This is the sixth winter that I've experienced upstate, and it has taken the cake for the most wintery winter that I've ever lived through. It's been an absolute joy to take advantage of all of the unique opportunities that arise when water freezes in large amounts. I thought I'd like to write about many of the ways that we enjoyed the cold.
Ice Fishing
I have wanted to try ice fishing for forever. While it's been cold enough to ice fish in winters past, we never quite got around to it. When the opportunity arose again this year, I was determined to try it out. Rob had most but not all of the equipment: we were crucially missing an ice auger, which is what drills the hole in the ice, so I found a used on on Facebook Marketplace. Moreover, one of the tip-ups (more on that later) was broken so I fixed it. With that, we had everything we needed.
We chose to go to North-South Lake up the mountain. When we got there, there was one other family there ice fishing, and they were packing up, dragging all of their gear out on a powered sled which was much cooler than us hauling everything out on foot. We picked a spot on the lake, and got to work setting up shop.
The first step was to drill some holes in the ice. Who knew that it was such hard work? The ice auger was invaluable, but man, was it tiring to spin it down through nearly a foot of ice. We took turns with it and drilled three holes. We didn't really know what to make of the initial layer of watery slush between the snow and the ice, and had we not seen that family there just before we go there, there's a good chance we would have been too sketched out by it to stay. So it was nice to have that psychological reassurance followed by the observation that yes, the ice was indeed very thick.
After the holes are drilled, the next step is to set up the tip-ups. These are rather simple but ingenious devices, not unlike a mouse trap: it is essentially a tripod with a flag on it, where the flag is held down by fishing line that extends down into the water. When a fish pulls on the line, it releases the spring-loaded flag and the flag flips upward, letting you know you've caught a fish. We put a worm on each one of our three tip-ups and put them in place over each of the three holes.
Ice auger and tip-up.
At this point, you're basically just chilling on the ice and maybe you catch a fish too. Rob always likes to do something fancy on our outdoor excursions and this time was no exception. He had skewered up some lamb beforehand and brought a little charcoal camping grill, so he got the grill going and we enjoyed some 羊肉串儿. We packed the Jetboil so we were able to have hot tea as well.
羊肉串儿 and tea.
It was a nice sunny day out, and we had a good time sitting there on the lake. Ultimately, none of our tip-ups tipped up, so we went home without a fish, which is how a lot of our attempts at fishing seem to go and we're totally okay with that.
Downhill Skiing
Within my friend circles when I still lived in the city, this was definitely the most common outdoor winter activity, and it very much had a bourgeois air to it. Sure, why not fly across the country to spend a ton of money on a cabin, lift tickets, ski rentals, and overpriced chicken tenders?
Here, living a stone's throw away from a decently-sized ski resort, the story is different. We've opted for the Epic Northeast Midweek Pass for a few years now, which is much cheaper than any full pass but only allows Northeast resorts on weekdays. This isn't so much of an issue for us because Hunter is so close by. There were a number of days where we got there as soon as lifts opened, skied just a few runs, and then went home so that I could start working. We got freshly groomed snow, no lift lines, and the ability to ski right back up to the car. With all the snow we got this winter, it was a dream. I think I skied every run that Hunter had available, including the double black diamonds down the backside that are completely ungroomed and probably don't ever stay open for very long each season.
Me and my friend Riley at Stowe. I felt like a million bucks in my ski suit.
In addition to Hunter, the pass came with a bunch of other resorts in the Northeast, and it would have been a shame to not try any of them out. A few other friends happened to have the same pass, so we all planned a midweek trip up to Stowe in Vermont. It was, by far, the best skiing I've done on the East Coast. Sometimes I'm so overcome by joy while skiing that I can't help but let out some ecstatic whoops as I carve down the mountain, and this happened a ton at Stowe. The snow was great, the runs were long, the sun was shining, and I just had such a good time. It was also nice that the base lodge we hung out at the most still had a nice homey vibe without the corporate air that pervades ski resorts today.
When in Vermont, eat Ben and Jerry's.
Snowshoeing
After one of the big blizzards, we met up with a group of friends at Art Omi, a sculpture park across in Columbia County. This park is nice because it's free, and stays open in the winter for people who want to snowshoe or cross-country ski around their little network of trails. Most of us including me and Rob had snowshoes. It was a gorgeous day to be out and I thought it was really cool to see all the art in such a wintery setting, since I've only been there before in other seasons. I brought along my Jetboil and other supplies necessary for a mid-snowshoe hot chocolate break in the middle of a sculpture.
The Jetboil strikes again!
All in all, I honestly wouldn't rank snowshoeing all too high on my own tier list of winter activities, but it's enjoyable enough and nice to have to add to the variety of everything one can do in the winter.
Cross-Country Skiing
While I haven't done this as much as downhill skiing, I certainly do enjoy cross-country skiing as well. Rob had never been so I took him out for a day up at Pineridge. I talked the poor guy out of wearing snow pants because I was thinking that cross-country skiing is much more cardio than downhill skiing, and I know that he gets super warm in general, but I failed to anticipate that a first-time cross-country skier would fall a few times! The bottom of his pants ended up pretty wet but he assured me that he liked the experience overall, and he did go looking for cross-country ski gear online afterwards, so I don't think he was just saying he liked it out of obligation.
I do find it interesting just how different it is from downhill skiing. Hills that I would barely register on downhill skis suddenly look much more intimidating. The flip side is that going uphill is much nicer. Beyond the physical mechanics of it, it does have a much more peaceful vibe to it in general, gliding through a trail in the woods, across a meadow, along a creek.
