snow

Camp in the Winter

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailThere’s nothing more welcoming than a warm and cozy cabin at 21 below in the mountains.

We’ve only made it to camp once this winter so far for a few reasons but the weekend we spent there was a beautiful (cold) one. The second night the moon was shining so bright it was casting daylight like shadows. The next morning we woke up to -21° which was easily explained by the clear skies and bright moon.

Even in the brisk -21° degrees and the middle of 4ft of snow, the camp always offers a nice warm zone of comfort, and sights like these are some of the top reasons I love being in the mountains in the winter.

Snow Removal Empire

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

A few days ago, just before the “big snow storm” hit, a boy from down the street stopped and asked if we’d like the sidewalk or driveway shoveled.

I’m a sucker for young entrepreneurs so of course we did until I realized we didn’t have any cash.

“if you stop by tomorrow we’ll pay you double.”. “sure!” he exclaimed and headed towards the next house.

The next evening I shoveled the whole driveway after the kid never showed up. While doing so I had two thoughts:

  1. We need a new driveway, seems plausible to add a heating system when we do it. I’ve been examining the options and it seems where we live the electric system may be the most reasonable.
  2. When Lilahs old enough she should run a snow removal empire.

That last one probably warrants a description of my train of thought:

  • man it’s too bad that kid didn’t stop back over.
  • if we have a boy, he’ll be able to shovel or mow to earn some money.
  • screw that our daughter can shovel.
  • screw that, she can make the contracts and get the boys in the neighborhood to shovel and get her a tiny cut.
  • ooooh it could teach her scheduling, budgeting, organization and lots other managerial type tasks.
  • Holy crap! Extreme parenting anyone?
  • maybe that’s a bad idea.
  • yeah, not sure I want to teach her to get boys to do her dirty work.
  • yeah dumbest idea ever.

I think for now I’ll just forget I ever thought of it.

Snowstorm in Fairport

~ randyaa ~ 1 Comment

Took a little walk with my Camera and MonoPod tonight.  It was my first time using a Monopod and it’s alright, but I couldn’t drag the shutter as much as I wanted to so I had to crank the ISO a bit more than I’d like for pictures like these.  Ahh well, turned out ok anyway.  Kinda fun to shoot too.

I love the snow and I love snow storms. They make Fairport so pretty.  Glad I took the time to go out even if it was for only a few minutes.

Perfect Snow & Perfect Bonfires

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Delayed Post: written 2/14/2010

I don’t know what the Inuit word is for this type of snow (yes I know that myth isn’t really true) but I know mine: Perfect. It’s nice and grainy, packs just a little, blows just a little, isn’t wet (until it melts). Just perfect.  We haven’t had a ton of snow up here lately, nothing like what they just got down south. But the stuff we do have is just right.

We ran into a nice couple at the intersection of 81 and the (new?) trail towards Degrasse. A few minutes of discussion informed us of a big bonfire being put on by the Cranberry Lake Snowmobile Club just down the trail from our original destination (the Windfall).  Cheap lunch and supporting the club? Sounds good. We said thanks and headed on out towards the bonfire.

Whoa! Talk about fire! And the hot chocolate and hot dogs were free to boot! Met a nice guy named Randy Paige (sp?) who told us about a new 4-wheeler association which is going to make most of the trails we snowmobile on accessible by 4-wheeler this summer.  Sweet!

They had 2 groomers there open to let people climb in and check them out. About. 100 sleds, tons of raffle tickets for a gun, a 50/50, and the state raffle tickets for new snowmobiles. Was a good time, put some money in for the 50/50 but they were out of gun raffle tickets. Ahh well, one thing we probably don’t need more of anyway.

After the (free) lunch we headed for the open trail and made our way home.

Miles on the sled this season: 336

Snowpocolypse – or How I'll Enjoy the Weekend

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63.5″ is a lot of snow. I don’t care where you are or where you’re from.  It’s not unheard of in the north country but for the southern areas which are getting slammed right now, it’s a ton.  Some of these cities only see 12″ of snow for a whole season, others only see a few inches occasionally.  to get almost 70″ in one week… wow.   The biggest problem is their lack of equipment.

Take a look at the satellite aftermath of the storm:

eastcoast_satellite_image-small

Looks like a scene from The Day After Tomorrow.

Either way, I’m headed right into the middle of snow country this weekend.  Spending a long weekend at camp snowmobiling and otherwise enjoying the winter weather and beautiful scenery.

60″ sounds like nothing but fun to me.  If you live in this area of the country, you need to have outdoor winter hobbies.

I’ll see you from the top of littl blue!

Mile 0 2010

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Snowmobiling season has begun, and with a frenzy. The Adirondacks have been good to us this year. The snow came a bit later than usual but there hasn’t been a major thaw yet which makes for some ideal conditions, with a good solid frozen base and constant snow.

Mile zero started right where it should, the Toy Shed. Didn’t put on a whole lot of miles today, just 25 around the diamond property, but the riding was phenomenal and it felt good to be out again.

