North Conway, 2008
Cris and I try to go away each year on President's Day weekend, in
February. This year, his job called him away to California and our
trip had to be postponed into March. I'd worried that we wouldn't get
to do any skiing, as Boston was finally bare of snow, but I needn't
have worried. Pictures.
Fri Mar 14/08
We packed up the car and then Cris drove me to work, where I dropped
my skis in my office. I showed him my new digs, and then we went back
down to the car and found a parking lot near my work - I could see the car
from W.'s office. He continued on to work by T and I was at my desk by
8am. I'd worked extra hours that week so I could take off the
afternoon, but Cris had a meeting that was scheduled for the afternoon
and he was going to call me once it was done and he was ready to go. I
kept waiting for the call, but he ended up delayed until 4, at which
point I'd put in a full day and didn't need to use up any of my
accumulated hours. I picked up the car from the lot across the street
and was able to make my way downtown to where he was waiting with only
regular Boston driving hassles. I swapped the driver's seat for the
passenger seat, though, and let him drive us from there. We were fine
until we hit traffic on the highway, but it kept moving if slowly and
we made our way up to NH and to 16 with no major delays. We listened
to a couple of mix cds that Cris got from friends.
The directions to
Stonehurst were pretty
simple, it was on 16 just past North Conway, so I started keeping an
eye open for it once familiar features started to appear (the happy
pig on the BBQ billboard!). We pulled up
at around 7pm, and checked in, taking one load of stuff up to the
room. They didn't allow skis in the lodge, though there was some
confusion, the sign outside said no, the woman said I could look at
the stairs and try, but then she said no when we came down for dinner
- it's not really set up as an active base hotel, they have cross
country ski trails, but don't rent equipment, and don't have anywhere
to store skis if you brought them. I was a bit nervous about my skis
sitting in the car overnight, they didn't fit in the trunk and so were
just in the back seat, but they were fine.
We'd bought a package that included breakfast and dinner along with the
room, and so I did a quick change out of my work and travelling clothes
into a skirt and nice sweater before we came down to eat. The menu was
nicely varied, and the cocktail menu heavy on the old fashioned recipes. I
ordered a grapefruit and gin based drink to celebrate finally getting to
our vacation time (Highland
Rose: Hendrick's Gin, Pama Pomegranate Liqueur, pineapple juice & a
Grand Marnier floater), and ordered the scallops paparadelle. I was *so*
tired from over work the whole week that I almost fell asleep in my pasta,
and I barely had an appetite, just picking out the scallops and a few
strands of pasta and asking for the rest to be packed up. I put it out in
the car for the night (no fridge in the room) and brought in my favourite
pillow and all the non sports gear before heading up to the room and
running water into the big jacuzzi bath. That was bliss, and I barely made
it to the bed before falling asleep - I made it a bit too hot, oops, but I
had lots of tension to get rid of. And rid of it I was, falling asleep by
10pm or so.
Sat Mar 15/08
The smell of bacon wafting up from the restaurant downstairs woke me up,
and lured me downstairs. I tucked into a substantial plate of french toast
(made with thick cut raisin bread). We went back upstairs and changed into
active clothes, ready for a day of potential skiing. But first, we had to
figure out something to do with my exiled skis. We went to EMS first, so
Cris could get a new winter jacket that was less bulky than his parka, and
I picked up a touque to keep my ears warm, going for the horizontal
striped black/grey/white one as it was warmer than the knit black one. I
tried to find a pair of base layer tights, but all the ones available were
either XL or XS. They didn't have any ski rack parts that would match the
roof rack Cris already had, so they directed us across the street to
Joe's. Walking out of EMS, I spotted a poster advertising dog sledding,
with only a phone number, no address, but with cheapish evening rides.