Ice Skating
As we were driving through Saugerties back in January, during a prolonged cold spell, we saw that Esopus Creek was completely frozen over, and that there were a bunch of kids skating on it with shovels and clearing out a hockey rink. How cool!
Naturally, the first thing next morning, I told Rob that we had to go skating on the creek as well, so we threw our ice skates in the car and drove back. The area that the kids cleared out was pretty massive, and we were able to skate around for a while in huge circles. As we were leaving and taking our skates off, another guy arrived and somehow just took off skating down the creek, disappearing into the distance, so I'll have to try that next year if it gets frozen enough again.
Snowblowing
Yes, snowblowing. As in using a snowblower to remove snow from our driveway and other paths that need clearing. The first winter that Rob and I were dating, I told him I'd love to try snowblowing his driveway after a snowstorm and he got such a kick out of it, because in his mind it's just a chore. When I did do it later that winter, I really enjoyed it, and he told me that the novelty would wear off. Well, I continued to do it and I didn't find that the fun didn't really fade even several years in. I got to do a ton of it this winter on our new driveway, and Rob told me that I was only having fun because our new driveway wasn't as long as our old one.
Yardstick placed for scale.
I don't know about you, but I get the impression that Rob really just doesn't like snowblowing and is projecting that onto me. And luckily for him, I think I just like to do it. There's something really satisfying about watching snow fly out the side of the contraption and clearing out a nice pattern of straight lines until it's all gone.
Maple Tapping
This one feels like a bit of an odd one out in that it's not directly doing something with frozen water. In February and March, as the days are getting longer and the temperature is regularly poking its head above freezing again, the maple trees begin to wake up. They send sap up the trunk of the tree during the day when it's above freezing.
In order to access this sap, one only needs to drill a small hole into the side of a maple tree, and it immediately begins leaking sap at a high rate. I was astonished the first time I saw this and I still find it fascinating year after year. To harvest the sap, one can cut a young sumac branch and remove the core, which is soft, basically leaving a wooden straw, and whittle down a pointy end. This is called a spile. The sumac spile is more of an old-fashioned curiosity than anything, and the vast majority of modern spiles come in plastic or metal form. The spile is hammered into the tree and sap flows out the end; one simply needs to hang a bucket for the sap to drip into, and voila, that's all you need to do. Walk away and come back later when there's lots of sap in the bucket.
We soon replaced these buckets with huge 5-gallon buckets.
The sap itself is very tasty, and makes for a refreshing drink in and of itself, which, unsurprisingly, is very slightly sweet and gives hints of maple flavor. However, the ultimate goal of collecting all the sap is to make maple syrup. To do this, one needs to boil the sap down a lot: 40 units of sap turns into just 1 unit of syrup.
Doing this much boiling takes a lot of fuel, and the way we do it is with a DIY evaporator. The old one that we used to use was on its last legs, so Rob constructed a new one this year out of a barrel we had lying around. The evaporator is powered by a wood fire and fits two hotel pans on top.
Once a batch of sap has boiled down enough, we pour it into a stockpot and finish the process inside. This part needs careful supervision, or the sap is very likely to spill over and burn and cause a nasty sticky mess all over the kitchen that takes ages to clean up - ask us how we know. Anyways, we keep boiling the sap until it reaches 219 degrees Fahrenheit; this is the point that the water content is low enough that will not spoil. Then, we let it cool down to 190, and filter it into jars. One has to wait until 190 because above this temperature, sugar sand can continue to form and cloud up the maple syrup. After the syrup is sealed tightly in jars, we put them in a sous vide bath up to 185 to ensure sterilization.
This year's batch, finished this evening.
We do this every year and end up with a supply of maple syrup that lasts us through the following winter. It's very fun!
A Shower Thought
One rather silly thing that I've thought about a lot this winter is how all the snow and ice puts me in spatial locations that would be physically impossible in any other season. Take away the lake ice, and I'm standing on liquid water. Take away all the snow on a ski slope, and I'm floating several feet in the air. I just thought it was cool how these yearly scheduled phase changes make these situations possible.
What Next?
All of these activities were great. I would definitely do all of them again and it's a very nice list of activities to look forward to. Every activity should be possible on a yearly basis - even with climate change one only needs to drive north a tiny bit if it doesn't, say, stay cold enough to go ice fishing on our local lake.
There are yet more winter activities that I would love to try out.
On our way to skiing one morning, driving up Kaaterskill Clove to go skiing, I noticed that there were an unusually large number of cars parked on the side of the road. Maybe half a mile later, I saw a ton of people working their way up the massive ice formations on the rock walls around us. Ice climbing, how cool! As I found out when I looked it up later, we had happened upon one day of the Catskill Ice Climbing Festival. I am definitely going to sign up for the day-long introduction next year.
For several years, we have considered heading up to Quebec in the winter. Quebec City's Carnaval every February looks very worthwhile. Various parts of the province have canals and other water features that freeze, meaning you can ice skate through the woods for miles on end. There are various awesome-looking ski resorts like Mont Tremblant and Le Massif de Charlevoix. We think that next winter is the winter we'll pull the trigger on making it up there.
As for other miscellaneous things, I'd love to try out the luge at Lake Placid one of these years. I also saw on the drive to Stowe that there was a place to take a literal sleigh ride in Vermont. Like, on a one-horse open sleigh. Given that anybody who grew up in this country knows that it's supposedly oh-so-fun to take a ride in one, I wouldn't mind doing that at some point too.