February: off the couch

Heading to Chicago on school business, but it has been a great month with no travel ... Yahoo! I logged 22 days on snow, over 5,000 vertical climbing, and 22 hours of skiing. Feels like the most
activity in quite a while.

Trap Dike on Mount Colden

The photo is from last week's 20K tour - reconnaissance - it is in great shape. This is one of the best moderate winter mountaineering outings in the Adirondacks. If we want something stiffer (NEI 3+) right next door is the climb called The "Adirondike," at 4 pitches it is also in great shape. Brian? Gary? Dave? Larry?

Fossil Gear!

Ski mountaineering 1970s style ... Getting ready to rip the hide, and point 'em downhill. My 202 cm Rossi Strato 102, with first generation Ramer randonee bindings, adjusted for my ice climbing boots! I spent two hours touring the newly cut logging trails at NCS which weave their way through open stands of sugar maples ... fantastic skiing, and great views of Pitchoff, Cascade, Wright, and Algonguin

Skiing bibliography

Click on this link to access an extensive bibliography of the subject including fiction and non-fiction, guidebooks, films and video, photograph collections, poetry, and assorted artifacts. (Over 7,000 items catalogued in this database.)

NCS Skimeister

Lucy participating in the nordic 1K event, then it was on to the 1K air rifle biathlon, and finally then to the ski hill for the slalom and jumping events. It was a picture perfect day. (Click on the picture to enlarge the photograph.)

NCS Ski Hill

It was a beautiful day, and I was out skating our nordic trails, including a trip up the lower portion of our ski hill. Tomorrow is our annual skimeister - nordic, slalom, aerials, and biathlon - so the kids are getting pretty excited! (Click on the photograph to enlarge it.)

Saranac Lake Winter Carnival

Lucy skated a good race against stiff competition on a 1.8K course. Her time of 8:41 averaged 4:48 per kilometer. (Click on the photograph to enlarge it.) On a totally different note, tonight we are having "Hugh stew" ... one of our bulls - Hugh Grant - is being taken out of the freezer. For those that are interested, Selden names all our young bulls after movie stars because they get lots of female attention in the barnyard but all come to an untimely end.

Fantastic Tour

A superb day! Ted and I toured 10k to the end of Avalanche Lake. The
conditions were hard and fast, with lots of side slipping and
snowplowing to get safely down "misery mile." We did the full 20k and
1500' tour in just under four hours.

Loppet finish

Hock striding it out in the last 100 meters. I had superb wax ... purple covered by layers of blue and extra blue.

Maputo

Fossil friends -Tori and Greg - have moved into their apartment in Maputo. Maputo, formerly Lourenço Marques, is the capital and largest city of Mozambique.

Tioga Pass Resort

A decade ago I did some phenomenal skiing in Tuolumne with Ben. I would go back in a heartbeat ... any interest this Spring or some other Spring. (I enclosed the chute, not because I have designs on skiing it but because Lewy told me he had skied the Ellery Bowl chutes.)

Last Loppet update

The enclosed picture shows "Team NCS" just before the start of the big race. Our team was composed of four staff, four current students, a recent graduate, and a former NCS mom. The times for this rugged 25K classic (1800') ranged from 1:57 to 3:10, with Hock skiing a relatively casual 2:10. (You may notice that his travel schedule and cultivation dinners seem to have thickened his middle a bit!)

Blast from the Past!

A picture of Yvon, piolet and ice dagger in hand, working out the secrets of the ice climbing revolution in the sixties. The other picture is from my library and is of the classic - and highly collectible - gear catalog with Doug Robinson's article on clean climbing. Two key alpine artifacts!

Taking Home Hardware

One of our 9th graders - Meg - won the 13-17 age group in the 25k.
Betsy and Liz on the NCS staff also won medals. Kyle just missed
breaking the NCS with a 1:57 in the 25k classical.

Kudos to Gary

The fossil outhouse has a special new Finnish seat that is warm on the
butt in sub-zero weather. Thanks Gary.

Gary at the start

It is 9:00 am and the gun is about to go off. Gary skied a snappy 3:56
for third in his 50k age group. Of course, little does he know that
his top layer of blue wax (which I changed on my own skis shortly
after this picture) is going to be too slick to get him up the Porter
Hills.

Course profile

As you can see from the course profile enclosed with our race packet, we are going to do a lot of climbing tomorrow ... 1800'. Snow conditions are perfect, and it seems that the very warm temperatures are going to hold off until tomorrow afternoon when we are done! (Click on the photograph to enlarge the course profile.)

Tuning Skis

The NCS nordic team getting ready for the 25K loppet. We glide waxed with CH-8, and tomorrow we are going to check out a variety of kick wax combinations including grip tape, as the temperatures may change dramatically on Saturday.

Another blast from the past!

Hock competing in the 1986 Biathlon World Team Trials. Later in the following season he would qualify for the Olympic Trials. He passed up on that opportunity to help coach the US Disabled Ski Team in Seefeld, Austria where he guided a blind skier to 4th place in the World Championship 10K.

Stowe Derby

After I finish the Lake Placid loppet 25K, there is one more race to do on February 22nd with the NCS students ... the Stowe Derby ... 3000' descent from the summit of Mount Mansfield and then a 7.5K skate into the center of town. Can we put together a fossil team? (Click here to see the details about the Stowe Derby