Having a Ball

The temps started to rise and what happens is the snow of course gets sticky. This means the crampons ,on the bottom of the snowshoe bindings ,get full of snow and form a nice ball under your foot. Its like dragging five pounds of extra weight along and results in the snowshoe sliding around. So you have to "bare boot it" as we say. Lucky for us we were on the way down so we only had about a mile of bare bootin.

At the beach

The Beech trees seem to hang onto leaves a long time. It was cool listening to the wind rattling the leaves up here. The area had a pretty good population of Beech and Birch.

Shadow puppets

Just a shadow puppet show.

Monkey Man

Last weekend we did a quick run up the Robert Frost trail to a spot we call Monkey Man. There is a rock that sticks out of the cliff that looks like a monkey's head. It was covered with snow so I didn't shoot a picture of it. I will grab one once the snow melts some. At this rate it might be July. What a winter!

What time is it anyways ?

No watch no problem. If we assume the sun is due south at high noon or there abouts. You can use a compass to tell what time it is. The stick is due south ( its actually a little off after I looked at the picture) and the shadow is the time. The key is the fact that the sun sets in the west so you just kind of slice up the degrees until sunset and away you go. You do need a rough idea about the time the sunsets. It was about 12:30. It works good enough in the woods where I don't really care what time it is anyways. Another trick to tell how much daylight is remaining is to put your hand up horizontally. Then use your fingers to measure the number of them that will fit between the sun and the horizon in the west. Every finger is about 15 minutes of daylight remaining before the sun goes below the horizon.

I suppose you could just wear a watch but then what would you Blog about ??

Older than Me !

Way older. This tree was certainly around to see some history.

Ice everwhere

You wonder how the trees can rebound from this. The good news is there was very little wind. But still the tree damage was amazing.

Savoy State Forest

We did a quick trip up to Savoy State Forest. Its a nice spot but we were surprised to see ice everywhere . I was approaching 1/2 on all surfaces. You needed crampons on this trip. For the most part you could walk on top of the snow anywhere.

The view from The Ledges

There was a cabin here recently that has burned down . I don't know who owned the land originaly but this spot cetianly has a nice view of Shelburne and we could just make out Greylock in the distance. It was a little hazy as the temps were rising and things were melting.

No Jogging!

It was a nice place but you had better watch your step ! No monkey business here mister..