Tag Archives: downhill skiing

Cabin Life – #61

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Evening Entertainment
Psychologically, I am ready for winter to be over.  I like the snow and the skiing and the trips to the gym that I just can’t justify when it’s nice out, but I would really like some nice warm days to come our way.  Maybe I’m not ready for winter to be completely done, but I could use a February or early March thaw.

I was sitting here reading the other night, when the radio suddenly turned off.  This is a common occurrence, due to the fact that my radio is a “solar” radio.  I put solar in quotes because this is what the radio was advertised as, but it is, in fact a crank/rechargeable radio that happens to have a small solar panel on it.

This past summer I spent a little bit of money getting solar lights and this radio.  Last winter I had used an old digital alarm clock for my radio.  That clock was the same one that’s been waking me up since I was a freshman in high school.  It was a good, old-fashioned plug in clock radio that had a battery backup so that if the power went out, your alarm would still go off.  I went through a lot of nine-volt batteries listening to NCPR last winter, so many that I had to repair the wire harness a few times.  I took that clock radio to the campground last spring and decided to leave it there when I got my new solar radio.

The reception that I get on the new radio is good, but tuning it is a hassle and if I don’t charge it in the car then I will inevitably spend a significant portion of my evening cranking the thing so that I’m not sitting here in an eerie, mind-numbing, depression-inducing silence.

All that being said though, I wonder how long I would last without it.  Now, admittedly, I live in a writer’s dream.  Solitude, peace, quiet, and lots of inspiration surround me.  I like the peace and quiet, with no neighbors’ dogs barking or loud vehicles driving by.  I like the lack of distraction when I’m writing and reading.  But riding out the winter with its long nights would most definitely be a lot more trying if not for the company of the radio.

I suppose that when you deprive yourself of a lot of distractions, it becomes a luxury to have a little something going on in the background.  I have friends that have come to visit the North Country and can’t sleep because there’s no sound of traffic or sirens to listen to as they drift off.  I don’t have that problem.  There’s no shortage of noise out here, it’s just not the type of noise created by planes, trains and automobiles.

Between the wood crackling in the stove and two rambunctious, mostly nocturnal cats, I have plenty of sound to drift off to.  Throw Pico’s gentle snoring into the mix and the sound of the ever-present wind blowing around the cabin and it’s basically a symphony of natural sounds all night long.  But there’s sometimes I just don’t feel like listening to the wind or to Ed and Herbie wrestling.  That’s when the radio becomes important.  The distraction of music or talk radio or whatever is on gives me a much needed respite from the regular sounds this cabin makes.

When the sun goes down at four-thirty in the afternoon, it’s the radio that keeps me awake until seven.  When I don’t know if I should bother shoveling in the morning, it’s the radio that lets me know.  And it’s not that I have the radio on all the time.  I can’t write with the radio on, but I can read and play Scrabble.  I don’t change the station that frequently because it’s a bother, so I often listen to talk radio or music for a week at a time.  Sure, the radio I got may be under-performing.  However, it’s my lifeline to the outside world and my one source of passive electronic entertainment.  And if that means that I have to spend ten minutes cranking it to listen to twenty minutes of music, I guess I’ll just have to be ok with that.

Be sure to like Middle of the Trail on Facebook for more pictures and daily updates and follow @JustinALevine for whatever it is I do on Twitter.

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.

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.