Another thread to try to stay distracted from the weather

[Dirk]

If you want to stay in the northeast, how about Morrissville, Vermont? Stowe's low-rent next door neighbor.

Don't tell them about that... I'm still saving up for my down payment!

You heard it here first - Mo'ville is the next Aspen!

Seriously though. 20 minutes to Stowe, 30 to Smuggs, 1 hour to Jay. BC in Sterling Gorge, Mud City, Ranch Valley, Nebraska Notch, Underhill and Stevensville. Paddling on the Lamoille River, Green River Reservoir, and the Waterbury Reservoir. Keep a bigger boat (if you have one) on either Lake Champlain or Lake Memphramagog. Hiking up the wazoo. Rail Trail. Trendy brewery (Lost Nation). Good pizza. Excellent small hospital (Copley) for when you break something doing any of the above activities.

[RobRox]

Don't tell them about that... I'm still saving up for my down payment!

....
Seriously though. 20 minutes to Stowe, 30 to Smuggs, 1 hour to Jay. BC in Sterling Gorge, Mud City, Ranch Valley, Nebraska Notch, Underhill and Stevensville. Paddling on the Lamoille River, Green River Reservoir, and the Waterbury Reservoir. Keep a bigger boat (if you have one) on either Lake Champlain or Lake Memphramagog. Hiking up the wazoo. Rail Trail. Trendy brewery (Lost Nation). Good pizza. Excellent small hospital (Copley) for when you break something doing any of the above activities.

Sucking down the sudz is a risky biz...
Seriously, Morrisville has a lot going for it, Including reasonable drive time to La Belle Ville in QC. Plus, only 9 hours to Le Gite du Mont Albert.

[lowangle al]

I did a few backpacking trips in the Loyalsock area, my wife and I really like it up there. My place in Pa. is at the western edge of the Poconos about 15 minutes from I 81 south of Scranton.

The only other advice I have for you is when looking for your next home try to find something on a lake, or at least a spot where you can hike and ski out your door. It's nice to be able to recreate without having to get in the car.

[North816]

thanks for the update on Saddleback Rob.

I like Rangeley but I'd choose one of the great towns in Northern VT just for the advantage of being near Burlington.

[RobRox]

thanks for the update on Saddleback Rob.

I like Rangeley but I'd choose one of the great towns in Northern VT just for the advantage of being near Burlington.

Yup, a good Trauma Center nearby is a strong plus factor.

[oldschool]

I had the feeling the VT folk were being a bit shy about touting their own good fortune...thanks again for the suggestions.

Water - checked for our place in PA which is right on the creek - 5 minute walk downstream to a stocked pool for plenty of fun fishing whenever want to do it - usually each spring I go there and put in some time and seriously fish - meaning get up, coffee, fish the AM until things slow down around 11:30 or maybe noon - back to grab lunch, maybe tie a couple flys, possibly go for a jog or cycle a little, then fish the afternoon-evening. Next day repeat. No TV at our cabin - unfortunately there is a cell signal there enough to get text and often to allow my e-mail to update, which I'd prefer wasn't the case but at least I need to drive 10 min to have enough wifi to download attachments or do serious work online. Probably not a bad idea to be near decent water for home recreation too. Syracuse is very good for that.

