I don't know what happened, but the XCountry skiing area got erased, so we're going to have to start over. We've gotten about 9" of snow in the past couple of days--should be nice skiing this weekend.

Think that the topic was under the snow.:o) Now we got 2 cross country skiing topics. Franc or Jon. How many snow's left on the ground? Do you have lot of forest near you? Is cross country skiing is very popular, lot of trail?

It's pretty popular here. Lots of protected land, horse farms, apple orchards, 2 vineyards, golf courses, and small roads. We just got 5" last nite; by January we usually have plenty of skiworthy area. We get along with the horsemen pretty well!

Well, Yves, I haven't gotten a chance to try your technique yet. I was sick all yesterday and today. Will do it this weekend for sure and let you know.

We have two? Geez, I only see one. Weird.

Do the people who own the horse land, orchards, vineyards, etc. allow you to ski on their property? There are some great places to go here, and lots of snow, but everyone's into downhill around here. Maybe because Denver has to have more of the best skiing areas in the world within an hour and a half drive. Breckenridge, Keystone, Vail, etc.

Franc, where are you from? Seems to be mostly a plain. Do you have cross country trails in mountain near? Is cross country very popular in US? Here, it's about 50\50. Down hill is very popular with teenagers (ski and snowboards)and young people (yes it's for me :o)). Cross country is more a familly affair. Around here it's a plain, snowmobile and 4 wellers domain. But about 50 miles up north, it' mountains, so down hill, cross country, snomobiles and 4 wellers places.

When I was going to work tonight, I had a idea. I saw the moon getting at his full size. Maybe Franc know's. Jon, when the moon will be full or near, find a place where's no lightning at all, put your snow shoes or skis and take a walk. It is, it is.... Try it and tell me. You have to live that once in your life.

Haven't had the chance Yves, but I see the point. I'm located in a pretty varied area terrain-wise, leaning towards low mountains and slopes. The Quad riders have ther own places to mess up, it's very popular. The protected lands and farm land is wonderful for family XCountry skiing, the folks who own it are very friendly to the sport. Those who guard their privacy make it very clear (e.g. Mariah Carey, Letterman, some concert musicians,etc.). I don't think it's popular/glamorous enough yet to attract to many enthusiasts. most travel about 1 hour north to downhill "resorts" with the crowds, colors, and prices!

Yeah, full moon tomorrow. Maybe I'll give that a try. It can be VERY cold, though. Yeah, it's almost all down hill here in Denver. I don't know about elsewhere, but I think in the US most are into downhill.

Well, I was out again today. It was 50 degrees and I was in a T-shirt. Great fun. I realized why I was having such trouble slowing down. The trails I ski are two narrow, close together ruts. It's almost impossible to V in your skis in that situation. But who cares? I got to hauling butt down those slopes and all you had to do, generally, is keep yourself upright--the ruts will keep you on path. Great fun! Felt like about 40 mph, although I know it was less.

If others don't slow down why should you?:o) If ever you would like to slow down A BIT, you could put your poles between your legs and sit on them A BIT. When you'll really have to slow down, you'll see the trail's getting larger, and without tracks. Do you have any problem about climbing? I was planning to get out tomorrow, but my wife's car maked me change my mind, electrical problem (battery or alternator)So I'll have to look on that by a fresh 17 degrees.

Climbing is easy, as is flat areas. One question--today it was fairly warm and the snow was melted some. As a result every 5 feet ice would cake up on the bottoms of the skis, making forward motion almost impossible. Is there any good way to avoid this? I thought that I was picking my feet up too much, but when I made sure to keep my feet down, it still happened. Is this just "tough luck" because of the conditions?

Could be lack of basic wax. Did you ever put wax on them? If not, could be a good idea to put a base wax. It is a hard one, for coldest temp. (You can put soft wax (high temp) on hard wax low temp. but not inverse.). Here you can find some in spray (Easy to apply). I sometime use paraffin (stuff you cover with comfits jar). I you buy it on solid form, you have to heat the wax and then spread it on your ski. When hardened, you take it off with a scraper., cleaning all the ehhh cracks(?) meaning center line, and kick helper things (really lacking vocab.) Your skis will be a bit faster.

Yeah, they're supposedly "waxless", but I'm sure you can wax them anyway.

Yes but only to fill the plastic's porosity, making the skis ice free and sliding better.

I wish it would snow!!!! Man, the skiing on 2 week old "snow" (ice pack, really) stinks. As soon as it snows again, I'll be back out. Also have some spots where I'd like to do some "backcountry" down hilling, but on a slab of ice it would be pretty terrifying.

No if you wear leather coat, pants, gloves, and a helmet.(and don't forget the bicycle horn) :o))) We had 6 inches of brand new snow today but won't have time to put my skis on. We are planing a weekend on snowmobiles in a couple of weeks. I wish you happy new year I will be back in 1998.

Snowmobiles sound fun. Sigh. Won't be able to afford one until next year probably. Do you own one, Yves?

I'm back alive and in good shape (no eating and drinking excess :O). When we get back home a fine snow was falling, making the road as a skating ring. Lot of cars where parked in the fields, no damages but very hard on the driver's dignity. A Winstar get launched just 2 cars in front of me. Fun to see. He probably touch his breaks too hard, went 90 deg. and vroom in the snow. I didn't see any 4WD. They were probably too far in the cows field, cause the difference between a 2WD and a 4WD, is that the 4WD just go farther in when they fly off the road :o)) No I don't own a snowmobile, I'll have to rent one. I don't have $$$$ and space to own 5 bikes, 2 cars, a trailer and a snowmobile. Don't forget that I'm married and I'm at my wife's max. tolerence for my playthings:o). One thing that could change all my planing is that it is now possible that I build a house on my land up north next summer. That means lot of preparation, so less time for playing.