Cris offered to call and see if any spots were available that night, and
we moved onto the porch. He got a talkative guy on the line, turned out
that the evening rides were booked up, but they had a space for the
longer trail ride that afternoon. It was only about 11am, and we did a
spur of the moment booking for 1:30, getting verbal directions to a place
just across the border in Maine. We were going dog sledding. :)
At Joe's I found just what I wanted for a ski rack, the simple model that
will hold up to 4 skis or snow boards. I put it behind the counter and
tried on some ski pants, but the whole low rise thing is still going on
and I couldn't find anything comfy. Installing it was easy peasy, but it
ended up being impossible to swap the locks from the bike rack onto the
ski rack, due to the old style lock cams. Cris made a brilliant suggestion
and I dug out my cable style ski lock and used that to secure the skis to
the locked uprights. We still had some time before we had to head up to
Maine, so we stopped in at Katrina's Organic Market, across from
Stonehurst, to get stuff to go with our leftovers from last night's
dinner. Unfortunately they didn't have any bread for Cris to make a
sandwich, but they did have a small smoothie bar, so I got them to make me
one, and we grabbed forks. We went back to our room to eat, and then
headed out, north up 16. We went through the White Mountains National
Forest, past the AMC lodge at Pinkham notch.
I was a bit dubious about the directions, to go to the end of the last
road, where the plowing stopped, and especially dubious as we passed a
sign as we turned on to it: This road not maintained for winter driving.
Turned out that they literally didn't plow it past a certain point, there
was a 4 foot snow bank leading up onto a snowy trail, with some cars and
two trucks parked there, with dogs chained up. Paul was there to greet us,
and gave us a primer on now to get in and out of the sled, what to expect
from the ride, and introduced us to some of the dogs.
Soon, the previous ride's participants came barrelling down the
road/trail, and they helped Steve unhook the dogs and water them. We got
to help hooking up our dogs to the same sled, the first one I grabbed by
the collar was pulling hard, and I had to, as directed, pull his front
legs off the ground so that I wouldn't get pulled over. The second was
less enthusiastic, and the third was nice and calm, he was leading me but
not pulling. Cris got in first, I nestled in front of him, we were zipped
in and we were off. :) The dogs go from zero to I'M RUNNING! in about 1
second, I had to brace myself so I'd not crack against Cris's head. The
unadvertised part of the adventure was that the dogs would void their
bowels soon after starting to run, without stopping. One was so good at
pooping on the run that he'd be running (and keeping up!) just on his
front legs. Luckily none of them caught stuff with their back feet, so it
was just the smell we had to deal with. Lots of snow mobilers were out,
Steve wasn't happy about how they'd gun their engines while passing us. We
had a train of about 12 dogs, but they were all real professionals,
working dogs to the core, and would go "on by" without a glance at the
other trails nor noisy people movers. After a bit, Steve asked if one of
us wanted to help drive, and Cris hopped out and onto the runners. It was
neat riding by myself for a while, but then I volunteered to drive as
well. Man, it's a workout! I had to balance on one side while pushing with
the other foot, then switch to both feet on and hauling the whole frame to
the side. Steve was with both of us as we drove, but at one point, he had
to stop the sled to untangle the dogs. As he finished, way up the line, he
told me to let off the foot brake. So, for a brief period, I was driving
by myself, and then he hopped on. Awesome. :) I had to hop off as we got
to the turn around point, as it was clogged with snow mobiles (it was a
look out point) and Steve had to guide the dogs precisely. He gave them a
snack and I pet some of them while they were waiting for the bag of meat
to get to them. Some of the dogs took a break, lying down or rolling a
bit, but soon they were straining at the harness, ready to run back. I got
to drive a bit longer, but it was mostly down hill and that required some
finesse, so a while later, I got back into the sled with Cris. There were
some moments of quiet, just the dogs panting and running and the snow
gliding past underneath, that were just magic. We pulled back up to the
end, where the road reappeared under the snow pack, said our goodbyes to
Steve (Paul had packed up some of the other dogs in the truck mounted
kennels and moved them out) and got back in the car. I was glad I'd taken
an allergy pill, I was half covered in dog hair. Steve definitely gave the
impression that he loved dogs more than people (in fact I think he said so
more than once :) ), and I'm very glad that our spur of the moment
decision resulted in such a fun afternoon. We were out for about 2.5
hours, and it just flew by.
Back to the hotel, and I took a quick shower to get the dog hair out of my
eyes, hair, etc, and changed my clothes from the skin out. Putting on a
nice top and skirt after grubbing about with dogs most of the day was
nice. :) I was feeling more awake, and hungrier, at dinner that night, so
I started off with a 20th Century Cocktail (Plymouth Gin,
Lillet white wine, creme de cacao & lemon... ). I had the turkey
soup to start, very yummy, and the plank baked salmon for my main course,
and it was some of the best salmon I've had. For dessert we were torn over
the tira misu and the molten chocolate cake, so we each ordered one and
then swapped half way through. I *loved* the molten chocolate cake, the
tira misu was light on the rum, and more custardy than I prefer. After
dinner it was time for a proper hot tub soaking, and some reading before
nodding off.
