Bah Humbug

Apparently at least one of my faithful readers was offended by the last photo I published. Lord knows we can't have that, so I am attempting to express my sincere contrition by sharing this image of cute, fuzzy kittens. Who could possibly be offended by a bouncy bundle of fluff? I'm hoping that all is forgiven and we can all once again sing Kumbayah around the campfire while bonding over our adoration of these precious little handfuls of purring love.

Now that I've dispensed with that unpleasant chore we can get down to brass tacks: we are getting hosed by the weather. I've seen some grim starts to the ski season but this has to rank with the worst. My scientist friends (of whom I have several) are going to want to see the data to back up that assertion but I'm just going to rely on my old-timer status and forego the numbers and charts. People frequently ask me when ski season starts here and my standard answer is we're always skiing by Christmas. I suppose technically you could ski on the trails right now if you were desperate and/or feeble-minded but it's not something I would recommend. It's icy and rutted with rocks and bare spots showing in places.

So, yeah. Bah humbug. Nordic skiers in western Montana are getting a lump of coal in their stockings this year.

The one bright spot I can report is that I went for a run on Westside Bypass this afternoon expecting

it to be a skating rink and wound up wishing I'd opted to skate ski it instead. The Westside snowmobile trails starts right below our house and I was aware that the groomer had been over it a couple of days ago but it still looked rougher than a cob from what I could see. However, if you can endure 1/2 mile of marginal skiing as far as the south Archibald Loop Road, conditions improve dramatically. I was running on it and kicking myself for not being on my skis. After a mile the groomer took a left on the north Archibald Road and right now there isn't a track on it, just corduroy from the groomer comb.

When I say "right now" that's exactly what I mean because that can, and will, change with a moment's notice. If you're in Missoula I wouldn't recommend that you make the drive based on this report, but if you're in Seeley it's definitely worth a shot. I know that's what I'm going to be doing in the morning.

No telling when the Pisten Bully will be back this way. Lynn and I have been trying to figure out the logic behind their schedule for years without success. But, if you check their schedule regularly you can sometimes get lucky and have first tracks on an immaculately buffed surface. Here's the link: https://www.driftriders.org/trails.html . That may not show up as a link when I publish this but you can copy and paste it into your browser.

That's the best intel I can share at the moment. The forecast for the foreseeable future looks bleak so I'm going to control what I can, which probably means more gym time and running, but for tomorrow, at least, I'll get some miles on my skate skis. And continue to pet my cat.

New Season, New Website

Seeley Lake Nordic Club's charge d'affairs. This woman gets things done.

Welcome to the new Seeley Lake Nordic Club website. This is my first DIY post so it's all about practice, not about polish. You may ask yourself, who is the woman pictured above? Or, if you're an old Talking Heads fan you may ask yourself, "my god! how did I get here?" Both excellent questions, but we're only interested in the answer to the first question, who is that woman? Some of you news junkies immediately know the answer and the first five commenters to post the correct answer will be rewarded with a hearty handclasp and kiss on the lips from our very own Master of Grooming and Curmudgeon Extraordinaire, Mr. Lynn Carey.

You may also ask yourself, why the new website? The short answer is that the old website was hosted by Dave Plante, a friend of ours who for a long time lived in Seeley. Dave builds and administers websites for a living and for years now has been generous enough to keep our site on his server as well as make the additions and changes that we asked for, plus post my blog whenever I muster the ambition to throw something together.

Life happens, though, and Dave made the decision to move back to New England to be closer to his family. It became apparent to all of us that it was time for the Nordic club to step up and create our own website that we can administer without outside assistance. After some discussion Katrina Stout was recruited to build a site on Wix that would allow us to make our own posts as well as edit content. So, here we are, and here I am, composing my first post on the new site which I will publish all by myself. What a big boy! I feel all grown up and responsible now. Sort of.

****************************************************************

I'm sure that by now everyone knows about the big user fee debate. The response to the Forest Service has been overwhelmingly in opposition to charging fees for skiing in both Seeley Lake and Missoula. The Seeley Lake club's feeling is that the proposed fees are unnecessary, insulting and a slap in the face to the club. Without going into a lot of detail, the proposal was put together using bogus and grossly inflated numbers without any consultation with the club, which has been responsible for the vast majority of the work and funding that has gone into the trails. Under a partnership agreement with the local district, we have provided quality skiing and the vision to maintain and improve that skiing for over 25 years with little assistance from the Forest Service other than to approve our proposals. One of our goals has always been to keep skiing free at Seeley and there is absolutely no justification for altering that arrangement at this point. Thanks to everyone who has commented and supported our position. Right now I feel pretty confident that the fee proposal will go down in flames, but you never know. I thought Weber State would beat the Grizzlies. I also thought Donald Trump was unelectable. Stay tuned.

