The North Country Men’s Club’s winter camping trip was a two-man job. Jack and Tom went in on Friday, March 4, to the leanto on St. Regis Pond and came out on Saturday. It was a typical trip of a little more than 24 hours to the NCMC’s favorite winter destination. Unlike some trips, however, the skiing was great, as a recent storm had brought about a foot of snow, and the weather had stayed cold, leaving a great track of packed powder for the campers. Indeed, the change from the previous year’s icy expedition was 180 degrees.
Jan and Tom, both retirees with zero obligations, decided at the last moment to go to the Adirondacks on the Wednesday before the trip. They stopped at The Mountaineer in Keene on the way up, and Tom purchased an Exped inflatable pillow costing $54 (that is not a typo). They then arrived at Cascade cross-country ski center outside Lake Placid at about 2 p.m. Tom promptly bought the most popular ski boot in the world, the red Alpina Alaska boot, to keep up with Jack and Bill. He bought the boot from Nate, who is not Ian, who is the guy at the Cascade ski shop who Jack always seems to deal with. The Editor has decreed that the Alaska boot is now the official boot of the NCMC, whether one has an NNN-BC version, or the pinhead version. Jan and Tom were debating whether to ski after the boot purchase, as it was approaching 3 p.m., but Nate said they would ski for free as Tom had spent almost $300, and he was willing to overlook the shortfall. The skiing was very good, and they whipped around the trails for about 90 minutes before continuing on through Placid and to Saranac Lake, where they checked into their lovely room at the updated Hotel Saranac. The room provided a view of the end of Lake Flower and the finish line of the 90-Miler. They had a nice dinner in the hotel’s bar and grill. They also used the comfy robes in their room’s closet. It snowed a bit overnight. The had a nice breakfast in the bar and grill on Thursday morning.
It should be noted that the only other time that they had stayed at the Hotel Saranac was nearly 30 years earlier on Memorial Day weekend in 1992, when Jan met Jack and Mary. The hotel at that time was run by Paul Smith’s, and students studying hospitality ran the place. It was on that trip that Tom purchased his 18-foot Sundowner at Tickner’s, and they and the Semlers took a paddle on the Moose River. It was also the weekend when they all met a couple of guys who had just completed the Bog River Flow-Oswegatchie River canoe trip, which Jack, Tom, Bill and Jay completed a few years later. That’s the one, dear reader, with the three-mile portage in the middle, but that’s another story. It also snowed a little in Saranac Lake on that 1992 weekend, which will never happen again.
After leaving the hotel, Jan and Tom stopped at the Grand Union in Saranac to pick up the Bertolli bag-o-dinner for the camping trip (Jack had asked for a variety with sausage) along with some other supplies, and headed for the clubhouse on Kimpton (or ”Kempton” as it reads on the Adirondack paddling map). They moved in to the house and took a five-mile ski on the Fish Pond Truck Trail to check the conditions, which were excellent. Tom debuted his red Alaska boots, of which he approved, and no snowmobiles had fouled the ”no snowmobiles allowed” truck trail. Tom was also using his old Fischer E99 waxable 210s. He had brought wax and Jack told him where he could find a waxing cork in the basement. He applied a healthy portion of Swix Extra Blue and waxed long (Tom had done his research and noted that Swix declares on its website that Extra Blue, or Blue Extra, as it reads on the label, is the world’s best-selling wax). Jack and Tuki arrived late Thursday night, long after Tom and Jan had gone to bed. It reached 17 below that night!
On Friday, Jack plowed the driveway and got on a long GI work call about some futuristic motility product (remember when SmartPill was futuristic?) and eventually got down to the business of packing for the camping trip. Nothing new there. Tom, the nothing-bothers-me retiree, didn’t care. He actually stuffed Jack’s giant Marmot down sleeping bag into its stuff sack while he waited amiably.
They set off on the trip after 2 p.m., with Jan accompanying them on the truck trail to the spur trail that leads to the portage trail between Little Clear Pond and St. Regis Pond. Tuki, alas, was left behind. He is getting older, and the forecast called for a low of almost zero at night. He would be better off lying by the wood stove and keeping Jan company.
After his obligatory fall crossing the railroad tracks, or the right-of-way where the tracks used to be, Tom made it all the way to the leanto while remaining upright. The skiing was quite good. They ran into a guy who was skiing out. He said he lived in the Catskills and was up for a weekend of skiing. Jack said those lone wolf skiers always look like the guy from Into the Wild. The guy was wearing Alaska boots.
St. Regis Pond was covered with snow and they had to break trail down the pond to the leanto. Whatever tracks from other skiers that may have been on the pond had been obliterated by blowing snow, and it was snowing lightly at that point as well.
