Photogaboutit

Dave skis down the Mt. Ascutney auto road. This 30 second exposure is too long to capture Dave, but the headlamps pointing down track his path. If you look closely, you can also see his tracks underneath the light. For a night owl like me, a 1:00 am ski is just the ticket. This view is from the little shelter half way up the road. After I took this 30 second exposure at iso 800, I then pulled the exposure down a couple of stops. The original photograph looked like the middle of the day. Over the past four or five days, our region has been blessed with abundant snow. At my house here in Windsor, Vermont we got about 10" the other day and another 5" or so last night. Many of the mountains picked up over twice that. The moon was so bright, it cast shadows on the snow. Yesterday morning at 1:00am, which was actually still a continuation of Friday for us, Dave and I decided to climb and ski the Mt. Ascutney Auto Road by moonlight. We went VERY leisurely wi...

Maurice plows the 8-10" of new snow from our driveway so that I can get out early tomorrow morning for some fresh turns. Gotta love a nine year old plow guy who comes to work with a smile! Maurice, my awesome nine year old neighbor does a fantastic job plowing our driveway with his little John Deer tractor. Well, we finally got our first snow storm. (In fact, it pretty much was our first winter snow storm here in almost two years!) Dave drops a knee on one of our many fresh runs this morning at Pico Mountain. Dave and I got out to Pico this morning. Unfortunately the summit quad was closed due to wind (although I understand it opened for an hour at the end of the day) but we were able to make a number of quick hikes over to the trails off of the Outpost lift and were skiing multiple runs of 10"-14" of untouched pow. What a great day. Still deciding where to head tomorrow.

Photo of me skiing, shot by my wife. This is out behind the house during mid December of 2008. (Photo by Julia Burakian) This is just a quick reminder to Mother Nature, that it's mid December in Vermont! I hiked over Mt. Ascutney today and even at the top (3,200ft) there wasn't a speck of snow to be seen. (At least other than the white trails on Okemo.) Here's proof that occasionally we do get winter. It's supposed to get a little snowy starting tomorrow night. Fingers crossed!