Fundy Loppet - February 20th

www.skichignecto.ca

On Sunday February 20th the Chignecto Ski Club is hosting the Fundy Loppet at Fundy National Park. If you like groomed trails, Fundy National Park is a great place to cross country ski with 25 km of trails for both classic and skate skiing. 

For you information and to register for the Loppet, check out their website www.skichignecto.ca 

The Chignecto Ski Club promotes cross country skiing in the Park and operates a Jackrabbit Skiing Program for youth. In addition to the winter activities they were the force behind the H20 Adventure Triathlon last September.  

The Fundy (Caledonia) Highlands that flank the inner Bay of Fundy from St. Martins to Hillsborough, create a unique snow effect. Moist air coming off the Bay, cools as it's pushed into the higher elevations and turns to snow. The snow starts to get deep as soon as you leave the coast climbing into the park and creates a snowbelt in the middle and northern edges of the Highlands. This area has significantly longer snow season than the valleys of southern New Brunswick.

Holidays

The snow hit Southern New Brunswick after Christmas like an egg-nog hangover. And I've been having a blast everyday since it fell. The cross country skiing has been great and I've done some snowshoeing unfortunately the ice climbing has suffered from the warm temperatures. As the temperatures have risen in the past few days I even tried to go bouldering!

Great snow for snowman making.

Wet snow fell on Monday so my family suited up and built a snowman in the fresh snow.

The Amphitheatre at Parlee Brook - looking scrappy.

On Tuesday I ventured in to check out the ice climbing conditions at Parlee Brook's amphitheatre. The snow was suuuuper deep in the bottom of the ravine. We swam and struggled in snow up to our armpits for over an hour trying to reach the back wall. Fun but exhausting. The ice wasn't worth climbing. We'll need it to be a lot colder.

Cutting a trail through deep snow.

New Years Eve was warm and sunny - a perfect day for being outside.

My Dad skiing behind our house on New Year's Eve. 

I snowshoed into Parlee Brook again, tempted by potential ice. We were able to top-rope a route with some nice vertical ice bits. I got back to Sussex after dark and wanted to meet my goal of three sports in a day. So I drove out to the Dutch Valley towards Waterford with the hourglass hill in mind. I couldn't see it from the road in the dark, so I followed a skidoo trail hoping it would lead me there - it did. After 45 minutes of climbing, I turned my skis back towards the lights of Sussex and practiced my turns on a long downhill run.

Top-roping a bits and pieces of a route at Parlee's amphitheatre.

The New Year began sunny and warm. It was great weather for my first Polar Bear Dip. It wasn't nearly as cold as I thought it would be - just a few cuts from a the ice in the river.

I had planned to cross country ski on New Years Day but we thought it may be too warm (turned out to be great skiing - just like spring conditions). Instead we went to check out some newly found granite boulders west of Saint John. We drove in on snowy roads and found snowy boulders but I still enjoyed hiking around to look at the boulders. Still a great day for hiking!

Legitimate granite boulders in New Brunswick!

On Sunday I got out for a short cross country ski at my parents house in Corn Hill. The snow was melting and it even sprinkled a few rain drops by the conditions were actually quite good. Fresh snow around the melting point can be a sticky mess but older snow that has warmed and froze and started to melt again is great - just a bit slow. I'd call these spring conditions.

XC skiing in Corn Hill 

XC skiing on my parent's trails.

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New Website for Elmhurst Outdoors

Check out Elmhurst Outdoors' new and improved website. Now with snow condition updates!


 Paste this url in a new browser if the above link doesn't work-
http://www.elmhurstoutdoors.ca/Elmhurst_Outdoors/Elmhurst_Home_Page.html

The Loch Alva Trip - 9 days to go!!!

In 9 days my friend Paul Maybee and I are heading into the backcountry of the Loch Alva Protected Area for 6 days and 5 nights of winter fun. A couple months back, we sat in Paul's kitchen discussing our plans for a Gaspe Ski Touring trip. As we drank our coffee the conversation kept slipping back to New Brunswick backcountry adventures. We'd both heard about the great hut to hut skiing in the Gaspe but that comes with hut bookings, park passes, and a day long drive in each direction. The huts would be nice, a luxury even, but we didn't want a vacation. We want an adventure, a learning experience. So do we really need to drive 10 hours to find this? No we don't. We've got plenty of wilderness around Southern New Brunswick. 