Sun Mar 16/08
Breakfast was a substantial Belgian waffle for me, and some brochure
browsing, as I'd spotted the rack of ski resort hand outs on the other
side of the stairs. Cris was willing to give Wildcat a try, despite their
lower ratio of beginner hills, especially because they had a sweet deal on
Sunday afternoon lift tickets: ski 12-4pm for $20. We decided to fill up
the morning by snow tubing. The mountain in downtown North Conway, Cranmore,
offered 2 hour passes for $18, so we were off.
We got there right at nine,
just in front of a big group of young boys with a semi annoying coach (the
local ski team, I think). I was a bit disappointed to find that it wasn't
as big as advertised - there were only three lanes and one lift, I think
the other four lanes and one lift were ... gone? missing? hard to find? I
asked one girl about it, but she didn't know where they were. So, it was
like tubing on the bottom half of the place I went to in Utah. Still fun,
but by the end of 2 hours, we were more than done. There was a super
excited 2 or 3 year old boy tubing with his dad, they started off in a
single tube, and the toddler would scream and laugh the whole way down.
After a while, he got his own tube, and they went down in pairs (Cranmore
limits it to 4 tubes at a time, no huge trains here), with the toddler
screaming at his dad to let go. :) The older boys were, of course, having
snow ball fights, and some of the staff built a jump at the bottom of the
middle ramp, without really warning anyone. I almost got whiplash going
over it, and avoided it until it got flattened. Cris and I raced a couple
of times, that was fun. :) After a couple of joint descents, I agreed to
try spinning, man those teenagers can impart some wicked spin to the
tubes! It was super fun after all, and I didn't get motion sick, so
spinning it was from then on, unless we were racing. :) The snow was
falling lazily down in big flakes, and the temp was just about freezing, a
perfect day for tubing. More families with kids started at 10, most of the
toddlers then would go down with really worried looks in their faces, just
peeking out from their parents' arms. At 11, we spun our tubes into the
pit and took off to get some lunch, going back to the Stair Way Cafe on
the main drag. We just beat the lunch rush, getting in around 11:30, and
wolfing down our brunch foods. I sprang for the lobster benedict and it
was very good.
Then we hit the road, north on Rt 16, following the drive we took the day
before, but stopping at Wildcat
(woot! you can ski free on your birthday! too bad they don't open in
September..). Cris went in first to get his rental equipment, and I kitted
up at the car. I waited for him by the lifts and we went over to the mid
mountain lift that let out onto a nice long green. We skied the first run
together, and then he went off to the other beginner lift, and I went up
to the top. Good snow at the top, and then ice in the middle, and soft
spring snow at the bottom. It had been foggy that morning, it was good
that we were there just for the afternoon. I had some good runs, but my
quads were surprisingly tired from dog sledding the day before, and I took
off to find Cris. No sign of him on the shortest lift green, so I went
back up, and down the first run we tried. I spotted him down slope and
sped up a bit to catch up. And then sped up some more. And then bombed
down the slope, finally catching up when he stumbled a bit. I was
impressed! He decided to call it a day at that point, but I wanted one
more run, so I went up to the top, and then got side tracked across the
mountain, going all the way across the long way, and coming back down to
see him all back in street clothes and sipping his hot chocolate. Back to
the car, left the skis unlocked and got back into my winter boots, and we
headed south, back toward the hotel.
We ended up doubling back a bit on Rt 16 to visit the AMC lodge we'd
passed on the way up, to browse their store, get some info on the trails,
and see about snow shoe rental. Nice comfy place there. We stopped briefly
at the grocery store on the way back, picking up some snacks for hiking
the next day. I had time before dinner to take a nice (luke warm!) soak
with my muscle ache reducing bath salts, and *didn't* fall asleep in the
tub. Last night of getting dressed for dinner, and we went with wine
instead of cocktails. I tried a local white that I quite liked: Jewell
Towne Riesling, from South Hampton, NH. I went with the house salad as a
starter this time, and had the Baked Haddock with Lobster Cream Sauce as
my entree. It was a bit disappointing, still good, but not up to the
standards that the previous night's meals had set. The cheesecake with
sugar cookie crust was way too heavy for me, I only had about a quarter of
it. I read for a little in the room, then it was time for a hot bath. :)
Mon Mar 17/08
I couldn't resist the stuffed french toast any longer, but it ended up
being two pieces of french toast with berries sandwiched between them.
