4 miles to the summit. Elevation gain is 1,144 feet. The trail climbs gently for about the first third, and then steepens. A preliminary effort brings you to a traverse of a couple of hundred yards along a contour to reach the base of the most rugged section. Above that the grade lets up slightly on the way to a more or less level few yards approaching the summit. There's a fire tower that is not abandoned, but is usually unoccupied. During the winter there is never an observer. The trail is popular enough that the footway is reliably packed down. People do it in a variety of inappropriate footwear, but so far none of them have had to be evacuated by emergency responders. 

From the first hike in late January until the most recent one yesterday, the surface has been different each time. The first time it was a well packed snowshoe trail firm enough to go up without wearing the snowshoes. It's very rude to posthole a trail, stomping deep footprints into it because you don't bother to bring snowshoes. Going up it's easy to place your feet lightly and commit your weight gradually. I wore snowshoes to descend, because your body weight always arrives with more force as you step down. 

Snow fell before I got out on the second hike, but other hikers had a few days to pack it down before I got there. From that point on, no new snow was added. When the weather stayed somewhat cold, the trail changed only a little. I did see the tracks of one intrepid skier one day, and on another the unbelievable signs that someone had ridden a bike down it. I didn't see clear signs that they had ridden up it. And the tires didn't look super wide, almost like plus-size, 3-inch rather than full fat. Mixed in with tracks from snowshoes, hiking boots, and ice creepers were the prints of street shoes and sneakers. 

I was going to begin riding this week, but the forecast indicated that I won't be able to be consistent enough with it to make the initial discomfort worth it. I banged out one more tower hike instead. This is prime hypothermia season. Temperatures above freezing, ranging either side of 50°F (10°C) fool a lot of active people because we need very light layers while exerting, and may feel comfortably warm for a few minutes after stopping. The temperature on the summit that cloudy day was solidly mid 40s. I felt quite comfortable on arrival. I put on a fleece jacket because I knew I would want it soon. Indeed, with a fairly light but persistent breeze I soon felt like I wanted more clothing than the fleece. Rather than dig out the extra gear, I gathered up my stuff to head down. But I had the layers if I needed them.

Hypothermia gets you when you don't expect it. You get cold on a winter hike, it makes sense. We do hear about poorly prepared people who get into trouble and even die out there in the winter. But most people have some idea that they should bundle up a bit at the height of winter. It's in the transition time, into early spring, when acclimated outdoor types might overestimate the mildness. It happened to me one April day decades ago, on a cloudy afternoon with some showers in the forecast. I set out around the mountain on the fixed-gear, wearing sufficient clothing for the best of predicted conditions, but with nothing extra in case things deteriorated. They deteriorated. Sprinkles began before I has half a mile down the road. Those turned to a steady rain. I kept going. The route is all or nothing. There is no way to cut it off. Once you reach the halfway point on the far side of the mountain you need to keep going the rest of the way.

Theoretically I could have gone up to one of the sparsely distributed houses along the route and asked for shelter, but apparently I would literally rather die than bother anyone to bail me out for my stupid decision. I don't know what kind of shape I would have been in if my spouse at the time had not thought to go out and collect me. She correctly guessed my route and drove it the opposite direction to intercept me. These days I am alone most of the time, so I have to pay closer attention to the list of essentials any solo traveler should have.

The roads will now present the best venue for consistent activity for maybe as much as a couple of months. Back when mountain bikes were relatively cheap and definitely simple, we rode on found trails rather than courses designed and constructed at great and ongoing expense. We would charge out on the rotting ice of snow machine trails and woods roads, crashing into icy water, grunting though deep mud, and laughing about it. Not anymore, though. You don't put in hours of labor on loamers, or thousands of dollars on more elaborate trails and then go ride them when they're wet and soft! Horrors! And the bikes themselves demand such loving care to keep them ready to throw off of 9-foot drops that you don't want to crap them all up with a bunch of abrasive silt on mere dirt roads. The gravel demographic might be a tad more open to muddy roads. Fat bikers might try their flotation on some of them as well. My fixed-gear is still coated with adobe from my ride on New Year's Day, when the dirt part my favorite local loop was sloppy from the rain we'd gotten during Christmas week. Mud season has to come sometime, but I try to avoid having to do too much cleaning over and over again.

