Tag: white mountains

Chopping Wood

Last winter we ran out of wood.  

This was the first winter with the Lodge house, so we weren’t sure how much wood to store up.  We head a little less than a cord, which I thought would be plenty.  

Around March we totally ran out and had to make some emergency calls around to get some wood delivered.  The problem is that we have a small wood stove and need the wood cut at 14″, which apparently is not a normal length. 

So this year, I set a goal of building up my wood pile large enough to last throughout the entire season.  I’ve been cutting trees down, cutting them to length, splitting, and stacking.  We are usually pretty busy, so I’ve been trying to sneak this project in an hour here or there once or twice a week.   

It’s now late September and I’ve built up a pretty decent pile.  Unfortunately I don’t think I’m there yet.  Also, the wood needs to season.  By ‘season’ I figure it needs to sit out for a single season, but I’m still not sure.  

Overall, I’ve found it incredible satisfying to see the lifecycle of chopping down the tree, stacking it, and now starting to burn it.  It’s hard work, but very enjoyable.

-40 degrees, no skiing this weekend

Wow, we thought last weekend was cold with a wind chill of -30.  Well, this weekend was even worse!  With wind chills of -40, it was a struggle just to get from the car to the cabin!  Some of the ski mountains were closed because of the cold, but Bretton Woods was open.

It was definitely impossible to bring the kids skiing.  Instead we took them into Littleton on Saturday, went to the candy and toy stores.  It was so cold out the water in my eyes froze solid walking from the car to the store.

Michele took the boys rock climbing at Bretton Woods while I hung back during Tommy’s nap time.  At night we made tacos, had a nerf gun battle, and celebrated Michele’s birthday.

It was so cold the cabin was having a hard time staying warm, we couldn’t get the temp above 60!  It’s looking like we’re going to get a good snow storm this week, so looking forward to some good skiing next weekend!

When you realize your kid is a better skier than you…

So, Bretton Woods is now fully open for the season.  As of today, they are 62/62 on trails and 28/35 on glades.

We’ve pretty much fully explored all the trails on the mountain and so now we are discovering the glades.  This weekend we’ve tried our first double black diamond trails.  These are the most challenging on the mountain.  Not for their overall steepness, but for the combination of steep and obstructions (i.e. trees, rocks, and water).

Some of the more challenging ones we tried this weekend were:

  • John Grave’s Glades – On the west mountain.  A nice long glade run compared to the shorter runs on rosebrook.
  • Hemlock – This thing was treacherous.  Short but extremely steep with trees everywhere.  I went down on my butt.  Eli fell and hit his chin on his skis.  Not doing this one again.
  • Lazy Man – Even though this was is rated higher than hemlock, I think hemlock was actually more difficult.  Both hemlock and lazy man are right next to each other.
  • Roz’s – Not much of a glade, more like a chute that connects many of the rosebrook glades together.  At the bottom of this run you had to navigate through pools of water on a narrow strip of a trail.  One wrong move and you’d be soaked!

Continue reading “When you realize your kid is a better skier than you…”

First Day of Winter!

It’s officially the first day of winter!  There’s something relieving about knowing that each day from now on will have more daylight than the one before.  Winter can get a little depressing when it’s dark in the morning before work and still dark when you get home.  There is just no time to enjoy the daylight.

This is why, being a new englander, you need to take up a winter activity to stay sane.  For the past couple years since we’ve taken up skiing more regularly, we are actually looking forward to the winter!

Last weekend had some of the most unbelieveable ski conditions we’ve experienced in a couple years.  We were skiing in literally 2 feet of powder.  It was up to our knees while going down the trails.  We were in pure heaven.

Ironically, the kids hated it.  They weren’t used to skiing in powder and kept falling.  Once they were on the ground they had a hard time getting back up and were just getting frustrated.  Some day they’ll understand that these are rare days in new england.

So rare in fact the conditions did a complete 180 within 24 hours.  We went from unbelieve powder on Saturday to a complete downpour on Sunday and many of the trails closed.  We decided to have breakfast at Polly’s Pancake Parlor (which I highly recommend) instead.

Just another weekend in the whites!