Tag Archives: backcountry skiing

Cabin Life – #8

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My hands are beat up.  I guess that shouldn’t be much of a surprise, but the combination of old scars and new wounds (fine, they’re more like boo-boos, but whatever) represent the bulk of the physical hardship of living out here.

The quarter-sized scar on the back of my right wrist is courtesy of the wood stove, as is the small scab on the back of my right thumb.  Next to the burn on my thumb are two little marks where large splinters were pulled out.  The back of my left thumb knuckle got skinned the other day while cleaning the chimney.  And my left middle finger got nailed grabbing wood out of the shed.

One of the apple trees

There are also the pre-cabin scars like the one on my index finger from where the first knife I owned folded up on me while I was up in the apple tree at my parent’s old house.  Plus the one on my right palm that ended with seven stitches after jamming my hand into a pile of broken glass at the bar during work.

There’s no doubt about it, my right hand takes the brunt of my abuse.  I just read “The Old Man and The Sea” and that had a similar theme, but the old man thought his left hand was weak and stupid.  He relied on his right hand and never had any doubts about its usefulness.  I don’t think my left hand is useless, and in fact I have to admit that if I was going to lose a finger, I would prefer that it came from my right hand.  I need all the fingers on my left hand to play guitar.

One nice thing about the mildness of this winter, so far anyway, is that my feet haven’t been as frost bitten as I thought they would be.  I developed frost bite on my feet years ago.  Cramming my feet into ill-fitting and stiff down hill ski boots and skiing over one hundred days per year pretty much sealed my fate.  I should have chosen boots that were comfortable, but I wanted racing boots even though I sucked at racing and was only on the team to get the free skiing.  The tables have turned now, and since I no longer get free skiing, I no longer get frostbite.  Truth is, I’d rather hit the slopes and deal with the frostbite.

Cabin Life – #7

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The shadows are getting long, and it’s only 4:00 in the afternoon.  There has been a noticeable difference in the amount of daylight from a month ago though.  In the beginning of January, I would have put my headlights on at this time.  But not today, because spring is coming.

It’s early February, and I can’t help but feel a certain amount of accomplishment.  When I moved into the cabin back in October, it seemed like winter was going to be a long, harsh struggle to survive.  I’ve had a good winter so far.

It’s been a remarkably mild winter though, and that has a lot to do with how it’s been going.  There have been lots of days with temperatures above freezing, and if all the rain we got had been snow, then I would guess that there would be about another three feet of snow on the ground.  Plus, the plow guy has only had to come twice, saving me a ton of money, and him a lot of veggie oil (his truck is a bio-diesel).  He did get stuck last time, and I mean way off the driveway stuck.  I helped him out and our efforts eventually took two hours, two shovels, my Jeep and his back-hoe.  But the effort was successful, and I get a free plow the next time it snows.

The wood is holding up really well too.  We cut, split and stacked about

The Old Plow

nine and a half cords of wood, which you can visualize as ten rows of split wood, each four feet high and twenty feet long.  I’ve only burned about two and a half cords so far, which means lots of dry wood for campfires this summer.

Analyzing my experience so far, I’m amazed at how long it took to get some of the little things down.  Like making sure the fire stays going all night instead of getting up three times to put wood in the stove.  Or making sure that I buy lamp oil for the kerosene lanterns.  Or planning ahead to make sure I have enough water for a few days.  My friends are remarkably generous with their drinking water, and for that I am very thankful.

It’s been a lot of work living out here, and the work is far from over.  But so many of the chores are enjoyable, that the days seem to go by kind of quickly.  I walk up to the other cabin out here a couple times a week to make sure that it’s still standing, no one has broken into it, and that there are no tree limbs sticking out of the roof.  Carrying a few arm loads of wood inside every day and splitting the bigger pieces gives me a little exercise, as does finding small logs in the woods and dragging them out to be cut up for next year’s fire wood.  I wish I could attach some sort of harness to Pico so that he would drag them, but I know that he would not want to do it.