Having the shed will make things a lot nicer. Now that we can properly store at least 4 sleds we can leave them up here all season. Needless to say, I’m prepared for a lot of riding this year.

Plans are in the works to make a (snowmobile) trip to Whiteface Mountain from camp. It’ll be a long ride, but very beautiful I’m sure.

Cant wait for tomorrow’s ride, wherever it takes us.

Miles on the sled this season: 25

Mountains Snow and Four strokes

~ randyaa ~ 2 Comments

When we got to camp last night conditions were better than we could have hoped. Easily two feet of snow on the level and trails freshly groomed. Unfortunately it was midnight and -10 outside so we promptly hit the hay to prepare for the ride ahead.

This morning one of the other diamond sportsman club members (Chuck Ferrel) stopped by on their way to the Backwoods Inn (previously known as Hams).  After some chat about where they were headed we decided to join them.

http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=63961
If you do not see the slideshow above please visit The original Post

We were going right by Little Blue Mountain so we went on up the trail. I say this every time but it was the clearest I’ve ever seen it on top. Usually, if it’s clear, White Face Mountain is just visible through some haze. Today, there was no haze and White Face looked clear as could be.

There wasn’t as many people there as usual but on the way down we met a guy who was having problems getting his sled started. It was an Arctic Cat T660 four stroke with a dead battery and no pull start. No pull start!? Yep, seems since it’s a four stroke there’s too much compression to pull it over so they don’t even bother including one. I’m pretty sure there won’t be any of these sorts of sleds in my future. I wouldn’t want to be stuck out in the woods with a dead battery or a blown starter like that guy.  To make it worse he wasn’t even smart enough to bring jumper cables!

NOTE: this post is pre-dated, as it was written but not posted in the mountains since there is no data connection.

Then There Was Four (Snowmobiles)

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Bever PondWe’ve managed to make it up north for three absolutely gorgeous weekends. This weekend was no exception. We went riding on Saturday and the sky was an incredibly clear blue without a cloud in sight. We took a ride up Littl Blue Mountain and again the view was better than the last time. White Face Mountain was perfectly visible as well as some other mountains in the same range and beyond.

Broken Down SledAfter a quick snack we headed off to Sevey’s Corner and beyond. Once we crossed route 3 the trails were even better. Freshly groomed with few sleds having been down them. Everything was going great until we were waiting for my uncle Wes and a few other sleds came by and told us we had a broken down sled. We went back a few miles and it wasn’t good. The supports holding his suspension up broke and his snowmobile was literally sitting on the ground. We towed it back to route 3 and my cousin Donald headed back to the truck while Uncle Jerry, Dad and I headed out to finish the days ride. Only four of the five sleds we ran with this season made it out alive.

Looking Back On 2007-08 Snowmobiling Season

Looking back this year we’ve had a fantastic season. We put on over 520 miles in three weekends. All the riding we did was on perfect trails. I’ve never seen better snow conditions than the past two weekends and the days we went out the sky was so blue it was amazing.

Final Snow

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Street Light in Fairport

Today we got what is probably our last snow accumulation of the year. We woke up to one of the prettiest snowy scenes from the entire season. About 4 inches of wet sticky snow came down overnight. I took an extra long walk to the bus just so I could enjoy the scenery and take a few pictures.

Snowmobile Tickets and Skylines

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White Face MountainToday was bright and sunny too. They sky was so clear we had to go up Littl Blue Mountain(edit: the previous link was wrong and linked to little blue not littl blue) again. We did and there were actually other people at the top! Some guys were fiddling with a broken down 2007 Yamaha and I had to snicker. Give me a Polaris any day. Mine is a 2006 but my parents have a 1979, 1995 and 1997 which are all still running solid and they’ve never had to do much to any of them.

From the top of Littl Blue we could see White Face Mountain crystal clear almost 70 miles away. The picture doesn’t come close to doing it justice but it’s the best I could do. Just the shear vastness of the space you can see up in the mountains like this is always impressive. I created the panorama to demonstrate.

View From Little Blue Mountain - Panorama

We had our snacks on Littl Blue and then headed down for some scenic riding. Along one of the main trails we hit a snowmobile traffic stop. Yes, on easter sunday the cops have nothing better to do than look for snowmobilers riding without insurance and with expired registrations. We were all valid and were just about to go when the cop noticed my insurance paper had expired a few weeks earlier. Great. I explained to him that it definately is still covered I just had forgotton to grab the new paperwork. “We have no way to tell” he said as he issued me a ticket. Awesome, now I have to deal with getting that dropped when I get home. This crap irritates me for lots of reasons but I’m not going to complain about it here.

Ice Formation on North Side of the HillAfter getting delayed by the traffic cops we headed on to horseshoe lake. The trail had been cleaned up since we were there a few days ago and it was a much better ride. It’s a good thing because I was tired of bouncing up and down on moguls.

The sun was a lot warmer today. It was just warm enough to melt some of the snow on the south side of the hills. The air was still cold however; that when the water ran down and started to drip it would freeze instantly creating some very neat ice formations.