Thursday 12 February 2015 – Western Cabin from P10

Just a short 16 km ski today, in cool and cloudy, but quite acceptable weather after another 10 cm of overnight snow.

Sue and I drove to P10, whence she shot off up Fortune Parkway, leaving me for dead in the wake of a small child.

Trail 3, the Burma Road, was a delight to ski after overnight snow and a few folk in front of us had smoothed the trail. We turned right at Ridge Road then took trail 2 down to Western Cabin, where Sue is pictured leaving in the top image.

We hoped to avoid having to light a fire in a cold cabin for the third day running, and we were granted our wish. The cabin was full, with about thirty people warming themselves in front of a roaring fire. There was standing room only for a while, but we eventually found a couple of places on a table with two old ladies.

Then it was back up trail 2 and along the sweeping undulations of trail 1b to reach Champlain Parkway and its attendant ‘Lookout’, pictured below – one of the coldest spots in the Park.

Not exactly blue skies, but a good view from the escarpment – a bit like some of the views from the North Yorkshire Moors escarpment above places like Thirsk.

We hastened on to the Étienne-Brûlé Lookout and then along trail 3 to regain Ridge Road. Zooming down past Huron Cabin and flying on down the Khyber Pass – in superb condition for a fast descent – we were soon back at Fortune Parkway by Gossips’ Corner. The easy descent from there to P10 car park was achieved by 2.30. My Garmin Gadget* wasn’t working today, but I reckon we were skiing for about 2¾ hours, plus our lunch break at Western, covering a little over 16 km, with 250 metres of ascent.

The evening was spent most enjoyably with Michael and Sayuri, Michael having taken the day off to cook us a splendid meal. It was brilliant. Thanks.

As I write this on Friday morning, it’s minus 25C outside, and with wind chill the weather forecast says it is currently minus 37C. We won’t be going far in those conditions, so the next entry will be in a couple of days’ time. I hope that won’t bother any of the thirty or so prompt readers of these postings; I’m sure it won’t disturb the reading habits of thirty more who tune in every few days to catch up, and it won’t bother the 250 or so other readers who tune in daily (perhaps by mistake) to one or other of the 2100 or so other postings to this on line diary.

* The ‘Garmin Gadget’ is my Garmin Forerunner 310XT gadget that I use to record my routes and produce .gpx files. Fellow blogger Gayle recently posted within some ‘Random Witterings’ a list of mainly ‘human errors’ that she has encountered when using her own GG, and I recognise all her ‘common failures’, reiterated below:

1. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; place by window to obtain satellite signal; forget to pick up before leaving; upon returning from walk, switch it off with nothing recorded.
2. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; obtain satellite signal; put in top pocket of day-pack; forget to press ‘start’; finish walk with nothing recorded.
3. Turn on GG before setting out on walk; remember to pick it up and start it; complete walk but forget to stop it; drive off somewhere, very quickly increasing the recorded mileage and speed.
4. Decide to take day-pack on walk for no reason other than to give a pocket in which to hold the GG; check contents of pack (decide not to take anything out for fear of forgetting to re-instate it later); go out for walk; remember after half an hour that the GG is still sitting, switched off and completely forgotten, in the living room.

To those I can add what happened to my GG today (a recurring issue) – I had re-charged it the previous night and taken it off the charger, the act of which inadvertently turned the gadget on, completely draining the battery in preparation for its next trip…

Duh.