It's great to watch the Okemo mountain ops crew each day as they cut and shave away at our 2 new ski and ride trails for the winter. Yesterday they put up an erosion fence across a pitch 100 yards south of Quantum Leap- and it looks pretty steep there! That fencing was just in time too as a line of T-boomers marched across Vermont last night and lit up the sky!
While those fellas have been hard at work up on the hill, we've also been busy around the Jackson Gore base area cleaning up our hiking trails. These trails were cut when the Gore was developed several years ago but haven't seen much traffic, which is a shame. Check out the hiking trail map and help us groom our restored trails!
Here's some details on a couple of our hiking trails:
The Green Mountain Turnpike Trail follows the old toll road, commissioned in 1799. The trail passes close by the old Bixby farmstead which served as a toll house on the turnpike. You can clearly see the home's foundation from the trail.
The Jackson Falls trail ends at the confluence of 2 beautiful 60 foot cascading waterfalls after crossing under the Coleman Brook lift through a raspberry thicket.
The most difficult Sawmill Trail begins at the site of an early 1900's logging camp, you can even see where the logging camp was nestled next to the railroad tracks.
No doubt, Okemo is well known for it's trails during the winter- make sure you find out how great our summer trails are too!
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
How you feelin'? hot, hot, hot
Gotta love it when you can sneak in a line from Buster Poindexter! ...and did you know that song cam out in 1987? Where were you? As for being somewhere...as a life long New England, it's weeks like this one that remind me how much I enjoy winter. Give me pack-boots and a good toque over a steamy 95 degree day with 95 percent humidity any time.
As Silver Linings mentioned with the photos of that fuzzy faced dog...it's good to learn something new every day. Yesterday I learned that felling trees is an activity best left for a cooler day. After dropping 4 trees, I was toast. And just so you know that life has it's own plans. I had cut the proper notch in one of the trees, started the back cut. (now...this certain tree was right next to my pond, so the goal was to drop the tree away from the pond...or so one would think.) As life would have it, the tree dropped in the exact opposite direction of where I had planned. I was able to pull it out at the other side of the pond about 30 minutes later, after it drifted across. The other 3 tress cooperated very nicely.
I've been dropping old trees to get ready for next winter. If you've ever brought in your own firewood you know why the old saying is, "firewood keeps you warm at least three times. Once when you cut it, once when you stack it, and once when you burn it."
And speaking of firewood, it's time to go home and finish cutting those freshly dropped trees into lengths that I can carry out of the woods.
The June heat wave ends tonight....enjoy the thunderstorms and be careful with the high winds.
As Silver Linings mentioned with the photos of that fuzzy faced dog...it's good to learn something new every day. Yesterday I learned that felling trees is an activity best left for a cooler day. After dropping 4 trees, I was toast. And just so you know that life has it's own plans. I had cut the proper notch in one of the trees, started the back cut. (now...this certain tree was right next to my pond, so the goal was to drop the tree away from the pond...or so one would think.) As life would have it, the tree dropped in the exact opposite direction of where I had planned. I was able to pull it out at the other side of the pond about 30 minutes later, after it drifted across. The other 3 tress cooperated very nicely.
I've been dropping old trees to get ready for next winter. If you've ever brought in your own firewood you know why the old saying is, "firewood keeps you warm at least three times. Once when you cut it, once when you stack it, and once when you burn it."
And speaking of firewood, it's time to go home and finish cutting those freshly dropped trees into lengths that I can carry out of the woods.
The June heat wave ends tonight....enjoy the thunderstorms and be careful with the high winds.
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