They arrived at the leanto and moved in after sweeping out the snow with a broom that someone had left at the leanto. Jack, using his fancy new snow shovel, which has a hoe mode, tried to find a spot on the pond to break through the ice and get water, but the ice was too thick and they resorted to melting snow for water. One skier doing a loop through the pond came by. It could not be determined if he was wearing Alaska boots. Jack tried to deploy one of his many MSR stoves, but it leaked at the pump, so they used the JetBoil for all their cooking needs. Tom had purchased a new Svea white gas stove in the past year, but had forgotten to bring it. It all worked out as they could use a big pot to cook on the JetBoil. They heated and ate the Bertolli and Jack made some tasty minestrone soup with pasta, so they were well fed. They turned in early and it is reported that each of the campers only answered nature’s call once during the night, which was starry.
The morning was also clear and they hung around the leanto for quite a while, having coffee with hot chocolate and eating oatmeal, and melting snow for water. They took a while to pack up and put on their ski boots. Tom had opted to wear his old black Alpina boots. He liked the Alaska boots on the test run he took with them on Thursday, but they were new and higher and stiffer than his old boots, and he reasoned that wearing them three days in a row right out of the box might leave him with some blisters. He had only been on cross-country skis once during the entire winter before heading to the Adirondacks for the trip, and his feet were going to get a little beat up no matter what boots he was wearing, as he was skiing four days in a row. Tom, by the way, had seen the three-pin version of the Alaska boot for sale at The Mountaineer, and remembered that that was where Bill had acquired his boots.There is a third version of the boot, called the Alaska XP, that goes with some special Rottefella binding. It was Rottefella, by the way, that invented the three-pin binding, apparently in the 1920s.
The campers were going to ski to Fish Pond before returning to the clubhouse, and there was a discussion whether to leave the packs at the leanto and return home on the route they had come in on, or take the packs, leave them on the truck trail, and return home on the truck trail after skiing to Fish Pond. They opted to bring the packs and they headed down St. Regis Pond to the pond’s outlet and the spur trail out to the truck trail. There were three day skiers crossing the bridge over the outlet of the pond, but none of them appeared to be wearing Alaska boots. At the end of the spur trail, they encountered an Australian couple who were living and working remotely in Tupper Lake. They were wearing three-pin Alpina Alaska boots.
After leaving their packs on the side of the trail, Jack and Tom skied to Fish Pond and back. It was a good ski with good snow over the rolling terrain. They got back to their packs in the late afternoon and headed down the truck trail toward home. Tom walked down the steep hill that is about 2.5 miles from the south end of the truck trail. Jack, who had expertly skied down the hill, had walked back up in his boots to find out where Tom was and whether he was making any progress, and planned to help him carry the pack or skis, but Tom demurred. He was thinking that he should have left his pack at the leanto and skied home that way. At the bottom of the hill, his skis went back on with Jack’s help (The bindings were proving to be balky), and they skied quite quickly out. On Kimpton, Jan met them with Tuki, who for a second did not know who they were and gave them a warning bark. It had been about an eight-mile trek, according to Jack’s calculations, from the leanto, up to Fish Pond, and back out to the road and the clubhouse.
They had picked the right night for camping, as Sunday brought heavy rain and warm temperatures that ate deeply into the snowpack. Jack and Tom went over to see Brian at his canoe livery and to pick up maple syrup that Jack had won in his bet with Brian that the Bills would beat the Patriots in the playoffs. They learned that Brian’s house sustained severe damage while he and Grace were in Florida because their propane company had failed to make an automatic delivery. The heat had gone off and everything had frozen. Fortunately, they had turned off the water, but the place still needed a lot of work and they were staying at the livery. Brian also told them that he was done with all Adirondack canoe racing; the 90-Miler, the Round the Mountain, and the Long Boat Regatta. He also said he was planning to do the 90-Miler.
Mary arrived from Buffalo on Sunday and they had a great dinner of grilled steak. Big doings are looming at Kimpton as the next expansion phase of the house is scheduled for the spring.
In recapping the trip, all the gear worked well except for the MSR stove. Jack and Tom had both used their Exped sleeping pads, which appear to be the best choice for winter, as they pack up quite small and are lighter than a Therm-A-Rest. Tom also brought the same solar string lights by Mpowered that Billl had brought the year before. Strung up along the front of the leanto, they had stayed lit the entire night.
There was the usual talk of staying out for two nights on a future trip, which would allow a full day of skiing without packs. That would probably require Bill’s participation, as two nights of melting snow for water is at least one too many, and Bill can always find open water.