The one thing that surprises me the most though, is the fact that I’m really enjoying living like this.  Sure, if it was my property I would invest in some upgrades like solar panels and a well, but I have really not been missing any of the things that we take for granted.  The transition to life off the grid really hasn’t been painful, and that’s really comforting to me.

Cabin Life – #6

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Why did I let myself fall asleep on the couch at six in the evening?  Now it’s two in the morning, and I’m wide awake.  I forgot how boring it is to be up in the middle of the night without any electricity.

A year ago, I was living in Florida, five blocks from the ocean, with a pretty good job (two of them, actually), and a nice place to live.  And the temperature never went below zero.  I was on a boat a lot of my work days, and got paid to hang out with my friends while working at the bar on weekends.

Wood smoke and sunrise

Occasionally, I would go hiking with Pico.  Our favorite place to go was Pumpkin Hill Creek Preserve State Park.  There were a few loops of trails out there, and I regularly worked with some of the people there on water quality stuff.  Although it wasn’t really hiking.  Sure, I was walking outside in the woods, but just kind of strolling along a sandy, single-lane road that was maintained not for recreation, but as a fire break in case of a forest fire.

When Pico and I would go hiking, I always looked for the eagle’s nest.  And there was a chance that we’d see deer or wild boar, and we were guaranteed a sight of the enormous gopher tortoise.  They can move really fast when they want to.

One time for work, I was driving a truck along the hiking trail, and a big fat black boar popped out of the undergrowth and started running away from the truck.  Perhaps instinctively, I started to chase the boar to see how fast it was running.  I backed off the gas when I hit 17 miles per hour, and the thing disappeared back into the brush a few seconds later.  I could see the tusks on that monster from about fifty feet, and they scared the crap out of me.  I just imagined Pico getting impaled by a tusk as he ran up to greet the boar.

Chasing the boar reminded me of a time when I was at Paul Smiths, some friends and I were out on a large, private property.  We had permission of course, and since it was fall and the height of berry season, we figured that we could probably find some black bears grazing out in the fields.  As we drove around the enormous expanses of blueberry fields, we saw 24 black bears.  Only one of them was out on the road, and when it took off running, we chased, just to see how fast it would run.  It was a small bear, probably a yearling, and we topped out at about 18 miles per hour.  Seeing that many bears was an incredible experience.

I’m glad now that it’s winter, there are not too many living things out in the woods that would pose a real threat to me or Pico.  I never take his leash on our outings, and he’s free to run and smell and pee all he likes.  The bears are hibernating, and the skunks and porcupines are not moving around much, though I have found some tracks and scat from porcupines.  So far, Pico has shown no interest in chasing the rabbits, but the red squirrels out back are now firm enemies.  It’s become apparent that he expects me to help him get the squirrels.  He trees them, then looks at me and barks.  The squirrels laugh and move to adjacent trees.  Luckily, they haven’t found the bird feeders, or Pico would probably have dove through the big window trying to get them, expecting me to follow.

 

Cabin Life – #5

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Bitter, bitter cold.  The HIGH temperature yesterday was 1.  About 8:00 this morning, the thermometer in my car read -18.  And that was after the sun had been up for a while.  It hurts to do anything outside when it’s that cold, and I’m pretty sure that I would rather die than go to the outhouse right now.

There’s really no difference to the feel of the air whether it’s twenty below or thirty below.  Both temperatures are equally hellish.  It’s not like when the temperature goes from thirty to forty above.  Forty degrees is a really warm day up here this time of year.  I would have my windows open, there’d be people walking around in t-shirts.  But trust me, when its more than ten degrees below zero, it is all terrible.

I’m chicken sitting, otherwise I wouldn’t go anywhere on a day like today.  The car gets started at least thirty minutes before I leave to let the engine and parts get warmed up as well as the heater.  She starts fine, but there are always

The front door hinge inside the cabin

horrible sounds when it’s this cold out.  The Jeep doesn’t want to go anywhere either and it makes its protestations known.  Too bad, I got chickens to take care of.

