Nordic Night Ski + Turns, 01/22/19

Some XC skiers love perfectly groomed skate lanes, others love nicely set track.  Me, I love ungroomed tracks in soft snow.  There's nothing like gliding along through the quiet woods with the feel of fluffy, yet supportive snow under your feet.



I like this place because it's rather large.  About 1000 acres undeveloped park.  It used to be old farm land, and there's plenty of evidence of it still around.



There's the occasional little clearing, but most of has regrown with woodland.  There's also large areas of hardwood swamp.

 

It's not everyone's favorite, but it's a great habit for all sorts of critters.

I love skiing before and into sunrise and at dusk and into dark.  Something really great about being outside at those times, especially winter.  Sunsets are nice, but it's also the feel.  I love that I can literally feel the temp changing.



I decided to take a detour into deer territory.  This is the thick shit where they like to hide out.  It's all scrub brush, brambles and a lot of old, downed trees.  I actually skied through this mess below.



In retrospect, I'm not sure why, but I was on a course and I didn't want to turn back.  It got better, eventually back to open hardwoods again and then onto a snowshoe trail.



And finally back to some fields.



At this point it was getting dark fast and I wanted to go sneak around in the woods and make some turns.  I headed over to one of the few little knobs in this area.



Farmed a few turns there, and few here.





Had a lot trouble coming back up.  This snow is not particularly grippy with fishscales and after dark, once it cooled even more, it was super slick.

I skied a couple more small hills and headed back.  Love skiing at night with that headlamp.  It's super bright and I dare say I can see better than in the day.

nice, night XCD is  a hoot!

Thanks bro.

This place isn't as great for XCD so I just use my NNN-BC, 200cm XC skis.  Keeps it real.

Hopefully I get some shots/video of the other places.  There's some short, but sick runs.

Excellent shwacking,