Nearby trauma care unit - not bad to think about either. Being in my early 50s I feel like I'm hitting a bit of a transition whether I like it or not - I can still ski hard stuff and sometimes ski it reasonably aggressively if the conditions are right. I do feel like I'm getting closer to the point where I'm not always going to be down for anything but am not there just yet - it was funny, when we were looking ahead to going to Smuggs this year, we saw their triple black - Black Hole - conditions were not all that great the day we were there - good cover most spots and some glade skiing but that section off upper lift line was not really open. I think ULL maybe opened a little bit in the afternoon briefly and my son hit one or two runs in there but it was the first real day out skiing for us all season so a little early for me to jump right onto top end blacks - I did Lower Lift Line at the end of the day and that was enough along with the odd other glade and groomed blacks. In reading about "hardest runs in the east" I happened to see that a run at Whiteface was on someone's list - Lookout Below - that run was fun as my family was there about four or five years ago - my kids board or ski blacks solidly and are ski club rats at school up for anything. My wife's dad was a weekend instructor at Squaw Valley for a club when she was growing up and she skied every weekend if she liked it or not. We got to the top of Lookout Below and looked down it and it was one VW beetle or bus sized mogul after the next - wall to wall and top to bottom - the run heads straight down. It is the first time my kids ever paused seriously to look at a run they were about to do, which was fun to see. Anyway - I still like stuff like that but if conditions truly suck, or it's pointless for me, I'll give it a pass now. Our second day skiing after Smuggs was at Stowe - my son was taking the drop in's from the very top of the Madonna lift for National, and a few others - some of them are slots between spruces near the top and just not something I'm going to be able to tele or parallel so rather than sideslip 10 or 20 yards down the start of a run, I just passed and picked it up below which was good for me on day two at the beginning of the season anyway. I took a couple of falls this year that made me very glad I wear a helmet, but nothing really serious. Glade skiing is probably the place I need to be most careful as, at least for me, even paralleling, there is a bad tendency to build speed which you can check but I feel enough times that if I clocked a tree, it would not be good. Haven't done that yet, but feels a bit like I'm on borrowed time for that one. My goal is to keep skiing at about this level - trying to get into better shape each year or at least be the same so that despite age, I still can hit it. I've never been able to ski a steep lift line in a continuous fluid, non-stop run - lower angle lift lines yes, but not a fairly steep one with drops or jump turns or little hucks. I can huck like 4 ft if I stare at it a minute or so and the landing does not have bad consequences for failure to make the next move immediately after. Same jump turns with tele - so my skiing of double blacks is methodical picking my way down combined with linking a few turns where I can here and there. All that still fills me with a solid sense of accomplishment despite the odd context of riding a chair repeatedly up just to find my way down and repeat.

In other good news - looks like the warm up isn't quite as bad as it could have been and things appear to be lasting a little longer than I thought - looks good for getting out a couple more times for me after all.

Once again - I'm really grateful for this place, the moderators who keep it on track and admin folk. Nice to have a community of folks into tele, backcountry and occasional good discussions or advice about cycling, gardening, brewing and the like. Really appreciate all you folks -

[Grant]

If your VW Westy is part of the equation, you better find a good local mechanic wherever you are moving. Larson's in Morrisville may work but Craig's in Colchester is a better bet.

[oldschool]

Bought the Westy from a Vermont guy outside of Burlington - if I'm not mistaken I went to Craig's to have it checked over by the mechanic there. Guy named Noah who was very cool, very helpful. My local garage does pretty well with it, but no major items yet though I know some will come sooner or later.

[MikeK]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like if you own a VW, you should know how to fix it yourself.





Not so much with the modern ones as the computers have become a bit much, but anything pre-2000.

[oldschool]

Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like if you own a VW, you should know how to fix it yourself.





Not so much with the modern ones as the computers have become a bit much, but anything pre-2000.

Well the short answer for this is, yeah, you're wrong.

Longer answer is a little more nuanced -
While it is true that lots of VW enthusiasts are "shadetree mechanics" or whatever, there's plenty of folks who just enjoy their vehicles and I've found the folks around here in the VW club to be a pretty diverse and accepting bunch of folks whose main criteria is that that you have some appreciation of the craft of VWs. Though I'm not that much into it, I really like the fact that the folks are remarkably non-judgemental in my experience. Just nice folks who enjoy VWs.

