Finally, A Winter Worthy of the Name

 

Visit #1466, Sunday 18 February 24, 7:05-8:50AM, 4.1 miles, no litter.

Temps in the 20s, sunny.

This past week saw a good dump of snow, up to twelve inches in some towns, followed by another three inches from Friday night through Saturday morning. After last year's snow desert, this was a welcome change.

Despite the snow, I found mountain bike and fat bike tracks in the snow up at Castle Craig. While I'm sure most of you have heard of mountain bikes, if you don't know what a fat bike is, click on the preceding link. The tracks were only on pavement which, considering the conditions had to be a dicey affair.

What brought me out this week was a report by an alert blog reader informing me of a fallen tree across a trail. Well, due to that reader's advanced age 😉 they weren't quite alert enough and couldn't recall the exact trail (kind of like forgetting where in the lot you parked your car!) so I had to go in search of it myself.

I found it, and it's definitely chainsaw material which means next week will be a Power Tool Weekend®!

The rest of the hike was enjoyable except for my cold hands. I didn't have hand warmers with me so my usual trick is to "play piano" with my fingers until they warm up. While it eventually worked, I'm a lazy American and I couldn't help but think it would be nice if there were such a thing as heated ski poles. I thought I was on the verge of a fortune generating invention. Seems I was too late to make my millions as the idea is already patented.

It will be interesting to see next weekend how much snow remains .