A couple of days ago, I went out for my morning ski. It is wonderful excercise and gets you out in the open; an essential ingredient in fighting off "cabin fever," or the malaise caused by staying indoors. This time I took my camera with me. So we're off. Our objective is to extend the Westbound trail through the woods west of the house. First, however, we warm up.
This is my warmup
piste, or track. It goes around my "backyard." Temperature is about -15C. There are 40-something cm of snow on the ground, under the usual for this time of year. The snow is nice at -15C, we get a good glide. I think -10 is ideal, but you takes what you gets. Four laps, and all gear secure, my boots are not coming unlaced, don't need the hand-warmer today. OK, onwards.
A short bit through the woods next to my driveway and we are at the Power Line Right-of-way, or PLRW for short. I spent most of my life in the computer business; acronyms are a way of life. We are facing north at this point, we will go right up the PLRW. I have beaten out a track there. Swish, swish and...
...we are at the northern end of the PLRW, facing west, about 150 meters from the last photo. Off to our left, the Reutov II house, beyond it, the Polushkin house. That's where we're headed, Still power line, but badly hacked by the hateful snow machines, or Satan Sleds as I call them. However, their unskiable tracks were dusted over by our last snowfall. So we head toward maison Polushkin.
About 40 meters behind Polushkin, we arrive at the West Expressway junction. The West Expressway is a semi-cleared track through the woods, going north-south, wide enough for a small car, a snow machine, or me. You can see my snowshoe tracks, going west like Horace Greeley. We will be back here, but for now we turn right, going N to pick up a trail I am hacking through the west woods. This is all track I have broken before, so it is quite fast.
We turn on to my Westbound trail, and as you can see, we are really in the deep dark Boreal woods. Deadfall all over the place. My track is zigzag to say the least; you can't go 20 meters without zigging (or zagging, as the case may be). There is usually a tree, a deadfall or brush in your way.
Eventually we reach the end of the broken trail, and it is time to break some more. I try for a few hundred meters a day. It is a big effort to break trail through snow. Your skis go down deep:
I have a pair of skis that were designed for Telemarking. I love them, not because I Telemark well (no hills for kilometers around!), but because they will float you in deep snow like this. They are really wide. Not bad for a $10 yard sale buy. Those narrow things they sell you as "cross-country skis" at high prices are good only on prepared tracks. Here at Chalupy, the only tracks available are those I make myself.
Eventually I run out of steam. Time to return. It is much easier going back because you are following broken trail. Eventually we arrive back at the Expressway Junction:
We are now facing due south. In the middle of the picture there is a small bright dot. That's the sunlight on the meadows at the end of the Expressway. We are going there, and we have about a Kilometer to go. It is easy skiing; we have a track and the snow machines have left it alone. This luck cannot last, but we enjoy it while we can.
This is Moose Meadows, as I call it, at the end of the Expressway. There are often moose there, hence the name but today (because I have the camera) there is nary a moose. My tracks can be seen off to the left. Moose Meadows is a rough ski unless there is a meter or so of snow to fill in the bumps. In summer, it is a swamp.
So off we go to the left (previous photo faces south) and go some 400 meters, and we arrive at the desolate Ghost House:
The former owners of this place were killed in an automobile accident. There are a few vehicles, like the trailer at left, junked around the place; a hole in the ground. And no doubt ghosts. We ski on by. We come to the Ghost House driveway:
This leads right to my own driveway, maybe 400 meters, we're almost done. I like the Ghost house driveay, it's fast unless the moose have torn holes in my tracks.
And we're home. We have been out an hour and a half, but some of that was spent taking pictures. Taking a picture at -15C is not at simple as it sounds. If you let the camera hang around your neck, the batteries give up in the cold. So you have to stuff the camera down your warm clothes, So before you take a picture you unzip any number of zippers (and you have great big mitts and ski poles to deal with, too) and pull the camera out and check the mode and take the picture, and then reverse the process to put the camera away.
Alaska is wonderful. The dreaded winter is not so dread, if only you get out in it for a bit.
And now I am on my warmup track. The track is the first thing I break out when the first snowfall comes. It goes around my back yard, so to speak. I go around the warmup track four times. In college, the track coach always made us do four laps to warm up. Vestigial memory. We pause at the far corner to see how the house is doing.
There is some buildup of snow where the chimney blocks the natural slope of the roof. Onward. We complete our laps, and branch off to the left of the first picture.
Now we are on the loop. We are headed roughly Southwest, up towards the ghost house. Notice the total absence of brush. It's all buried. Tough on the moose, but it is very nice for us. We now come to the first turn. In the woods, it is hard to ski in a straight line. There are always trees in the way. But this is the real SW corner of the loop. We pull off mittens so that we can operate the camera. Our hands freeze. No sacrifice too great for blog-land.
We note the downed birch at our right, hung up of course. Prime firewood candidate, and we may be able to get the tractor in there come spring. We are turning East, a longer leg of the loop. The leg looks a lot like the rest of the woods. But there are always interesting tracks. Maybe fox or weasel. Maybe even wolverine.
On we go. Eventually we can see Beryozova road. Halfway through now. Another left turn and we are running paralllel to Bery road. Going north now.
No tracks here. Too close for the road. Animals avoid us, and I don't blame them. So finally we get to the last left turn.
The house is but 200 meters away. Can't see it in the shot, center left. I had a shot of the final approach but deleted it by mistake. New interface to DigiKam. Not, in my opinion, entirely an improvement. Anyway, we do the 200m and we are home. It has taken us an hour, but it can be done with good snow in about 40 minutes. This time it took an hour, but we were taking pictures and pulling off mittens and the whole routine. Took a while longer. But the woods are really beautiful in deep snow. So you had a rest form the nanomill, and a nice ski in the woods.
