Valentine's Day on Hunger Mountain

What better way to spend Valentine's Day than on an adventure somewhere you've never been, with your man and your dog? I can't think of anything better, so that's what I did! Seth and I decided to take our adventuring selves to Hunger Mountain. Aren't we romantic?


(Pardon my messy house, we are remodeling.)

A picture of Thunder in his bright orange jacket has been requested, so I took one:

He has to wear this jacket because he is stupid, and runs out in front of cars whenever he gets the chance. Seth doesn't like it because he thinks it is embarrassing, most other dogs we come across aren't wearing anything remotely similar. But I remind him that Thunder is stupid, and it is better to be wearing a bright orange jacket than get hit by a car. Once in the park a little girl asked her dad why the doggy was wearing "that." The Dad responded "so that everyone can see him!" Seth was mortified. I told him it was a good sign that he knew the real reason he was wearing a bright coat, and didn't respond "because his owner's are weird old ladies."

Anyway, at our house in the valley there was no snow. There had been no snow for some time and we were getting depressed. We'd been wallowing in our lack of typical winter-wonderland Vermont weather, and weren't sure if we should be wishing for snow, or daring to wish that Spring might be coming early this year. We weren't really sure what the snow situation was like in the mountains either, but we were glad to see that there was at least a small layer of snow on the track up to the trailhead.

As we started going up, I kept thinking that this must not be an ideal mountain for skiing. The trail seemed abnormally steep and rocky, and I kept thinking there was no way I was going to be able to ski down it without killing myself. (This is a pretty frequent frame of mind for me on the way up a mountain.) We crossed boulders, gingerly stepped through open creeks whose running water caused snow to stick to the bottoms of our skis, and wondered what was going to happen on the way down as the trail slalomed through trees. It occurred to me that Hunger Mountain is not that inviting to human life. (Maybe that's why it's called Hunger Mountain?) 


The wind on Hunger Mountain was like nothing I have ever heard. It roared through the trees, causing them to crack and moan under the pressure. My thoughts ran to the Grimm Fairy Tales, and the legendary Black Forest. I have never before understood why people could see the woods as a place of fright; to me it has always been a retreat. But on Hunger Mountain, I began to understand. 


We were having fun though, and Thunder seemed to be having the time of his life! He would scurry past Seth anywhere the trail got a little wider, and come back with a giant stick in his mouth. He would drop it, then immediately begin to hunt for a new stick to run around with. Occasionally he would drop the stick, gallop back to Seth and me, grab the spindly trunk of a sapling sticking out of the snow, and take off. When he realized the sapling hadn't come with him, he would turn around and cock his head in confusion. It seemed like we'd been going up forever when we came upon a sign that let us know we weren't lost. (We knew we weren't lost)

 

Here is Seth looking down the trail to White Rock, which is only .75 miles away. We decided to stick with the plan (!are you shocked!) and continue up the "Mount Hunger" trail, which was supposedly 1.1 miles long.

We continued heading up the trail for a little while when we came across a giant wall of ice. This is not abnormal in Vermont, and in fact, it was heartening to see normal signs of winter, just so that we knew it still existed. The problem with this particular wall of ice was that the ice continued across the trail in a particularly long narrow section which could only be described as gnarly. Again, I wondered how I was going to get down.

Eventually we came to a section that was so steep there was no way we could get up it with our skis on. Instead of turning back (like I normally would have voted for) we decided that our Valentine's Day adventure needed to be an all or nothing adventure, planted our skis in the snow and continued on foot (in our ridiculous cross-country ski boots). Then we came to a section that was so craggy and icey, I wondered how I was going to get down it in my ski boots! Again it occurred to me this mountain was not very inviting.

At long last, we saw a small wooden sign nailed to a tree that said "Vista" with an arrow pointing to an opening in the trees. We looked over at a wall of white. It was snowing and we couldn't see much past the edge of the cliff. Then I noticed that the trail continued going up past the Vista, and Seth was already halfway up the next steep section. 

We kept going up for a while and I was suddenly quite hungry. (Maybe that's why it's called Hunger Mountain?) We eventually came to a place where the trail looked like it was going to start going down the other side of the mountain, and decided to turn around. The woods at the top of the mountain were lovely. Big trees with lots of space in between. I imagine it is idyllic in the summertime. 