If I can get straight into commuting, I won't have to ride the muddy dirt roads or stick to the entirely paved options to get base miles before undertaking the more serious effort of lugging my tired old ass and my day's load of crap to work and back. My 30-mile daily commuting distance puts the day's effort into the realm of a real ride, even though it's split roughly evenly into 15 miles morning and evening. That work day in the middle keeps me on my feet. The rides are also in what passes for rush hour around here, so I'm dealing with hurrying drivers on all sections of the route. I need to be combat ready.

Fortunately, most motorists just want to get past a cyclist with the least delay. A honk, a yell, a thrown object -- these are impulsive acts not meant to delay overall progress. If a rider is careful to offer no greater offense than the mere audacity of claiming some space on the road, the vast majority of drivers just want to go by and get on with their lives. Only their fellow motorists inspire the urge to have a tank battle right then and there. But that's a story for another day.

A short little winter

 Back in the early 1990s we had a stretch of El Niño winters that really put a crimp in non-cycling winter activities. Non-cycling activities are very important to balanced fitness, because cycling is not complete exercise and does not help with bone density. They're also fun, if you're not obsessed with riding and actually enjoy the opportunities that a natural environment and four seasons present to you. So those of us who play outside in all weather felt severely deprived and grumpy. We hadn't seen anything yet.

Climate change hadn't hit the headlines as much as it does now that it's nearly too late to do anything about it. A few of us connected the dots, but didn't bother to discuss it with a public still happily in denial about "natural variations." And New England is notorious for variations. Our reputation is international. One November day a few years ago, I was helping out at a local half marathon that started and finished at the Castle in the Clouds, in Moultonboro, NH. The day was a typical gray, but mild. As I hung on in the back of a pickup truck cruising the course to pick up traffic cones and signage after the race, I remarked to the Chinese student helping out from a local prep school that the year before had been harshly cold on the same basic date.

"Well, that's New England," he said. Our reach is global.

The range of variation has reached the level of insanity. The flooding in the earlier part of the winter hit the national news. We finally picked up 6-12 inches of fluff on January 2, followed a couple of days later by snow so saturated with water that it landed as about five inches of slop. The fluff had packed down to an inch or two on trails. The slop destroyed some of it, and turned the rest to mush. Another storm right after that was even wetter. Then temperatures finally turned wintry before another five inches of light powder came in on January16. Nighttime temperatures flirted with 0 F for several nights, with daytime highs in the teens or 20s. That ends now, as the temperature climbs steeply to the useless range it occupied earlier. As if that wasn't enough, rain is coming in on Thursday and Friday to wreck the natural cover on cross-country ski trails.

Thanks, Corporate America!

Funny thing: because Wolfeboro and Tuftonboro have been favorite summer home areas for wealthy people for about a century, the beneficiaries of the political system that was bribed to ignore the environment and corrective regulation for decades has a well established colonial presence here. A certain family is sentimentally buying up local landmarks and attractions to preserve their theme park and maintain the servant population that they've grown accustomed to seeing. One contingent donated a good chunk to the cross-country ski association's fundraising drive to put in a little bitty snowmaking loop at staggering expense, to try to keep going in the face of the climate disaster made worse by their own oligarchic greed.

The climate countered by hitting us with really poor snowmaking conditions. These combined with the fact that the snowmaking crew is shared with the town's little downhill ski area. The downhill ski area took precedence, so the cross-country loop remained uncompleted until just this week.

As a person ages, deterioration proceeds unnoticed during periods of inactivity. You feel fine just toddling through the necessary activities of life, with maybe a twinge here or there when you lift something the wrong way. But as soon as you try to get back up to speed in things that were well within your capability, like a hike, or a ski tour, or bike commuting more than a couple of miles, you feel what you have lost.

I had to work on the best days of our mini winter. Up before the sun, off to work, stuck in the shop until after dark, days slip by. The leaping sunrises and lingering twilights warn that bike commuting season will arrive in a very short eternity. The light will be here long before the weather is nice. And even though first light to last faint gloom extends almost 12 hours already, sunrise to sunset is only about nine and a half hours. No matter what the weather does, the light travels at the same speed. The planet bows toward its partner the sun in the stately dance of seasons. It takes a long time, even at thousands of miles per hour. 

The temperature might shift back at times before we move into official spring, but the overall trend is warmer than average. I always wonder if the average is the ancestral average, or the new average, which creeps or leaps steadily higher. Our mini winter might be followed by one or more little repetitions. If we're lucky, one of them might coincide with the Massachusetts school vacation week, which is our biggest earning period of the winter. After that, numbers dwindle to the few who are already interested and an even smaller number of curious samplers.