A Little bit of Off-Trail Exploring

Outdoor Weeks Ending 3/24/13

The last two weeks I was more busy than usual but still managed to get outside for 9 hours 26 minutes the previous week, and 6 hours and 40 minutes last week. Fresh snow just prior to the official start of spring time and seasonably very cool temperature slowed things down some, but it was still beautiful outside on most days. Just a few snowy pictures for the last two weeks!

Outdoor Week Ending 3/10/13

Almost 12 hours, 3200' of climb, mostly hiking with a little trail running. For some reason I was run down early in the week, but felt a little better and did some running on the weekend. Seasons all have their character, and now I'm looking forward to springtime. Wet feet, sloppy snowy and now muddy trails, and gray skies are getting tiresome. Had a minor fall yesterday on some ice, put a nice scrape on my bare leg. Nature always refreshes and inspires though, if I go prepared and relax into the environment.

Pix, click to enlarge:

All melting fast,

then a mid-week 8 to 10 inches of fresh snow, breaking trail,

Outdoor Week Ending 3/3/13

This week brought an early change of seasons to the lower Hudson valley as the snow mostly melted with rain early in the week and daytime temperatures above freezing. Almost 15 hours and a mile of climb this week, that's better!

I encountered a mix of still very hard packed icy trails with other areas quite muddy on Friday as I wandered out to the north exploring a few new trails in an area still fairly new to me. I wasn't entirely sure what route I was taking, so I just took a look at the map every time I came to a new trail junction. I ended up doing a giant loop around the park, probably 16 or 17 miles, all on sloppy slippery ground, many times taking off and then putting back on my trusty Kahtoola microspikes.

(I've tried other traction devices for hiking and trail running, but I like these the best because they're flexible and you can wear them on rock and bare ground if necesary and they handle that better than other models, and the neoprene upper is of better quality: these never slip off even with very hard trail running).

It was a serendipitous outing that found me with just one 24 oz bottle of water, but luckily it was winter so I could get away with drinking less liquid. I had plenty of food though, and my normal solo emergency winter stuff - a lighter, space blanket, flashlight, and a few extra energy bars. I thought about the water, and it was everywhere with the snow-melt happening all around me. I should get a steripen UV water purifier I thought. But I could also put heated small rocks into my plastic water bottle to boil and purify water if necessary, I also thought.

Sometime before Parker Cabin Mountain the sun came out, as advertised, only to disappear behind a very dark cloud-front that moved in from the west 45 minutes later. Despite cloudy weather pretty much all week, I still enjoyed the stark landscape in full melt. While I was out there this week I thought about the great shoes I've been wearing all winter and how well they've served me: the Montrail Mountain Masochist 2 Outdry.

(These are waterproof and hold their waterproofness well over months of continuous use. Yes your feet eventually get wet from sweat condensation, but they run very well, can handle any terrain, and will keep your feet comfortable, warm and dry longer than any other shoe I've tried. On the wet east coast of the USA you need something like these. Highly recommended!)

Now some pix from the week (click to enlarge):

Swollen streams and rapidly melting lake ice:

Hardpack ice on the white bar trail going north:

Atop Parker Cabin Mountain:

A clusterf#$k of trees on the long path going south:

Another hurricane "Sandy" mess:

NYC from the shelter at an unmentioned location:

Still lots of snow in places:

You wonder how it even grew there, right on my favorite short section of the Kakiat trail: