Bezabor: (posted from home)

Wednesday, 15 February-
Today I started preparing our tax return. I only worked until noon and then the weather was just too nice to stay inside. I’ve been doing pretty well this winter in avoiding PMS (Parked Motorcycle Syndrome) and it has been days like today which make it possible— it’s in the mid-Fifties today! I rode the Concours down to Starbucks and then to Rudy Park and spent an hour walking at a fast pace. Then I returned home and worked on the blog. Tonight we’re going to watch Sydney Bristow kick some more butt.

Tuesday, 14 February-
Labashi needed to get out into the fresh air after being cooped up for the last ten days so we went snowshoeing. I had bought her the snowshoes two Christmases ago and we had never had the opportunity to use hers. I had enjoyed a spectacular day snowshoeing that December in just-right weather and had impulsively bought a set for her. But ever since then it seemed our relatively-rare snows wouldn’t be deep enough or it would be too windy and cold outside to enjoy the snow. I even took the snowshoes along on this year’s Christmas trip to Michigan hoping to get a chance to use them out there but it was very windy and daytime temps never got out of the mid-twenties that week so we didn’t get out. But today was a good day. It was a sunny, blue-sky day with the temperature at 38 and deep-enough snow that you needed the ‘shoes. We drove down to Rudy Park so we’d have a variety of terrain and lots of open space to try. We spent about an hour trying all the different types of terrain—from the flat fields by the astronomical observation building and softball and soccer fields to the sledding hill and toboggan runs and even the fairly-steep wooded trail near the BMX course. We only lasted about an hour but that was enough—it was lots of fun and Labashi likes her new 'shoes!
Afterwards we did some grocery shopping and that evening we went to Wildwood Nature Sanctuary’s Olewine Center for a nature program. We really liked this one—it was a slide presentation called “Pennsylvania’s Forest History” by retired forestry official Jim Nelson. He did a great job of telling the story of Pennsylvania’s forests while showing us historical photos, many of them made from glass lantern slides made in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Jim also fielded questions after his presentation and really knew his stuff. After we returned home we watched two episodes of Alias.

Monday, 13 February –
Well, Labashi’s finally on the way home from her extended visit to help out at her brother’s house so it was time for me to clean the house and make things presentable. For some reason I woke up at 0230 this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep (it probably didn’t help that I’m enjoying reading “The Closers”) and by 0600 I was ready to get up. So I went out for breakfast and then did some grocery shopping. I need to do that early shopping more often—there were no lines at the Giant at 0700 this morning!
At home I cleared away all my backpacking gear, did the dishes and trash, ran the sweeper, and cleaned the bathroom, even trying out a Magic Eraser cleaner on the shower stall, then took a well-earned nap. Labashi finally arrived about 1500 and I welcomed her home with the flowers I’d picked up that morning and a box of hazelnut-chocolate candy I had picked up at the Wegman’s in Williamsport last week. With tomorrow being Valentine’s Day, the timing was just right.
We watched another of the Alias discs that evening… season four, disc three.

Sunday, 12 February-
At home I woke to about ten inches of snow and decided to shovel a little then take a break for breakfast, shovel a little more, take another break, etc, till done, expecting to be out there until sometime this afternoon. I shoveled for an hour or so and then our neighbor showed up with his snow-blower, asking if it would be all right to plow my driveway so he could play with his new toy. Uhhh, heck yes! That made quite a difference. He did the lower part of the driveway toward the road and then said there was no reason to plow the rest because when the snowplow came through it would just plow the driveway shut again but he’d come over then if I liked and finish the job. I figured I’d just do that myself but did appreciate the offer. He left and I continued shoveling around the vehicles and sure enough, here came the snowplow. As he went by on the opposite side of the road I waved a hello. Then I heard him stop and back up. He swung the plow over and plowed the rest of my driveway, finished the south side of the road down to the nearest intersection, and then turned around and did the north side of the road, neatly bypassing my newly-cleared driveway without leaving so much as a snowball’s-worth in my drive. Cool!
I spent the rest of the day doing some web stuff and that evening watched “Suicide Club”, a strange film about Japanese teens committing suicide. I agree with this review I found on RottenTomatoes.com:
"The film’s an odd blend of mystery, social commentary, experimental freak-out, and all-out horror, and while the blend doesn’t always work... it works well enough."-- David Cornelius, EFILMCRITIC.COM


Saturday, 11 February-
This morning everyone seemed to be preparing for the snow predicted for later today and tonight but I went for a motorcycle ride. I was just running some errands but it was a beautiful, 35-degree, sunny morning ahead of the storm and that was great weather for a ride. With snow predicted to start around 1300, I started seeing some flurries at 1130 and headed home. But it didn’t take me long to start complaining about being stuck inside for yet another weekend (last weekend was rainy). I briefly considered just going ahead with my overnight backpacking plans despite the snow but we were supposed to see up to eight inches of snow overnight and the weathermen weren’t very sure their predictions should be that low—if the storm track varied northward we could get a lot more. I wasn’t concerned about being able to hike around in the backcountry in deeper snow since I could simply take my snowshoes along. But I didn’t want to do an exhausting several-hour flog back to the trailhead through deep snow only to find my van trapped by snow and then, once it was freed, try to get home via snowy roads. About then it occurred to me that I could still accomplish a lot of what I had wanted to do on the overnighter by taking a day-night hike. And if all went well I could be home before the snow accumulated too much. I could (1) see how comfortable my new ultralight pack is, (2) see what it’s like to cook a meal using Esbit/hexamine tabs and (3) see what interesting things happen in hiking alone at night by headlamp in a snowstorm. Now we’re talking!

