There Has to Be Snow Somewhere

I can only recall one Presidents' Day weekend without skiing at Crystal Lake.  So five desperate members of the Crystal Lake Skiers Association (the Smiths, the Barbours, and me) went up to the Tug Hill plateau for three days of skiing.  The snow cover there had been terrible, but lake effect snow covered the trails and then some over the weekend. We started in the small, groomed and (here) ungroomed Osceola Ski Touring center with windchill 20 below.  Here is our band:

The second day we went to Salmon Hills, a biggest, more groomed, but less Crystal Lake-y area.  But snow is snow, and it snowed all day.

Day three took us to Inman Gulf for what we thought would be an easy backcountry hour on a very beautiful trail along the rim of the gulf.  The photo shows the stream at the bottom.  The walls are both mostly cliffs!

But we we unprepared for the two feet of fresh powder, and found that the little hills turned into big ones, and the techniques needed are quite different from groomed trails.  But we all made it, and ended the day with the biggest hamburgers a sumo wrestler could imagine.

(And this desperate skier was introduced to the TV show Desperate Housewifes back at the hotel.  I prefer My DVD "The Joy of Telemark Skiing".)

Michael