So much time and energy are devoted to dealing with the cold when it is like this.  Two nights ago, it was well below zero, and when I went to put the chickens away for the night, I noticed that there was no light coming from the coop.  I checked inside, and the heating lamp was not on.  It was a frantic scramble to check the extension cords and make sure they were plugged in.  Hands freeze and become useless very quickly when they have to be shoved into the snow searching for a little piece of wire.  And I have to be careful opening the door to go in.  The tiny bit of moisture on my hands from the snow freezes to the doorknob, and I have to exert a little extra effort to “let go” of the knob.

Once inside, my face and hands start stinging.  I was outside for maybe five minutes.  I check all the places where I think light bulbs could be: basement, garage, linen closet.  Finally in a back corner of the basement, I find the light bulbs.  I love compact fluorescent bulbs to save money, but in this case they’re useless.  I need a good old fashioned incandescent, one that sucks up the juice and spits out a ton of heat.  I don’t know enough about chickens to know how well they’d survive a winter up here with no shelter, but I do know that I don’t want to report a dead chicken to Amy.  Even if it would be a delicious tragedy.

Another option if I can’t get the lamp working is to bring them into the garage.  It’s warmer and sheltered, but then I would have to clean up all that chicken crap in the morning.  Plus, they probably wouldn’t want to leave the garage, meaning that I would have to catch each one and carry it outside.  If you’ve never hung out with any chickens, they’re kind of dumb.

Luckily, it was just a burned out bulb, and I found one halogen light that seemed to throw some heat.  The next morning, the chickens were all still alive, so the bulb must have at least helped.  After checking the coop for eggs and finding two frozen ones, I guess that chickens can survive pretty cold temperatures.

 

 

Cabin Life – #4

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Woke up normal time, between four and five in the morning.  I usually get up a few times a night to stoke the fire, but the stove has been burning well for the last couple of weeks.  I still like to get up and throw a couple of logs on, and to be sure the fire doesn’t go out, I set an alarm for 10:30pm, 12:30am, and 2:00am.

Got up, checked the fire, finished the book “Boomerang” that I got from the library and tried to fix my car window.  The driver’s window is stuck about halfway down, and since its winter, I really need to get it fixed.  But I don’t feel like going anywhere today, especially since I have to drive with the window down.  No, it’s better to put some plastic over it and wait a day or two to head to the mechanic.

Getting up so early and often generally requires that I take a nap during the day.  Since I get up so early, nap time is usually around 9:00am, which sounds weird, because most people have just gotten out of bed or are just getting to work.  But by nine, I’ve been up about five hours, and it’s nice to get a little more shut-eye.  When I lay down, the wind was blowing and the sky was overcast, but it was warm and there was a steady pat-pat-pat of water dripping off the roof.

When I woke up around noon, I glanced out the big window and could not see the trees on the other side of the yard.  They are maybe 150 yards away, but it was a white out.  The wind was raging, and snow was blowing everywhere.  The screened-in porch had about a half inch of accumulation despite the screens, there were a few inches on the ground while Pico turned white with snow after about a minute outside.

Since I had plenty of water in my brand new 5 gallon jug and lots of food, hunkering down didn’t seem like such a bad option.  It would be downright enjoyable if I had another little nine volt battery so I could listen to NPR once in a while, but I killed the last battery yesterday.  With all this indoor time on my hands, there’s really only one thing to do:  Clean.

I had a roommate for the last couple of months, but he’s gone now, so I set to making the cabin a little less like a weekend retreat and more like a home.  The biggest thing I have to do is the dishes.  There’s four knives, a bowl, a fork, and a small sauce pot to be washed.  It’s not that I don’t eat at home or cook, but I generally use paper plates and bowls, along with plastic silverware and cast-iron pans.  I know, I hate using the disposable stuff, but it’s really hard to do the dishes out here with no running water.  Plus, at least the paper dishes can go into the stove and produce some heat for the place.  Using the stuff twice, that’s my justification.

