Skiing Report - 2010

I've been skiing three times this year so far. We've been pretty devoid of snowfall here in the Granite State, but the times I've gone have been pretty decent. The first day was a January 15th trip to Ragged Mountain. I found some $10 off coupons in the New England Ski Journal (free at Eastern Boarder in Nashua) and took advantage of the midweek rate on a Friday.

I would say it was about 70% open. Both peaks were open although the peak serviced by the incredibly slow triple chair only had two trails open. We only went up that one a couple times. There were two ungroomed trails open on the 6 person high speed serviced peak.

After we finished up, we ventured into the bar. To our pleasant surprise, complementary buffalo wings awaited us.

From Ragged, we trekked to Freedom, NH to stay with some friends. On Saturday, January 16th, we tackled Wildcat with some discount tix we purchased from Liftopia.com.

I love Wildcat because of their superfast quad that takes you from the very bottom 2000' to the very top. This makes from some nice, long runs. In fact on our first trip down, Mary remarked about how long the run was as this was her first visit to Wildcat.
You can't really beat the view of Mount Washington from Wildcat. It's literally right across the street. You also get a nice view looking east from the summit that I had never really noticed before.


We capitalized on a nice $25 midweek ticket at Tenney Mountain on Friday, January 22nd. Tenney has 1400 vertical feet serviced almost entirely by an ancient double chair. It's ok though because you get nice views of the Baker River valley and the southern White Mountains.

The mountain was practically deserted. The groomed trails stayed cuordory-like all day and there was a good amount of powder on the ungroomed trails left from a snow storm a few days earlier.

I've heard that quite a bit of snow was lost to the wam spell and rain we had about a week ago. I'm glad that I was able to take advantage of the snow we've had so far on three January trips. Hopefully February will bring a couple of blizzards to provide for some good March skiing.

Sports Guy Book Signing at Barnes and Noble in Boston

I was able to meet one of my heroes today. Bill Simmons had a book signing in Boston to promote his new book, The Book of Basketball. I bandied about things to say for days leading up to the meeting and even changed ideas right up until he was in front of me. Perhaps that explains the disjointed nature of our conversation. I only had to wait about half an hour and he actually signed my book by noontime for what was supposedly a 12:30 event.

The whole thing was a little bit of a blur. I was in his face before I knew it and he just started talking about how I was wearing a Celtics shirt and then how all he saw at his New York signing was Yankees and Knicks gear. This isn't really what I wanted to talk about with him. I decided to just tell him how long I had been a fan, hoping I guess that will encourage him to keep writing in the future.

I didn't really care if he wrote his name inside the book. Actually I was hoping much more for a picture of he and I. Alas, I'll have to do with a picture of myself and my book with his name written in it. That's ok, it was still quite a thrill to meet him and I doubt I'll ever forget it. Thanks, Sports Guy.

Great Gift

Bet you didn't know General John Stark said that...

Waterville Valley

So, by popular demand the Live Free or Die blog is back. For awhile my excuse to myself was that I hadn't done anything in New Hampshire but that has long since stopped being true. My Granite State visits have included another hike up North Pack Monadnock (sans snow), Pemi River Campground (kind of expensive and close to the highway but still a good time tubing down the river), kayaking the Merrimack river from Franklin to Boscawen (great time, saw my first bald eagle), back to back trips to Smoke Shack BBQ in Boscawen and Yankee Smokehouse in West Ossipee (both great, too close to call).

This past weekend I ventured up to Waterville Valley for my annual hockey tournament there that the Hockey Academy puts on. The two losses in three games didn't take away from the good times had by all.

The cool thing about the "Town Square" at Waterville is all you need is right there. It's all overpriced of course but you got a grocery store, pizza shop, restaurant, bar, ice rink, golf course, and ice cream parlor.

The Town Square condos offer fairly affordable accomodations right upstairs from all the action. The best part of that deal is all the free perks you get with the room. Free round of golf every day. Free 2 hour mountain bike rental. Free chairlift ride. Free kayak rental for an hour to take out in the pond they have there. I didn't get to do any more than play one round of golf since we had hockey games to play but one could easily get a full day out of the free offerings. An hour could be spent just walking around drinking in the breathtaking views the area affords.

If you're looking for a nice resort to spend a weekend with the fam you should definitely take a look in Waterville's direction. You can just park the car Friday and you won't need it again until Sunday.

Campells Scottish Highlands

I'm just getting into golf. One of the things that's cool about golf is the number of courses within a half hour drive of my house. I played one of those places for the first time on Sunday.

One of the keys to playing a new course is golfing with someone that is familiar with the layout that can guide you through your first round. Luckily I had two such partners.

My companions also happened to be quite a bit better than me which is good and bad. Good because you get to see them up close and try to copy what they do and also it forces you to raise your game a little. The bad news is you can only raise your game a little so you end up feeling like an anchor a lot of time.

Campbells Scottish Highlands is an 18 hole track that is fairly wide open. Most fairways lie side by side with no trees to obstruct you in between. Most of the course was wetter than you might expect for May. Unfortunately this forced us to keep our carts on the cart path. This resulted in what I would imagine was nearly as much walking as if we had just walked the whole round but maybe I'm just exaggerating.

After spending five hours there, I've decided CSH is definitely a course that I'll have to put in my rotation.

North Pack Monadnock

The Wapack Trail runs all the way from Greenfield, NH to Ashburnham, MA. On Saturday, along with my uncle Jason, I got take care of the northernmost part of the trail by climbing North Pack Monadnock.

As with the Monadnock climb the previous week, snow and ice blanketed the path throughout. This posed little problem on the ascent though. The trail winds its way over brooks and wet areas before it really starts to rise. In fact, the slope of this trail is so gentle, you barely know you're climbing before you get to the first lookout. It's nice northerly view that allowed us to see all the way to Mount Washington, although I needed my binoculars to initially discover this.

Its probably another 1/2 mile hike to the next view point which is a little more open than the first. This one looks to the east. Only a few mountains dot the landscape before giving way to the flatter land between south central New Hampshire and the Atlantic Ocean.

Another quick 1/2 mile jaunt to the summit allotted us a breathtaking view of Monadnock and the Vermont mountains west of that. No less than five mountains with ski trails carved into them were visible but I can only be sure that we saw Mount Snow, its sister mountain Haystack and Killington.

A slippery walk down that mountain caused us both to go ass over tea kettle at least once. Serious injury was avoided though. We cut over virgin crusty snow to avoid the ice where possible. Before long we were back on the flatter portion and home free.

North Pack Monadnock is a really nice day hike. The views will definitely bring me back for a return trip this summer.

Monadnock Spring Hike

Every year in March we get a nice warm day before the snow has completely melted. I usually try to take advantage by making a summit assault on Mount Monadnock via the White Dot Trail from the State Park. I was worried that the ice storm of December would force me to wait until 2010, but when I checked the NH State Park site I was greeted with a message saying the trails had been cleared. Some crazy trail-clearing, chainsaw-wielding bastards must have gone to town up there.

Temperatures were around 50 degrees for the whole afternoon. Much of the trail was covered in snow, but it was heavy and wet so it wasn't too hard to plow through. There was also minimal ice which made it an easier climb. We ate lunch on the summit without getting too cold aided by a thermos of hot chocolate. The skies were clear but we could only barely make out Mount Washington and couldn't quite see Boston. Still a stunning view.

Our descent was made speedier by our ability to slide down on our hind parts. Definitely my favorite part of a nice Winter/Spring hike up Mount Monadnock.