An Urban Boychick Takes on the Outdoors

When you travel with a group you need to stay loose. The plans for Day three changed more times than I can count - snowshoeing, skiing, snowshoeing, hiking at Blackwater Falls, skiing ...When it came down to it, Peter, Suzanne and I went snowshoeing, most of the rest of the group went cross-country skiing, and Peter and Gina, after getting their usual late start, went hiking. In the woods on show shoes I had never been on snow shoes before. The other Peter was an experienced snowshoer. Suzanne and I strapped on our borrowed (from Dave & Cyndi) snowshoes and followed Peter into the woods. Well, other than Peter's initial preference for bushwhacking straight uphill, it was a blast. Skis let you move quickly through the snow, but you're somewhat constrained by terrain. Snow shoes let you go anywhere. We hiked alongside trails. We hiked off trails. We hiked up hillsides. We ran into the rest of the group at one point. The day was much warmer. Saturday we had been wishing...

Crazy conditions at the lodge - that's me betwen the ski racks Wait a minute, this wasn't in the forecast! The weather forecast had called for a warming trend over the weekend, but Canaan Valley weather can be unpredictable. I awoke Saturday to cold temps, light snow, and fierce winds. I watched the snow swirl around as I ate breakfast at the inn and chatted with a couple of other guests, all skiers. I was in no hurry to get outside. Saturday was also the day we had figured on going telemark skiing, but it turned out that some of us preferred going back to Whitegrass for XC. I picked up Peter and Suzanne at Hypnocoffee in Davis and the three of us headed over to Whitegrass. Dave and Cyndi, Reggie and Cat, Rob, and Jen headed for Timberline to telemark. Gina and Peter slept in a while. Nelson and Carolyn headed out separately to ski. Taking a break at a shelter. Note horizontal snowfall Have I mentioned it was windy? The closest weather history I could find online just n...

Me, in the Whitegrass lodge I headed up to West Virginia today for a ski weekend with a group of about a dozen friends. It was in part a celebration of one of us turning the big 4-0 (alas, she was the second youngest of the group), but mostly it was just a chance to hit the trails for some cross-country skiing and maybe telemark skiing and snow-shoeing.  Plans for the trip had been long in the making, but in the final analysis were a little short on details, at least to the engineering-inclined, with no particular agreed-upon arrival time. I figured I might be skiing by myself on Day 1 and so I was pleasantly surprised when I pulled into the parking lot at Whitegrass ski area and immediately spotted my friend Rob. He had car-pooled up with Suzanne and Jen and they had arrived just minutes earlier. Whitegrass is a funky 1950’s (or thereabouts) downhill ski area which today serves as a cross-country ski resort. The lodge is small and rustic. It feels like a restaurant in a colleg...