Sounds great. Too bad the skiing world had to be shocked by the ski accident of Michael Kennedy a few days ago. We have a 'home' conference if you want to talk about the house you're building; I'm building one too so maybe we could compare notes, Yves.

I heard about Michael Kennedy's accident at Spring, but not much. Do you know what happened? Must be a bad luck. I've put the home conf. in my hotlist, see you there.

Apparently Kennedy was playing touch-football on skis, using a soda bottle filled with snow as a ball (??) and slammed into a tree head on with resulting multiple internal traumas. Must have been going pretty fast.

He was also shoot videos of the football game they were playing while they were skiing. Apparently, he did some pretty decent things like helping poor folks get heating oil but will be remembered for the sex scandal with his 14 year old babysitter; once called a "poster boy for bad behavior" by John Jr. and now eulogized.

It *is* a bad-luck saga. Apparently he was a competent skier.

A Kennedy in a sex scandal? No way. That's the sad thing--anyone else (rightly so) would be put away for years with the biggest, baddest, child molester hating convicts around. But Kennedys can comit statutory rape, rape, kill women and leave them in lakes, etc. and get away with it. A damn shame. But I'm WAAAAY off topic. It snowed about 5 inches yesterday, so I'm back in business skiing wise.

Your lucky. We're having a very bad weather. It's raining in the upper atmosphere layer and freezing on the ground layer. So the rain freeze instantly when touching the ground. There's about 1 inch of ice on everything. (It took me 3/4 hour to take off ice on my car's windows before getting back home after a 16 hours working shift). Now skiing will be impossible till next snow fall. But I remember of a similar situation a couple years ago. The icy layer was so strong that I've made with my son, bicycle on it. It was incredible. Smooth as on a cloud, and able to go everywhere in a forest near my house. Making slalom onYour lucky. We're having a very bad wether bike between trees, a dream. By Sunday I hope going up north and take a walk in the wood.

Nothing but rain in the air and gritty gravel on the roads here, 50 degrees in January! Went out on the bike Sunday morn, got paranoid about the corners and came back.

Your lucky Franc even if you ride only a bit it's better than nothing. The only thing that I can do for now is sit on the bike (on it's center stand) and make: vrooom vroooom...(I look before if nobody's around :o))

Hey man you're not alone! No one can beat you when you're ridin in your garage!. The sandy stuff is extremely scary though. We've had rain & fog and 50+ degrees for 4 days.

Last Sunday I went to my land up North. Didn't have to use my snow shoes, there was a hard coat of ice on the snow. The look was weird. All the birch-tree's head were touching the ground. The branches are covered by 2" of ice. A couple of maple trees damaged, but not that much. If I can I'll get back with a camera. If it's sunny, it'll be great.

Is this near Montreal where they had all the outages?

My land is about 50 miles from Montreal. It is in the desaster region. The few people who live there, had electricity only yesterday (8 days without). The bigest problem is cold. Most of us uses electricity to heat. The space touched by that icy rain is very large. It also affected Ontario, Maine, Vermont at different degres.

I hear they're not talking about repairing the damage but instad about *totally rebuilding* the electric infrastructure. What a huge cost of lives and infrasctructure to this region. Do you know any people personally affected by this crisis? What has happened to them?

My God Yves I didn't know you were that close to the area. My neighbor just returned from Nova Scotia and told me that there were folks 2 weeks without power, and that Maine was a disaster. A shame. Hope all is well with you and yours!

Friends of ours in Ottawa are still recovering from damage. Five days w/o power. They cooked all their meals in the fireplace! Without all the death and destruction, cooking meals in the fireplace sounded like fun.

I'm glad they had a fireplace.

It's fun yes, for a day or two. You have to feed it very often, so sleep a little. A conventional fireplace keep the place warm only if weather isn't too cold. The first week was around 19 F. But till Sunday it's about -3 F. At that temperature, you must have a "slow combustion" stove that output more heat for the same wood log. At the peak of the crisis there were 1,300,000 homes without power. That means over 2,000,000 people in a vast area. It's really a disaster, a human disaster. From outside it must look not that bad cause there's no big physical damages, no immediate death as in a earthquake for example. But a positive point is that our cold weather made us more used to mutual aid, so with time, we'll get out of it. Personally. we didn't lost power for more than an hour. I must be in God's shadow. But lot off neighbors, friends lost it for different length of time. So I helped them as I could. I didn't work since Monday, cause downtown Montreal was power restricted to the minimum, so there were no commercial activity.

Terrible. The weather here in Colorado has been beautiful. I'm going down hill skiing this weekend--my second attempt. I'm going to take a class, so hopefully that'll help.

Did you get stuck last weekend with all the snow and induced avalanches?

No, it was fine. It was snowing when I got to Breckenridge and the slopes were beautiful. By afternoon it was sunny, about 4" new powder, and 50 degrees. Stunning! I ended up renting a Telemark rig because it felt so weird having your heels attached and I couldn't figure out how to get up after falling. The Tele skis made that alot easier and I ended up having a great time.

sounds like a stellar weekend!

(sorry to interrupt, I just felt the need to even out the identical topics... now, there's 43 responses in each...)

THanks, I feel better :o))

damn, i guess i mussed it up!