First Snow Part IV

December in New England can be anything, last year the weather was pretty warm, no snow. This year, it's been cold since the first of the month, and we're on our fourth snow event. The temperature the other night was ten below, snowing pretty good right now.  Good day to wrap Christmas presents..
We have five grandkids now, the latest was born on the ninth, Arcturus, Four boys and one poor girl!

Saturday we shovelled snow, then it rained Saturday night, so Sunday we spent 3 hours chipping and scraping ice off the driveway. Now this morning it's 14 below.. Really cold December.
I know all you republicans out there are saying "See, no such thing as Global Warming!"  Regardless of how cold it is now, 2016 will go down as the warmest year on record. Facts are facts, the climate is changing, and anyone who thinks it isn't or thinks we don't have anything to do with it is just plain ignorant.


I was glad to see Andrea Bocelli is refusing to sing at the inauguration. My father would be happy, he was a devoted fan. My father grew up a Republican, back when politics was far less partisan than now. He taught me to listen to what they had to say. He never voted the "Ticket" he voted for the candidate whom he thought would be best for the country. He would have despised this years republican farse.


We all look upon the Statue of Liberty as a great symbol of our country. Yet, as I still reflect on this past election, an election won by greed, racism and isolationism, I have to wonder, how many of those who voted have read the poem on the base of this great American symbol...

Read it, think...  read it again

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,With conquering limbs astride from land to land;Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand A mighty woman with a torch, whose flameIs the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

This is who we are, not what this administration is threatening for us to become

First Snow Part III

It's depressing getting your plow truck stuck, especially when you live in the middle of nowhere.

Luckily for me I have my neighbor down the road, Rollie. Rollie is a true Mainer. Born and raised here, and most likely, hasn't been anywhere other than here. He tells me he's been plowing snow every year since he was about 10. He takes care of all the roads here in the rural development where we live, so anytime I get in a jam, Rollie bails me out. I remember one time we had a big dump of about 2 feet of snow, and I got my truck so buried I didn't think I'd ever get it out. I spent about 2 hours digging and finally crawled back to the house and called Rollie and told him I was stuck. Well he showed up with his old reliable plow truck, took one look at my predicament and says to me "Dave, you ain't stuck, you just ain't goin nowhere". he walked around my truck, thought for a minute, hooked up a tow chain to his truck, told me to turn my wheels and put my truck in neutral and in about 10 seconds I was 'goin somewhere'. Now Rollie is no young fella, he's about 83 or so now, but I also remember one nasty, cold and windy winter day stopping by his house and there he was outside under his truck pulling an axle. It's just what you do if you're a Mainer.

Another joyous winter event I recall was during a sleet storm I was backing my van out of our driveway, which goes up hill, and I could not get any traction, But I kept trying, a little faster and a little further up each time. On about my fifth try the van slid off the driveway on to the edge of a steep embankment. Now I was definitely "Not going nowhere". I was in the driver's seat on the uphill side, but what I didn't realize was that I was the ballast that was holding the van in place. So, when I crawled out of the van, in slow motion, the van rolled down the hill onto it's roof! Meanwhile, DeeDee was watching the entire event form the bedroom window! Good thing there was no 'YouTube'!  Rollie couldn't help me that time, that was a 2 tow truck project!

Our next winter activity was "Extreme Sledding"  I'm not sure how we got started, but we had these cheap plastic Walmart sleds that we would use in the back yard and the hills at the end of the road. Then we started dragging them up hiking trails. The next thing we knew we blasting down 3 mile runs from the top of mountains. We started customizing our sleds and trying to figure out braking systems. With our friends Nancy, Rick, Lucas and Liz we did some harrowing descents on those crazy little plastic sleds.

One problem with New England winters is that it's not always cold and snow. Almost every winter we get at least one rain storm, that ruins the snow and wreaks havoc with driveways, roofs, gutters and everything. Because after the rain comes down, everything freezes, rock solid! One such event was the ice storm of 1998. A real strange weather pattern cause a catastrophic ice event in most of the Northeast. At our house at the end of the road we were without electricity for 23 days! It took me a day to clear enough trees to get out. Luckily we had a wood stove in the basement for heat and a generator. Another rain event happened in 2004. We had had a lot of snow, so our snow banks we really high, a torrential rain came down flooding our garage and basement. We were up to our knees in water and slush trying to trench the water away. Almost every winter I would be up on the roof shovelling snow. We had a repeat rain event several years later, got my plow truck stuck a few more times, slid into a tree and mashed in the whole right side, lost power at least once a winter. Had several chimney fires, fell on my ass on the ice multiple times...  

