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Saturday i went on a little BC excursion... North facing slopes were pretty good... Snow has changed... but still rideable and carvable. No ice... just pure snow... Still powdery in the untouched area... 4 laps made... Last run was pretty outstanding... Warm temps... Sun in my face on the way up... No winds... only a base layer for the climbs... Relaxing music in my ears... Can't think of a better way to enjoy the conditions we had! I'm guessing that further up wasn't that bad!

If you head up to big jay, there is some intensive logging happening between the 242 and the Big Jay State Forest... the biggest damage weren't done by the cut last year... Think how much can 4 big machine can tear up big parts of land! Now you have to deal with machinery... oil spills... torn branches and trees... but it's not on state land... so i guess it's all OK with the Green Mountain Club!

So what, it's on private land. 'S'long as it isn't bigger than 40 acres, they can clearcut the shit out of it without asking the state. They can basically do whatever they want, as long as the water quality remains clear. I don't know the county forester up there, but I can assure you that the Chittenden County forester would be on their case making sure the streams remain crystal clear. Green Mountain Club? Stop trying to hate on them. What can they do? Walk onto the people's land and say "Hey, stop cutting!"? They'll spit their dip at you, turn around, and continue right on. You have to be a bit realistic about things.

(Personally, I think it's dumb that they're cutting. Wood prices aren't exactly at a premium price currently.)

(Or, think about this: what would you rather have? Some folks cutting trees in northern Vermont, or some folks drilling oil in a part of the world where the military has to surround them to ensure relative stability so that they can then ship it across a coupla oceans, so that it can be refined, and then shipped to somewhere else so that it can be molded into plastic, from where it'll get shipped across the Pacific to China so that some child laborer can transform it into some ungodly wasteful hunk of BS that'll get sold at Wal-Mart for $0.99?) You're worried about oil spills and some trees getting cut down? Don't vilify loggers. Sorry for the rant, but that's how I feel about it.

But enough of the harsh, more of the good.

My splitboard skins should be arriving on Friday, and will hopefully be put to good use during the upcoming week! Tomorrow I'm gonna be scouring south-facing slopes in a certain notch (hint: not Smuggler's) to reap the benefits of following today's wind (sadly on slowshoes)! Should be good. With around 10 inches and some wind-deposit, I'm hoping that things will be quite good!

No worries, i get what you mean... It's just that sometimes environmentalists focus on what "an individual" or a certain "user group" does... but just next door you have something that has a stronger impact on the environment and brings a lot more erosion... and a lot more polutions then any mountain biking singletrack will ever do or a few trees being cut for glade skiing...

(back to topic... sorry!)

Comes down to two things: Can they do something about it, and how much of it is there? In VT, there's a whole lot of hardwoods. Boreal stuff...well...it's a bit more fragile and a whole lot less of it. And as mentioned, private vs public land.

Snow for today: the wind must have played around with the snow a lot last night. On south facing slopes below 2000 ft, we found maybe 2-3 inches of dust on barely edgeable crust. We decided to play on stuff that was a bit steeper, and that may have factored into it being shallow snow. The flatter it got, the more snow there was. The north aspect on the other side of the ridge appeared to have frozen leaves!

Retired to the Stowe parking lot for the afternoon for some grilling and drinking Shed growlers.

fri mar 6

to shit... that's pretty much where all the new snow's gone lately. the month of feb has been a down right roller coaster with big dumps and then rain... then repeat, repeat, repeat.

fyi, the last good rideable day for pow here in the bc in N. VT was almost a week and a half ago (wed am) and things have not improved much since then. mother nature is obviously PISSED and all over the road. full on warm temps and steady rain again today. looks to stay warm at least into early nxt wk.

i guess we'll just put another log on the stove and stay inbounds for a while. who knows, maybe we'll get into an early corn cycle over the next few days.

monday night's 'storm' produced about 2-3" of dust on crust, maine got hammered w/ 12"++. stayed overnight at the sh w/ twostowe and the gang, got a buzz on. fun times.

looking for SNOW.

Great corn riding saturday on Big Jay. Deep and wet! Pretty solid ride on a board... pretty sketchy on skis...

Walked the ridge from the mountain in T-shirt... Didn't bother with the splitboard and skins... snow was rock solid... The way down was super soft and floaty! A great run!

As far as the cut is concerned... total carnage! You can't ride to the road anymore... Feels like they're building streets down there with all the trees piled up... Access trail is compromised as well... Machinery is tearing up the place... oil spills on the track also... Pretty discusting! I'll have pics of the cut later on... How do they plan on "re-naturalizing" that!

Thumbs down on the carnage...

Rode Mt Cardigan yesterday.. Plenty of coverage but full on mashed potatoes. Wore nylon hiking pants and one layer on way up - Full sun the whole time (including 6pm when we arrived back at the car)

Good day out.

Snowing hard / huge flakes right now in central mass.

-will

BigJay, what cut is this? Is the the logging in State Forest that was alluded to in a prev post? Or is this logging on private land (also mentioned) ?

As I remember, the track out was on top of or beside a (frozen) stream bed. Are the machines spilling oil in or around and/or disturbing the streambed itself? If so, that's not kosher on public or private land!

The "jailhouse" chute is of least impact compare to what's going on down on the private land... Yeah, the exit is on a frozen streambed and that's where the machinery put their tracks... so it's pretty discusting... Wet and frozen mix... on top of tracks and oil spills... I'm guessing it's not close to being kosher!

When i post pics of the stack of trees and the wide cuts their doing, you'll be amazed!

Pictures would be awesome... then if this is private land, we need to report this to VT DEP. You can't spill oil in a stream even if you own it, even down here in dirty Jersey, that's illegal. They need to clean that before it melts and pollutes the stream.

So basically you have to navigate oil spots, machinery, sawdust, downed trees to get out of big jay now?

Yep... a nice little walk out now... sawdust and downed trees pretty much sums it up!

nice will, way to make it happen...

tue mar 10

dust on crust overnight, warming to mush...

thought i'd post some random pics from various adventures around VT & New England while we wait for more snow...
kev skinning the E shoulder of the hump a few years back

andre skinning up to the north glades from the pass

enjoying some beers at the hut w/ jackson and kev

smuggs back bowls

skinning up elephants head to b-day bowls
]
middlesex

kingdom trails burke

willoughby south cove


let it snow.