YAY for Touring! --Your own personal adventure or marathon...!

I had the funnest ski outing today. A friend and I went and skied a
few hours on a very picturesque local hiking trail that I'd never
skied before. It was quite glorious. I feel basically as tired,
satisfied and challenged as when I've done big ski marathons. Only all
it took was a drive to a fun, really long, unknown local trail. What a
blast!

I could easily see doing this for much more of a day. It makes me
wonder how far one could readily ski in a day, on a challenging
unknown trail.

We did about one-third of the Waterloo-Pinckney hiking trail in SE
Michigan.

It gradually became very sunny. Perfect snow. 20F. Just gorgeous. I
couldn't hardly make myself quit. We took a couple snack stops. When
we called it a day we got dry clothes on and went and got a beer in
the local town of Chelsea. When we went our separate ways it was still
sunny out and I just had to go back out for another hour further out
on that trail! I couldn't quit!

I found it a very nice challenge to figure out how to dress right for
the wide range of conditions (open and fairly windy and also sheltered
forest) and also what food supplies to bring. It turns out that we hit
it on the head for 3 hours.

Also, I can see how stopping for photos and rewaxing can really cost
you a lot of miles. It's easy to mess up a good rhythm with even brief
stops. I remember the same challenge in bike touring. I suppose it
might be best to plan on stopping 10 min's per hour. It takes thinking
ahead to make sure you get all errands done in those 10 min's to not
hold up the group.

The whole trail is 22 miles (I think) and it seems like it would take
about 8 hours to complete.

I suppose a rucksack with twice as much food/water supply and a dry
shirt and hat would do the trick. Possibly a fannypack is all you'd
need.

We don't have much snow but it's been cold so we've been milking as
much fun from it as we can. There were ski-biting stones on some
downhills.

Good times! I think I'll put up some pics and a report on my
http://OutYourBackDoor.com website. --JP

wrote:
I had the funnest ski outing today. A friend and I went and skied a
....

Very nice, good for you!
I found it a very nice challenge to figure out how to dress right for
the wide range of conditions (open and fairly windy and also sheltered
forest) and also what food supplies to bring. It turns out that we hit
it on the head for 3 hours.

Also, I can see how stopping for photos and rewaxing can really cost
you a lot of miles. It's easy to mess up a good rhythm with even brief
stops. I remember the same challenge in bike touring. I suppose it
might be best to plan on stopping 10 min's per hour. It takes thinking
ahead to make sure you get all errands done in those 10 min's to not
hold up the group.

Skiing almost 40 km/day, breaking trail 80+% of the time, 12 of us skied
across a major part of SE Norway to get from Morgedal, Telemark to
Lillehammer, in time for the opening of the '94 Olympics. (I've posted
several times about this trip!)

The keys to skiing with such a large party are
a) Everyone needs to be of at least approximately the same ability and
b) You only stop about once every 2 hours, and then for maximum 15-20
minutes.

When on military maneuvers the rule here in Norway used to be 5 min/hour
in summertime, but 10 min every 2 hours in winter. While skiing, esp
when pulling a team pulk, you simply need more time to stop, change
over, drink some and get ready again.

This is long enough that you still have to (and have time for!) pulling
on an extra sweather while stopped. I carry scalding hot sweet tea or
energy drink in a thermos bottle (glass, not metal, since glass bottles
insulate _much_ better), fill my cup totally full with snow, then add
enough of the hot stuff to melt all the snow. This maximizes the amount
of liquids I can carry on such a day.

The whole trail is 22 miles (I think) and it seems like it would take
about 8 hours to complete.

Without any existing trails at all, we've always made just about 4 km/h,
which would be 9 hours for those 35 km, but as soon as you have at least
some old tracks underneath, you can ski much faster. Including the rest
stops we've usually ended up close to 5 km/h, i.e. 10 hours on a 50 km
day, but we've also been close to 7-8 km/h with better (faster) conditions.

I suppose a rucksack with twice as much food/water supply and a dry
shirt and hat would do the trick. Possibly a fannypack is all you'd
need.

For a full day like that it is much better to ski with a narrow
Birkebeiner style rucksack that sits very close to your back.

Terje
--
-
"almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching"

Terje Mathisen wrote:
[ ]

I should google your '94 Oly trip report---it sounds worth
(re)reading!

b) You only stop about once every 2 hours, and then for maximum 15-20
minutes.

So that's when you eat a snack? Or would you take smaller bites along
the way. I might want a chunk of fuel every 45 minutes, say.

[ ]
enough of the hot stuff to melt all the snow. This maximizes the amount
of liquids I can carry on such a day.

Reminds me of the tip I just read to attach a sticky hotpack to a
waterbottle to keep it from freezing---I was thinking that two might
even keep the drink fairly hot!

The whole trail is 22 miles (I think) and it seems like it would take
about 8 hours to complete.

It seems a long time for the distance, to me, but it's a hiking trail
without ski marks really and it's very twisty with steep winding
uphills and tricky downhills. I took off skis to go up a few times. I
was impressed that there weren't obstacles and that the downhills had
decent runouts. But we went down moderately anyway.

[ ]
For a full day like that it is much better to ski with a narrow
Birkebeiner style rucksack that sits very close to your back.

This sounds like a mtbikers hyrdo pack...? I see many skiers using
these. They're from after my day. I have all equipment from 20 yrs ago
still... : )

Carbon poles sure do make the skiing nice. I had to use heavier alum
ones last week once---clubs!

Terje


--JP

PS: Whups! I just looked at the Waterloo trail map and it's *36* miles
long, not 22. No wonder it'll take 8 hrs to ski. That's more like it.
JP