“Uh oh, Wart Road isn’t plowed.”
In the back of my mind I could hear the dulcet tones of the recently departed Myron Cope: “Yoi!” And. “Double Yoi!” The deep snow spelled trouble for us indeed. Any thought to the contrary would be pure gorgonzola.
That opening statement sums up my weekend at CNYO’s annual Snowgaine event. I can still chalk it up as two days of good training. And a great time with a small group of folks who consistently show up to host and/or compete at what is certainly my favorite event of the year every year. Have I mentioned that Snowgaine is my favorite event recently? ;)
The road trip up on Friday night was a mini-adventure in of itself. Bruce and I carpooled up to the event with GOALS teammate(s) Brent and Abby. Brent is fully corrupted and on board for the upcoming season. Abby is still in project phase. She’ll be doing some racing but still has ironman and marathon issues to work out. Which to me is as simple as this: would you rather eat gu and talk about negative splits and PRs or chow down a big chocolate chip cookie and talk about the barbed wire fence that interrupted your bushwhack through four feet of snow? No contest.
An Alberta Clipper was busy slamming I-81 North with snow and the efficacy of snow plows and salt trucks was mixed at best. The crews in Wilkes Barre get a failing grade with a dozen cars off the road in the center median and no visible pavement. However, just up the road in Scranton the salt was working hard and we had clean pavement. Binghamton was the same as Wilkes Barre. Syracuse had the Scranton plan working. Alternating between 60mph or 40mph depending on where we were led to a late night arrival at the 1880 House. Situated in the heart lovely downtown Pulaski, NY I’d recommend it to anybody after staying there twice over the years.
Among Snowgaine’s many charms is the “anything goes” format for the competition. You can ski, you can snowshoe, you can run and if you’re so inclined you can bike. That’s where Bruce and I (and a few others each year) come in. The critical rule is all gear that you take with you from the start must be in your possession at all times. Bikes might be speedy on open road but most of the controls are in the woods. Bushwhacking a kilometer through deep snow with a bike on shoulder is entertaining the first three or four controls. After that it settles in to be a bit of hard work or insanity. You be the judge.
In the back of my mind I could hear the dulcet tones of the recently departed Myron Cope: “Yoi!” And. “Double Yoi!” The deep snow spelled trouble for us indeed. Any thought to the contrary would be pure gorgonzola.
That opening statement sums up my weekend at CNYO’s annual Snowgaine event. I can still chalk it up as two days of good training. And a great time with a small group of folks who consistently show up to host and/or compete at what is certainly my favorite event of the year every year. Have I mentioned that Snowgaine is my favorite event recently? ;)
The road trip up on Friday night was a mini-adventure in of itself. Bruce and I carpooled up to the event with GOALS teammate(s) Brent and Abby. Brent is fully corrupted and on board for the upcoming season. Abby is still in project phase. She’ll be doing some racing but still has ironman and marathon issues to work out. Which to me is as simple as this: would you rather eat gu and talk about negative splits and PRs or chow down a big chocolate chip cookie and talk about the barbed wire fence that interrupted your bushwhack through four feet of snow? No contest.
An Alberta Clipper was busy slamming I-81 North with snow and the efficacy of snow plows and salt trucks was mixed at best. The crews in Wilkes Barre get a failing grade with a dozen cars off the road in the center median and no visible pavement. However, just up the road in Scranton the salt was working hard and we had clean pavement. Binghamton was the same as Wilkes Barre. Syracuse had the Scranton plan working. Alternating between 60mph or 40mph depending on where we were led to a late night arrival at the 1880 House. Situated in the heart lovely downtown Pulaski, NY I’d recommend it to anybody after staying there twice over the years.
Among Snowgaine’s many charms is the “anything goes” format for the competition. You can ski, you can snowshoe, you can run and if you’re so inclined you can bike. That’s where Bruce and I (and a few others each year) come in. The critical rule is all gear that you take with you from the start must be in your possession at all times. Bikes might be speedy on open road but most of the controls are in the woods. Bushwhacking a kilometer through deep snow with a bike on shoulder is entertaining the first three or four controls. After that it settles in to be a bit of hard work or insanity. You be the judge.
When we received the maps 30 minutes before the start on Saturday it seemed 2008 might really be a good year for a strategy of biking on day one and snowshoeing on day two. There was a nice loop around the outside of the course that appeared to be on roads of a relatively plowed condition. Our intent was a counter-clockwise loop that would visit: 67, 35, 53, 61, 76, 36, 57, 40, 60, 77, 34, 43, 47, 66, 74, 37, 70 and 45. We thought that all the light brown roads on the map would all be similar to Center Road which we had driven on to lovely downtown Boylston. (Our start location marked by a blue triangle near the center of the southern edge the map). Whereas the gray colored roads would be the unplowed snowmobile trail/dirt roads in the interior of the course. There were even several controls (67 in the SE corner and 76 on the E edge) plunked next to the road that would be easy scores for us. Conditions were a little ugly in the morning. Dark gray clouds and some snowfall but the weather forecast had seemed to indicate clearing conditions as the day progressed. So after a brief debate we decided to stick with the bikes and not reverse our days.
