More XC Skiing and back to biking - Time to catch up here

After the great skiing last weekend, Monday's mixed precipitation "event" left conditions quite a bit less desirable.  Nevertheless, the Tuesday morning ECOS XC ski outing went on as usual.  We spent two hours skiing around Featherstonhaugh State Forest, near Mariaville, in conditions that were fair to good, but we were thankful the terrain was mostly flat.  The minor downhills were much slicker and trickier than usual, but it was a good outing.

I'm scheduled to lead a ski trip on Saturday, at Dyken Pond Environmental Education Center, in Rensselaer County.  This place tends to get a LOT of snow, but still I wondered what that snow would be like after the recent foul weather.  So today I drove up there, with the skis in the car, to check it out ahead of time.  The skis stayed in the car.  There was, indeed, a ton of snow, but the surface was pretty crunchy.  That's not a good thing here where the ski trails are actually narrow hiking trails, and very few of them are exactly flat or straight.  Unless we get some significant fresh snow before the weekend to improve things, I will be cancelling this trip.

When I got home, since I was dressed for outdoors anyway, I dragged out the bike and pedalled a leisurely 8+ miles on the snow-free bike path in Niskayuna and Colonie.  Last year, I biked in 11 of 12 months, and this year, I'm hoping to hit them all.  January and February are now covered.  I'd rather be skiing, but it just seems not to be for the near future.