Paul and I hiked into Turtle Mountain in the Loch Alva Protected Area in May 2009. Maybe it was the framed photo of the Turtle Mountain overlook in Paul's apartment that triggered it. But as we finished the dregs of our coffee, I think we were both dreaming of the view from Turtle Mountain. Wilderness stretching as far as you can see and so many lakes.

We did some more research and found there's not much online and there are certainly no guidebooks about the area. Go online and see what you can find. Not much at all. This added to the alure. So we started asking around. First we heard about an old growth forest on the banks of Loch Alva. Digging around some more, we found that there's many unique places to explore in this protected area. Earlier this week we listened to Martin from the Department of Natural Resources describe the rocky barrens and point out a handful of other attraction including a canyon, a series of waterfalls, and a place called the Valley of Diamonds. Our hearts sank when he mentioned the skidoo highway but we smiled when he told us skidoos can't get into much of the backcountry.  Precisely the area that we're heading into.

So with a week to go we're quite busy with gear preparation and food dehydrating.  As the temperatures outside, threaten to crack the thermometer each night, we find this small piece of wilderness grow in size.

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For more information about the Loch Alva Protected Area
http://www.gnb.ca/0399/loch_alva2-e.asp
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What do you Call your Snow?

On Friday my friend Lucas calls me to suggest we cross country ski in Corn Hill the following day. That night I call my parents to quiz  them about the snow conditions. It sounds pretty good although after a 15 minute conversation with each of them, I'm still a bit puzzled. It sounds crusty but ok-ish. Over the years my parents have become pretty adept at describing snow conditions but its still a struggle sometimes. And I have to hand it to them. This is not any easy task.  The English language has a real shortage of snow words. Obviously the English didn't invent skiing.

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We've only got a few specific words to describe snow in English "soft, sticky, hard, crusty, fresh, powder, corn" for example. With these words in our repertoire we can fumble through most scenarios and get creative "well its sticky and soft but in some places you break through the crust and underneath its powdery". What a headache of adjectives. And snow character depends on a slew of factors such as how it fell, wind, melting, daily temperature, age, and whether a track has been set. It's usually different in the woods than in the open and changes throughout the day. Imagine there was one word that could, in just a few syllables, communicate that there is a light crust above a base that is dense. And that with another word you could explain that its icy in the usual places (i.e. around evergreen trees), or windblown in the fields. Could there be a word that explains how your edges will perform on the descent?

Now describing snow may not seem particularly important for Southern New Brunswick. Afterall this isn't the Arctic and we don't have a mountain snow affect. But I would say snow language is particularly important in our region....because it varies so much! We ride a weather rollercoaster all winter long thanks to competing weather systems. As well, the snow conditions will be different from Hampton to Sussex and again when you go into Waterford. Distance from the Bay affects weather and so does the hills. It may be subtle but  elevation affect snow falls around here. Higher areas in the Fundy Highlands are significantly snowier than the Kennebecasis Valley (Just look for the snowy ridgelines as you drive along the Transcanada to Saint John).
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I discuss the conditions with Lucas. The consensus? Let's go for it.

We drive out to the Corn Hill on saturday morning, meet up with the rest of the gang and find a bumper  crop of snow in the fields. There is just a very thin crust on top with loose snow underneath. Once a trail is broken you can glide on cold powdery snow. The conditions are good. Even the beginners in our group are ripping it up!

The downhills are fast and the flats are effortless. A few of us take a 3 hour loop through rolling fields and forest. Searching out some good descents before turning back, face to the wind, for a bitterly cold ski home.

So I wish that I could describe the conditions in a few simple words but I can't. All I can suggest is to be curious. Take the time to learn the quirks of your own local skiing areas. Armed with this local knowledge maybe together we can create a new vocabulary for snow conditions and in the process improve our understanding of the natural world.

Drop me a line and tell me how you describe your snow.

 

Skiing along the stream in Coyote Valley

 

Before the Steep descent into the Marr Valley

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