C heers and Jeers
A big fat cheer…
To the hardy soles who have stomped out a cross country ski loop inside the confines of Mettowee River Park.
I skied there for the first time in the storm Tuesday night and it was pretty nice especially versus the Rail Trail. While the RT gives you plenty of groomed space to ski on, long stretches without fresh snow combined with cold temps makes for some icy skiing – still pretty good.
But back to the park, it was hard to get much glide with the deep snow all around – poles kept going in pretty deep and it was easy to get off the trail and into the deep stuff but it was also nice to get off to a pretty quiet, nearly deserted chunk of land and get my sweat on.
It was good, tough work.
I forgot to take my GPS so I’m not sure how far I went, although I think it was about 1.5 miles, give or take.
Find the loop, now under all of this new snow unfortunately/fortunately, park just down the hill off of Church Street near the bridge.
The village plows a little lot for about three or four cars and the trail starts right there.
It takes you around the perimeter of the cleared area and into the woods near where Eagle Scout Scott Chapman created a trail as his Eagle Project – what? Two years ago now? – and into his trail system bringing you out to the river before taking you out near the water treatment plant and back into the wood for the return. Nice workout, varied terrain and no big hills. When I’m out I’m looking for flat and glide or hill climbing, I don’t want to go downhill.
It looks like the recent snowfall will have the tracks all filled in again so I’m thinking about chipping in some effort and snow shoeing out at least part of the trail to help pack it down…more on that later.
VPR commentator entertains at Slate Valley Museum
By Jaime Thomas About 75 people gathered at the Slate Valley Museum Thursday evening to listen to Vermont Public Radio [...]