I realized that a VW Westy would fit a lot of my needs and decided to give it a shot with one that was in good shape that I found on CL. For a while at first I thought I'd get into working on it myself - check out the site Samba and you'll see that lots of folks do and lots of folks use good mechanics too. You can order parts and DIY stuff yourself, which can be fun, or, when it's in for inspection, which you can't do yourself, and a taillight is out, you can pay your local shop that does your minivan and other car to take care of the light issue and change the oil. Sure, I could change the oil for about half the price and 5x the hassle. Not worth it for me. Given that I also am not a trained mechanic, I'm certainly leery about trying to do something like replacing the fuel lines - yup, I can do that but I don't have a lift, or the tools. Paid a professional to do it. All in all my Westy is reasonably reliable - sometimes it is tweaky and I do change some of the fuses that blow out myself, but overall, it rolls down the road nicely, and I enjoy the hell out of it. Did change the battery myself and do a bit here and there. It is the first vehicle that I enjoy for more than a simple means to go from point A to point B.
Finally, to apply the same logic, I live in a house built sometime between 1924 and 1936 - I do a little work here and there but hire folks to do work well instead of half assing it - amazingly nobody on my street is a carpenter either... I flyfish reasonably well without building a rod from a blank, guides and thread, canoe and kayak without building my own boats or hand making paddles. Somehow it seems to work ok for me...

[MikeK]

Mostly teasing. I would have had a shop do the fuel lines. I didn't even like doing those, or brake lines when I worked in a garage.

I'll pay a shop to do certain things, but some stuff I'd much rather do myself so I know it's done right. You'd be surprised at the number of hacks out there.

[oldschool]

Leg had me a little grouchy yesterday - no worries - thanks again for the offer of some of your spare skis and especially for making that Finger Lakes thread - I just saw that yesterday and the locations are nice ones. I lived in Rochester briefly at one point and got to XC around there a little bit - in the park up by Irondequoit right near Lake O and I think out at Mendon Ponds. Also skied on the canal path on a couple of occasions. I agree that there's much to recommend the area and hiking and biking opportunities are plentiful near most towns and cities. I think there's a little bit of a snow dearth, especially as of late, if you are more than a 15 min. or so south of I-90 (NYS Thruway), but that's a pretty wide generalization and I think some of your nice spots are in that area. Living right in Syracuse I've had the option of going south but often take advantage of the lake effect band that tends to be a little north of my house putting down some nice conditions north of here. If you like Mendon, I think you'd appreciate Beaver Lake Nature Center - nice place to take your family on a road trip someday and if in winter, they have a nice inside space for kids to warm up, gift shop and little natural history/local wildlife museum in the visitors center. Parking is currently $5, I think and no trail fee. They post conditions on the website or you can call them.

[MikeK]

Hi Oldschool - I don't ski at Mendon much anymore, although I used to. These days I find it far too busy and they groom too much of it for my tastes. I get there a couple times a year though.

I typically ski at Black Creek park which is closer to where I live. They don't groom anything there. A lot of it is pretty flat, but there are some fun hills if you know where to look. I also like XC skiing there because it is less developed than Mendon.

I believe the other place you are talking about is Durand Eastman park. I haven't been there in a while, but they groom parts of the golf course, which is OK if you are into that. There are a couple cool ridges there for XCD but they don't really have much vert.

My favorite spot as of late is Harriet Hollister in Honeoye. It's pretty big and they have a mix of everything. Lots of short glades in between the XC trails and some really big, long glades if the conditons are right. The big glade is much steeper, tighter and could use a bit of clean up. It's typically been cleaned but I don't think it was this past fall and there are some big blowdowns. I want to talk to someone about helping clear that this summer/fall.

I've also started to ski at some of our bike parks because they have pretty good terrain. Dryer Rd in Victor is really good. I went there yesterday but the snow seemed light on that side of the world so I went back to Hollister. Tryon right outside the city has some really steep and open gullies but the conditions have to be perfect to ski it (for me). I bike there a lot in the summer and with the right snow, probably has some of the best XCD around.

There's a couple other small parks I ski at but not very frequently, I mainly hit those bigger ones around here. Ontario County park would be good also, but I've yet to ski there. The biking is excellent and there is a lot of steep terrain and vert. I also usually get to a place called Hi Tor now and again, and there are some logging roads there that are good for skiing, some with some decent pitch too.