K-P night patrol

There’s a lot of things I love about skiing, but at the root of it all is the simple joy of being out in the woods, in the snow. The nicer the snow, the bigger my smile. And when the snow is good around home, my favorite thing to do is to head out the back door for a tour of the woods that surround our house on my cross-country skis. But the short daylight hours of mid-winter and my job in Albany make it difficult to get out in the snow as much as I’d like, so when the snow is good I grab my headlamp and go on night patrol.

As with nighttime mountain biking, the woods take on a whole new look on a nighttime ski tour. I use the same high-powered headlamp that I ride with, so there’s more than enough light to ski by.

This past weekend’s storm brought a foot of perfect snow for skiing: cold, dry powder with just enough density to keep your skis floating. With snow like this, you can ski just about anywhere in my local woods, the Kalabus-Perry parcel of Saratoga County forestland.

I've gotten out for quick ski tours the last two nights. My route last night had been partly broken out by snowshoers and a snowmobile, but I had to break trail for about half of the route, a loop that climbs a small ridge. Once I had the loop broken out, I re-skied it. Nothing rides nicer than a smooth, skied-in track through the woods. On tonight's ski, I re-skied last night's loop and broke out a second loop. Animal tracks criss-crossed the woods: deer, fox, mice. A fox tracked up part of my ski track from last night. I don't mind sharing.

You want conditions like this to last all winter. Unfortunately it looks like we'll have a setback with this weekend's weather. If there's one thing any Eastern skier knows: ski hard when the snow is good, even if it's just for an hour or two at 10pm.