Good but not up to my memories of stuffed french toast in Vancouver. We
packed up and checked out and headed back out to Pinkham Notch in the
White Mountains National Forest to go hiking. The wind was *cruel* in the
parking lot, I was getting worried, but as soon as we rounded the lodge,
it was cut off. We asked about renting snow shoes, but the woman at the
counter said that if we were going to do the trail up to Crystal Cascade
and beyond, it was perfectly walkable with just boots. Okay, then, off we
went. And it was easy, it was like walking on the road we'd dog sledded on
a couple days before. Except going up. Way up. The walk to the Crystal
Cascade was short, and it was beautiful, though we almost missed it: it
was up a steep snow bank over my head, a group of kitted out hikers were
picking their way down and said that it was worth the climb. It was, water
falling out from behind ice. I noticed as I was trying to get a picture
that I was standing about a foot *above* the metal guard rail, on packed
snow. Boston was bare of snow after heavy rains, somehow I don't think
they got the thaw cycles we did further south. That part of the trail was
easy enough we set out up the rest of the Tuckerman's Ravine trail, but it
was a constant upward grade, winding up the side of the mountain toward
a hut and then a trail to the top of Mt. Washington. I tend to bike
everywhere rather than walk, so I had to take fairly frequent breaks to
catch my breath. Then I started to worry about my knees on the way down,
so Cris hiked up a bit further to look around the next corner while I took
some pictures (the B&W ones mostly in the link at the top). Nope, still
climbing, so we descended. We ran into an Aussie mom and son on the
first bridge and took pictures of each other in pairs. We were out
for about an hour, hour and a half, and I was running low on calories
despite snacking on the fig newtons we picked up yesterday. So we put in
our orders at the cafeteria in the lodge and settled into the bright airy
room with a few other groups to fuel up.
After lunch, we decided to try the Old Jackson Road trail, as it was
supposed to be packed and a bit less challenging than the Tuckerman Ravine
trail in terms of elevation gain. But I'd noticed this side spur to Lila's
Ledge that looked shorter and interesting. The only problem was that the
trail wasn't packed. Well, it was, but under about a foot of snow. And it
was only about a foot wide, and we didn't go back to rent snow shoes. But
we tried it anyway. Three stream crossings on ice bridges, some hands and
knees scrambling up steep slopes, and we found the sign pointing to Lila's
Ledge. But no sign of an actual trail going there. Cris tried a few ways,
but had to give up due to the stupidly deep snow, he kept sinking in to
his thighs. We decided to loop around back to Old Jackson Road, following
Liebskind's Loop. We lost the trail and found it again, lost it and
backtracked, lost it and couldn't pick it up again near Brad's Bluff. I
broke through up to my hips at one point, and my weight was positioned
such that my knee scraped along some hidden ice (or maybe a buried tree
branch) and I severely bruised my left leg. I was worried that it was
bleeding, but didn't want to undo all my layers to check. In the end it
looked like a scrape, no bleeding (though it would have cut if I didn't
have the waterproof and polar fleece pants on), but as time wore on a palm
sized bruise blossomed. I was now really worried about getting back, I
rested a bit as Cris tried to find the trail, but the blazes were just
gone (there were a lot of birch trees shedding their bark, we wondered if
some bozo painted a shed piece). I basically forced us to go back, there
was no way I was going to risk another minor injury on top of the bruise,
we were over two miles out from the lodge with a technical trail to get
there, and I didn't fancy waiting for Cris to go and get help if
something else happened to me. Plus, it was getting close to 3pm, our
unofficial start the drive home time.