I already had the pack ready because of my trip cancellation last weekend so I just added a bottle of water and headed out. I didn’t remember to leave a note about where to look for my body if I didn’t come home (!!) so I called home via cell phone from the road and left a message on the answering machine. Hopefully that message would never be needed.
By 1315 I was on the Appalachian Trail and it was just then starting to snow. I had decided to drive to the AT trailhead at Boiling Springs and again hike south on the AT to Alec Kennedy shelter. I like this section and wanted to be on a trail with some landmarks I know well for the night-hike back to the van in snow.
As I slowly climbed Center Point Knob, I met a day-hiker coming down, another grey-hair, this one from Carlisle. I didn’t get a name. He had intended to hike to the shelter to check it out for a planned cub-scout outing later in the month. But he hadn’t seen the shelter. By talking about landmarks he had seen, we determined he had been within twenty minutes of the shelter but had turned back too soon. I assured him the side-trail to the shelter was well-marked and easy to find and I provided info on the shelter, fireplace, table, the hi-tech toilet, and the water source for his upcoming scout trip.
By the time I reached the top of Center Point Knob the snow was about an inch deep and it was spectacular up there. The top of the knob is always a nice place with its pines and rhododendrons but this day the light snow made it extra special. I signed the trail log and then carefully descended the ridge. I made it to the shelter by 1500 and checked the temp—32 degrees—then immediately put on the down sweater and lightweight balaclava from my pack to preserve some of the heat I had generated on the hike in. Though it was still snowing, I noticed that the snow wasn’t accumulating on the ashes of the fireplace. With a bare hand I could feel some warmth coming from the ashes and confirmed in the log book that someone had camped there overnight. I set up two stones at the edge of the fireplace to hold my cooking pot and got out my Esbit (actually Coghlan’s hexamine) tabs, the pot, my water bottle, and a package of Lipton beef-rice soup. I was happy to see my new Colibri windproof butane lighter light right up despite the cold (I’ve had problems with the Bic lighters working in temps near freezing) and its flame jet quickly lit the tab. I placed it between the rocks and put the pot on to boil. The tabs are supposed to burn for 9 minutes but they seem to burn less hot in the latter half of the burn. After one tab the water was barely lukewarm so I started another tab and while partway through that one, added another. The rice soup was starting to boil lightly so I lit a fourth tab and at that time poured half of the rice soup into a cup and started slurping it using my spork while the remainder continued to heat. I declared the experiment successful; the hot rice tasted good and warmed my core. The fuel tabs are very lightweight (there’s a dozen of them in a pack-of-cards-size package), they’re easy to light, and they heated up my meal well. I did not get a rolling boil out of them but believe I could have if I had done multiple tabs at once instead of doing them more or less sequentially. While cleaning the pot I noticed that that there was, as reported by other hikers, some black smoke deposit but that came off easily with my pot-scrubber. There was also a small amount of a thicker black deposit that took some extra-vigorous scrubbing to get off—I wasn’t fond of that.
I started the hike back to the van by about 1515. By that time there was about two inches of snow on the ground and it was still coming down. I was taking it nice and slow in the slippery conditions so got back to the top of Center Point Knob about 1800. With darkness falling and my glasses continuing to fog up after my climb of the Knob, I wasn’t able to see well so thought I’d try the headlamp even though it wasn’t dark yet. There was still enough ambient light that I didn’t need the headlamp to see around me but I noticed that the headlamp showed up the relief of the snow. That gave me more clues about what was under the snow, whether rocks, roots, or depressions or sticks lying across the trail. The other problem I had was losing the trail entirely. The snow of course covered the trail and some of the time I could see the outline of the trail depression, particularly with the headlamp showing more relief. But the blowing snow had covered many of the tree trunks and made it difficult to pick out the white trail blazes. I was also surprised how my perception of passing time changed with the limited visibility. It seemed like a very long time between blazes, leading me to think I must be wandering off trail but then one would materialize out of the darkness. Sometimes I had to brush the snow off to be sure it was a blaze. I went off trail three or four times but quickly corrected. And I knew that even if I got completely turned around all I had to do was keep going downhill and I’d come out to the fields below--- maybe not in the right place but I’d be able to orient myself once there.
I managed to stay on the trail and was nice and warm despite the blowing snow—in fact a little too warm. I was glad to get back to the van and realized that it was a good thing I was headed home because my clothes were sweaty and a little wet from the snow. Given that I had a dry down sweater and a dry sleeping bag in my pack, I would have been fine if I had had to spend that night outside but I really need to work on pacing myself a little better. But nevertheless I was very happy with my little trip. My ultralight pack worked well and was very comfortable. My cooking gear was a lot lighter (mostly from just deciding I didn’t need all that extra stuff) and worked fine even in windy and cold conditions. And I had the little hiking adventure alone in the night and snow.