 It was about this time when winter stopped being so much fun.. Oh but then there was 'Mud Season"  still to come. That's when it warms up, rains and floods everything, washes out your driveway, fills up youe basement and makes things just miserable.                                                  

Then I discovered Mexico

First Snow Part II

Having fallen in love with the mountains, I finally moved to New Hampshire's Mount Washington Valley in the mid eighties. The nice thing about living in the Valley was, you got to ski cheap and mid week without the crowds. So all our days off would be skiing, snowshoeing, back country skiing, ice climbing and even night skiing.  By the late eighties the new sport of snow boarding was just starting to make the scene. My good friend Dave Goodwin took to boarding immediately. Dave was good at anything he did, he was an expert sky diver, expert kayaker, great skier, he climbed, he rode dirt bikes, hunted, fished, so he was a natural at boarding.  He went on to be a snowboard and telemark ski instructor. Dave passed on a few years ago from cancer, he is missed.



DeeDee and I took to snow boarding a few years later and haven't been on skis since. I started guiding about that time, so as my commitment to the restaurant decreased, my time in the outdoors increased. Eventually I was a full time climbing guide, spending sometimes 7 days a week out bringing folks up Mt Washington or teaching them to ice climb. As a member of the Mountain Rescue Service, we'd sometimes spend all night rescuing an injured climber or searching for lost hikers in quite often miserable conditions. After several rescues where we had to snowshoe miles up steep terrain is awful conditions, I decided I hated snowshoeing! Rescues were tough, but when the result was good, it was worth it. Unfortunately, all the rescues did not always end well. Finding and recovering a body is a somber event that stays with you forever. Most rescues and searches were a result of poor judgement, lack of experience or just stubbornness. Almost all could have been prevented.  The White Mountains in winter are harsh. On Mt Washington alone there have been over 150 fatalities.


Why do so many die on a 6000 foot mountain, that in other areas would be just a hill?  It's just a few hours of driving for millions of people, it can have the worst weather on the planet, and people just don't want to head warnings. Outside magazine did an article about why so many die on Mt Wahington, good reading  if you're interested HERE...


In the meantime, DeeDee and I had bought a house in Fryeburg, Maine, a short distance from the Valley. The house was at the end of a dirt road, so we had a driveway about a quarter mile long. That first winter we shovelled the entire thing by hand. Luckily our nearest neighbor had a tractor and plowed us out enough for me to realize, I needed a plow. My first plow was a 1950's Ford Tractor. Tractors can move snow, but by no means do they move it fast or very efficiently. And without a cab, not very much fun. After a few years with a tractor, I finally smartened up and bought an old Chevy plow  truck. Much better, but there's still a learning curve to plowing snow, and as with most things in my life, I learned the hard way...

to be continued

First Snow

For the first 60 years of my life I loved winter. I loved the snow, loved the cold.  Now, not so much.

As a kid, snow meant, first of all, a chance for 'No School'!. Snow was fun, build forts, snowball fights, sledding. We had a great hill in our backyard and my father and my grandfather would work for hours perfecting a luge for our flying saucers, complete with huge banked corners. My Dad would sprinkle water on the track at night and wax the bottoms of the saucers. We flew down that hill, almost like Clark Griswold in Christmas Vacation!

Then I discovered skiing. I got a pair of Northland wooden skis, bear trap bindings and leather boots. Believe it or not, in south eastern Mass and northern Rhode Island, there were five ski areas within a half hour of our house. All but one are gone now, the hills covered with expensive homes.

As soon as I could drive, it was off to the 'real' mountains. The first big ski trip I can remember was with my friend Brad, he took the family Bonneville and we loaded up and headed to Stowe, Vt. We stayed in bunk beds in a hostel, cooked our own meals. That first day on the mountain was an eye  opener for us, the temperature was below zero, the wind howling. Stowe had a single chair, that was at the time, the fastest lift in the country. Two attendants would load you on and launch you as the third attendant tossed a packing quilt over you for warmth! The 'Front Four' at Stowe were and probably still are four of the steepest ski trails in the country, and we had no business being on them! From the lift we skied across the top of Liftline, yikes, really steep, then National, yikes, really steep, big bumps, then Goat, yikes, really steep and narrow, and big moguls, finally we came to Starr, end of the line. I remember looking down, it seemed to be dead vertical, all I could see was several giant moguls and the the roof of the lodge! Yikes. My way cool Head black metal skis all of a sudden seemed really long and heavy. Somehow, we made it down it one piece, had some hot chocolate in the lodge and spent the rest of the day on the easy trails.

We took a lot of ski trips over the next few years, skiing as early as Thanksgiving and late into the spring. As the years passed I continued to ski with new friends. My friend and business partner John and his friends loved to ski, all my motorcycle buddies loved to ski. Then I got into climbing and ice climbing and winter camping.  Winter was fun...

To be continued....