On the positive side, status quo has never been good enough for the Nordic club and we undertook a massive trail improvement project this summer to make grooming easier, extend the season and make skiing more enjoyable. The improvements are woven throughout the entire system and include leveling off-camber sections, widening corners, smoothing out rough spots, and removing boulders and a few trees. We had an arsenal of heavy equipment at our disposal including a loader, excavator and grader, so over the course of about five days we made some radical improvements. A lot of it won't be immediately apparent to the average skier once the snow fills everything in, but to those of us who groom and ski here regularly the changes will be obvious. Additionally, we smoothed out a teaching loop to the east of the yurt allowing us to get our clinics out of the main flow of traffic and unplug the trail. To the point of my tirade in the preceding paragraph, the entire project was funded and managed by the club with the only USFS involvement being to approve our proposal.

OK, now I'm feeling the need for a little balance or I'll walk away from this post feeling guilty. The user fee proposal came out of Lolo Forest headquarters in Missoula. To be fair, the local ranger district had no input into the structure of the proposal other than to comment after the fact. Our relationship with the local district, aside from a few small bumps in the road, has always been friendly and productive. For the most part the local forest service folks have been extremely supportive and appreciative of our efforts and ability to get work done on the ground, for which the club is grateful.

Enough diplomacy. Katrina promises me that she can make it easy for you unwashed skiing masses to post on this blog as well as the grooming page. Now is your chance to win a warm embrace from our very own Obi Lynn Carey, so tell us who that charming lady in the photo is and get in line for some good lovin' from Lynn.

Dezaiko Lodge

View of the lodge from the outhouse path. They call the outhouse the “biffy” which I assume is French/Canadian for “shitter”

Hut skiing has always been on my radar, but there is so much accessible good skiing locally, with and without a sled, that I’ve never acted on the impulse to book a trip. Plus, there’s the group factor. You have to assemble a compatible group of 8 or 9 people, be able to make decisions as a group and live happily as a group for the duration of the trip. Happiness and large recreational groups are generally mutually exclusive in my experience and I prefer recreating solo or with a few other like-minded people. The one absolutely reliable companion I have is our chocolate Lab who is always eager to go anywhere with me, agrees with every decision I make and responds enthusiastically to the multitude of pithy and incisive comments which issue from my mouth with such astonishing regularity that even I am amazed.

Our transportation. It took three 15-minute flights to get everyone, plus gear, to the lodge

Granted, Labs aren’t known for their discriminating tastes, but that’s not the point. The point being that Rocket and I get along just fine so why would I screw up a perfectly good day by mingling with a bunch of potentially annoying humans?

I wouldn’t.

Except….last year I was invited to go on a 7-day hut trip with my backcountry friends from Missoula. I had been hearing them rave about Dezaiko Lodge near Prince George, B.C. for several years and despite my reservations about the group thing I accepted. As luck would have it, I came down with the flu the day of departure and was forced to cancel. This year I was invited again and gave it another shot.

The drill is this: you drive about 750 miles northwest of Missoula to Prince George (I fully expect to be lectured about mileage rounding by some random “scientist”) and drive 1 ½ hours into the bush to a whistle stop called Sinclair Mills. From there you board a helicopter for the flight east into Dezaiko Lodge in the Dezaiko Range.

From the lodge, skiable terrain was accessed by skinning. We were a self-guided group but Brian and Carol, a Seattle couple, have been going there for about 20 years and know the area like the back of their hands.

The term “lodge” is a stretch at best, since it’s more like a cabin. It consists of the main building, which might be 20x24’ plus a full upstairs where guests sleep in what is euphemistically called “dormitory style”. The literal translation of that phrase is “no privacy”. There is also an entryway, drying room and sauna attached to the front of the building, plus a back bedroom where the owners sleep.

Pretty cozy quarters for a group of 9 skiers, plus Bonnie, the owner/guide/cook. The first couple of nights I wasn’t sure if I was going to make a positive adaptation to all that forced intimacy, but by the third day something finally clicked and I made the mental adjustment. It was a pretty easy group to adapt to, everyone was chill, conversation was good and no one ever got their nose bent out of joint or their tiny and precious little feelings stepped on.

The terrain potentially has any kind of skiing you’d want, from full-on steeps to safer glades and slopes lower down on the mountain. They’d gotten a good dump the day before our arrival which provided decent skiing for the first 2 ½ days, but on the third night the wind began to blow and the next morning everything that was exposed to the wind was crusted over. That prompted a full day of easy touring, followed by a search for soft snow that ultimately revealed decent skiing south of the cabin. We spent the final two days yoyoing that area. There was a little untracked snow left for the group following ours, but not much.

In the end, my fears of being overwhelmed by a lack of personal space weren’t realized. Overall, we had reasonably good skiing in an area that in the right conditions would provide phenomenal skiing. As usual when you’re playing outside, you make the most of what you get.