The propane stove is lit and the tea kettle is on.  There’s a big Tupperware in the sink to hold the hot water.  I have dish soap and a dish rag too.  Then the process begins.  I’ve put the five gallon jug on to two small pieces of 2×4 to raise it a little.  I wash in the hot water, rinse with the cold water.  It’s enough of a pain that I am still going to use mostly disposable stuff, but it only takes a few minutes to wash the dishes.  Trust me, this is a big step up in lifestyle.

I rearrange some other things so that I can sit on the couch in front of the big window and decide that that’s enough productivity for one day.  After all, I got all winter out here.  The storm is still blowing and the forecast now says that the high temperature tomorrow is going to be 1.  There’s about 6 inches of snow on the driveway, and I have to get it plowed for the first time this year.

But it’s nice to just sit inside by the fire once in a while.  There’s subtle pops from the woodstove and all three animals are snoring.  The sound of a fat cat snoring makes me want to crawl back into bed, but I have to head outside and get another arm load of wood.

Lyon Mountain

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First stream crossing

Earlier this year, I hiked Lyon Mountain for the second time.  It was a warm-up for the next week when I hiked Cascade and Porter.  Lyon Mountain is not one of the High Peaks, but it’s close at 3830 feet in elevation.  The nice thing about Lyon is that it sits all by itself on the Northeast edge of the Adirondack Park.  From the summit on a clear day you can see Vermont, the High Peaks and the skyline of Montreal.

The mountain also has a long history and even some intrigue about it.  For a long time, Lyon Mountain was one of the biggest iron ore operations around.  It has hosted a ski area, fire tower, caretaker’s cabin, and possibly even some nuclear missile silos.

The trail up Lyon Mountain was recently redone and now includes more switchbacks and a few new bridges.  The trailhead (N 44.72386, W073.84167) is at the end of a dirt road off of the Chazy Lake Road at the site of the former Lowenburg Ski Area (Lowenburg… Huh, wonder if they were Jewish?).  It actually showed up as Lowenburg Road on my GPS.  From Route 3 in the town of Saranac, turn onto the Chazy Lake Road.  Continue straight through the first Stop sign.  Be sure to wave to everyone you see, and then bear left at 0.5 miles.  Turn right at 2.3 miles at the Four-Way Stop.  Get your first view of the summit and fire tower at 3.5 miles.  Turn left onto the dirt road at 7.9 miles.  There is a brown wooden sign hanger at the road, but no sign.  Coming up the road, park on the right and the trailhead is in the far left corner of the clearing.

Red trillium on the Lyon Mtn. trail

For the first ten minutes or so, the trail is nice and wide.  (If you’re a backcountry skier, then follow the trail straight here to the top of the old ski trails and have a great time on your way down!).  The trail is well marked with red plastic discs.  Bear left onto the single track and make the first stream crossing on one of the new bridges.  The forest makes a nice change here to an understory of witchhobble and trillium with a maple canopy.

Make the second stream crossing after a nice rolling stroll and then about a half mile later, get a view of Chazy Lake to your left.  The summit push is pretty steep, but I only had to use my hands to scramble once or twice.  I did run into a large sheet of ice on the trail that I had to avoid, because I wasn’t prepared for ice, you know, because it was May 20th.  Reaching the fire tower, find the highest rock you can, and that’s the summit!

The summit is open with an almost 360 degree view.  Try to stay on the rocks and off the soil while hopping around.  And if you make it up more than three flights of the fire tower, you’re more brave than I am.

Fire Tower on Summit of Lyon Mtn. summit

Looking to the North from the summit, you can see the Altona wind mill area, and Montreal on a clear day.  To the southwest, you can see the High Peaks and to the East lies Vermont and the Green Mountains.  The trail up Lyon is not an easy one, but it’s not a killer either.

As I said before, this was the second time I climbed Lyon.  The first time was in 2008 in preparation for climbing a couple of High Peaks, the same reason I did it this time.  But soon I will have to climb it just for it’s own sake, because it’s a great hike.