How can you tell a meteorologist is lying? Their lips are moving. It never cleared up. In fact conditions degraded as the day went. The snow was whipped by the wind and riding the roads was painful at times. Stingy little ice pellets for the face and wind gusts to chill anything wet or exposed. The plowed roads filled with enough snow to slow our bikes a bit and allow skiers to approach easy targets like CP76 on skis via the road. Good times. Our planned lap around the outside progressed well until reaching Marsh Road which might have transported us into CP57. It was marked in gray on the map so we knew it was likely to be unplowed. In fact only the very top of the Marsh Road sign post was even visible after being buried with the plow clearings off the County Route 92 we were using to move North along the east side of the map. We figured if we left CP57 and CP60 we could loop them on day 2 with CP65 and CP75.
The most fun I had was the approach to CP77 which involved a little faith based navigation. What's drawn on the map was our early morning plan. However, after punching CP40 and continuing North, we found Sharp Road to be buried in much the same fashion as Marsh Road. We had hoped there might be a hard pack from snowmobile usage (which is often rideable) but no luck. Fresh soft snow. So instead of shoving the bikes along Sharp Road we continued North and found the plowed Westbound Road that you can see a scrap of at the intersection of Sharp and Brown Road. Brown Road was rideable up to the last farm houses shown in the clearing and from there we rolled our bikes to the boundary line that guided us into CP77.
The Monday Morning Navigator says CP34 was OK because it was along the way once we exited to the nearest rideable road. But he thinks the real time trouble started with the forays into CP43 and CP47. I thought we were getting late and not allowing a cushion for bad events when we left the corner of Dixon road to attack CP43 from the north side of the steep hill. But we still had 2+ hours and the roads we thought would be plowed were still plowed. So we continued on until we punched CP66 at 4pm. Now at this point we knew we had to beeline back thus putting the kabosh on CP74 and CP37. But we thought we could make it with maybe a small time penalty. Unfortunately when we made the right turn back onto Wart Road off Van Wormer Road we rode a few hundred yards and realized:
“Uh oh, Wart Road isn’t plowed.”
I'll wrap this up in my next post.........
How can you tell a meteorologist is lying? Their lips are moving. It never cleared up. In fact conditions degraded as the day went. The snow was whipped by the wind and riding the roads was painful at times. Stingy little ice pellets for the face and wind gusts to chill anything wet or exposed. The plowed roads filled with enough snow to slow our bikes a bit and allow skiers to approach easy targets like CP76 on skis via the road. Good times. Our planned lap around the outside progressed well until reaching Marsh Road which might have transported us into CP57. It was marked in gray on the map so we knew it was likely to be unplowed. In fact only the very top of the Marsh Road sign post was even visible after being buried with the plow clearings off the County Route 92 we were using to move North along the east side of the map. We figured if we left CP57 and CP60 we could loop them on day 2 with CP65 and CP75.
The most fun I had was the approach to CP77 which involved a little faith based navigation. What's drawn on the map was our early morning plan. However, after punching CP40 and continuing North, we found Sharp Road to be buried in much the same fashion as Marsh Road. We had hoped there might be a hard pack from snowmobile usage (which is often rideable) but no luck. Fresh soft snow. So instead of shoving the bikes along Sharp Road we continued North and found the plowed Westbound Road that you can see a scrap of at the intersection of Sharp and Brown Road. Brown Road was rideable up to the last farm houses shown in the clearing and from there we rolled our bikes to the boundary line that guided us into CP77.
The Monday Morning Navigator says CP34 was OK because it was along the way once we exited to the nearest rideable road. But he thinks the real time trouble started with the forays into CP43 and CP47. I thought we were getting late and not allowing a cushion for bad events when we left the corner of Dixon road to attack CP43 from the north side of the steep hill. But we still had 2+ hours and the roads we thought would be plowed were still plowed. So we continued on until we punched CP66 at 4pm. Now at this point we knew we had to beeline back thus putting the kabosh on CP74 and CP37. But we thought we could make it with maybe a small time penalty. Unfortunately when we made the right turn back onto Wart Road off Van Wormer Road we rode a few hundred yards and realized:
“Uh oh, Wart Road isn’t plowed.”
I'll wrap this up in my next post.........
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