Luckily, following our back trail was super easy, no wind was hitting the
ground and no new snow was falling. It was still a bit dicey getting down
some of the slopes though, having to kick into the snow, and hoping you
didn't hit ice, to get foot holds. Finally, Old Jackson Road came back
into view, and the bridge where we'd forked off onto Crew Cut. From that
angle, I could see just how deep the snow was. I made Cris stand on the
bridge, on the packed snow of Old Jackson Road and took a picture, the
snow was probably shoulder deep on him, and that's not even the off trail
depth! We were really lucky, we should have had snow shoes with us, as
well as a more detailed map than what we picked up in the AMC lodge. We
walked back into the lodge, and through to the car to get a change of
clothes - my base layer was sweaty, I'd worn one too many fleeces to keep
a good temperature (note to self: remember to zip up the arm pit zippers
before you wear that jacket again!). Warm and dry, we started off south,
leaving behind the snow covered wilderness for next year, but making plans
to come back and hike (and bike) in the summer.
We stopped on the way through Conway at the Army Barracks, where I picked
up some pieces that I was missing for an event in a couple of weeks
(finally found a leather aviator's cap for a decent price, and some cheap
buff gaitors and a top). Next door was a fine pastry shop, River Stones,
so, since lunch was long worn off, and fig newtons only go so far, we
stopped in to fuel up on sugar. I got the amaretto chocolate cake slice,
and only ate about a quarter before filling up, it was huge. Warm tea to
take the cold off, and we were off. We stopped at the NH liquor store, I
found a bottle of the Zen Tea Liqueur and picked up a bottle of Plymouth
gin to use when my current gin ran out. Quick drive to Portsmouth, where
we stopped at the Portsmouth Brewing Company (as usual) for supper. We had
serious hat head and were feeling a bit haggard, but still got carded,
sweet. :) I had the coconut noodles, which were good. We got home at
around 8pm, I think, and I just had enough energy to throw everything from
my suitcase into my laundry basket, shower, and head to bed.
Back to my diary page.
Soon, the previous ride's participants came barrelling down the
road/trail, and they helped Steve unhook the dogs and water them. We got
to help hooking up our dogs to the same sled, the first one I grabbed by
the collar was pulling hard, and I had to, as directed, pull his front
legs off the ground so that I wouldn't get pulled over. The second was
less enthusiastic, and the third was nice and calm, he was leading me but
not pulling. Cris got in first, I nestled in front of him, we were zipped
in and we were off. :) The dogs go from zero to I'M RUNNING! in about 1
second, I had to brace myself so I'd not crack against Cris's head. The
unadvertised part of the adventure was that the dogs would void their
bowels soon after starting to run, without stopping. One was so good at
pooping on the run that he'd be running (and keeping up!) just on his
front legs. Luckily none of them caught stuff with their back feet, so it
was just the smell we had to deal with. Lots of snow mobilers were out,
Steve wasn't happy about how they'd gun their engines while passing us. We
had a train of about 12 dogs, but they were all real professionals,
working dogs to the core, and would go "on by" without a glance at the
other trails nor noisy people movers. After a bit, Steve asked if one of
us wanted to help drive, and Cris hopped out and onto the runners. It was
neat riding by myself for a while, but then I volunteered to drive as
well. Man, it's a workout! I had to balance on one side while pushing with
the other foot, then switch to both feet on and hauling the whole frame to
the side. Steve was with both of us as we drove, but at one point, he had
to stop the sled to untangle the dogs. As he finished, way up the line, he
told me to let off the foot brake. So, for a brief period, I was driving
by myself, and then he hopped on. Awesome. :) I had to hop off as we got
to the turn around point, as it was clogged with snow mobiles (it was a
look out point) and Steve had to guide the dogs precisely. He gave them a
snack and I pet some of them while they were waiting for the bag of meat
to get to them. Some of the dogs took a break, lying down or rolling a
bit, but soon they were straining at the harness, ready to run back. I got
to drive a bit longer, but it was mostly down hill and that required some
finesse, so a while later, I got back into the sled with Cris. There were
some moments of quiet, just the dogs panting and running and the snow
gliding past underneath, that were just magic. We pulled back up to the
end, where the road reappeared under the snow pack, said our goodbyes to
Steve (Paul had packed up some of the other dogs in the truck mounted
kennels and moved them out) and got back in the car. I was glad I'd taken
an allergy pill, I was half covered in dog hair. Steve definitely gave the
impression that he loved dogs more than people (in fact I think he said so
more than once :) ), and I'm very glad that our spur of the moment
decision resulted in such a fun afternoon. We were out for about 2.5
hours, and it just flew by.