We stopped for a snack, and even though we kept throwing tidbits to Thunder he amused himself by gnawing on a decaying tree trunk, and spitting out the pieces.

Then we started the much anticipated journey down the mountain. In no time at all I found myself back at the big ice, and ended up taking my skis off to get past it. (I might have given it a go if I had been wearing a helmet, but I had no intention of killing myself on Hunger Mountain on Valentine's Day.) Then, as if by magic, we were down at the trail sign! 

"Wow!" I said to Seth, "This trail is AWESOME!"

He agreed, although he had known it would be awesome based on how it was on the way up. "Really?!" I exclaimed, "I kept thinking how awful it was going to be!"

Seth always knows better. That's why I continue to follow him up impossible mountains.

The trail down was so fast and flowey that Thunder didn't have time to torture the saplings, and I didn't have time to worry about how I was getting down the mountain. It was amazing, but before I knew it we were back at the car, packing up to head back home. 

On the way we stopped at the grocery and got some nice steaks for dinner. And now, if you'll excuse me, Seth requires my attention (did you know they are changing the rules in Moto GP this year?) and women's figure skating is on. One can only do so many things at once.

The Road back to Vermont -or- Stick to the Plan: A Lesson

In the early morning mist and fog, with a few residual rain drops dripping here and there, we loaded up the trailer and the 4Runner, and set out on our return voyage. Neither of us were all that excited about it; we had both been craving the rally as an all-to-brief vacation that our sanity depended on. But once the sun came up and the last rain clouds cleared out, it was a rather pleasant drive through the Carolinas.

We had been warned that we  might not make it home. As early as Friday night some of the rally racers were getting calls from their wives who wished they'd come home. How dare they leave them alone with the house when there were three feet of snow predicted? How could they?

Jen had spoken with friends in Asheville and found that it was snowed in, and warned us to check online to make sure the highway was open through D.C. I tried to do this, but all I found was a series of links that brought me full circle back to the original webpage without actually giving me any information. So we just kept going, and noticed with growing pleasure the rising piles of snow on the sides of the roads as we sped through Virginia. We weren't really worried. We assumed that all the hullabaloo was caused by people who don't know how to drive in the snow and usually don't have to. We drive in snow all the time. We drive after receiving immense droppings of snow on a regular basis (every year except this year)!

What we hadn't thought of was that the same people who don't know how to drive in three feet of snow also don't have the slightest idea how to clear three feet of snow off the road.

Very abruptly, as though we had crossed some kind of county or city line the road was pocked with several inches of snowy ice slush that had been compacted to form driving surface worse than any dirt road I have ever driven on. When the Car-Pool lanes began they were closed, and we noticed workers aiming heaters out of their trucks at the barriers, which were frozen in the down position. We laughed. It was surprising how bumpy several inch deep ice holes all over the rode made the ride. Traffic had slowed to a crawl. I stared out the window at the road, trying to discern how it got that way in the first place. The road was like a river. Dirty, muddy water was rushing over the top of the ice-field, down the hill. I looked to the side of the road, which was downhill, and noticed water piling up against the concrete barriers on the side, creating a REAL river going in the downhill direction. Even when the concrete barriers were no longer there, where the water normally could have run into the grass, the piles of snow on the side of the road were creating their own barrier and the water had nowhere to go but down. This culminated when we came to an overpass that happened to be at the bottom of two hills: water was accumulating quite quickly, and apparently there was no drainage on the overpass. (?? really? This place was a swamp originally, seems like they would have built with drainage in mind). We drove through six to eight inches of water, and noticed that the bridge was slightly off camber, and the people on the right side were driving through MUCH deeper water. Hmmm.

After three hours of watching people drive like idiots, we made it through DC. When we reached Baltimore there seemed to be more snow on the sides of the roads, but the roads themselves were perfectly clear. How southern Virginia and Maryland can figure out how to clear the streets but Washington DC can't will never make sense to me. Most things in Washington don't make sense to me though, so I guess this was just par for the course.

Things went on nicely after that, until we reached the New Jersey Turnpike and Seth started complaining about the outrageous tolls. He had driven most of the way so far and the DC drivers had left him in a particularly foul mood. We looked at the maps and decided to get off the turnpike and take a parallel road up to the last possible exit to minimize cash loss. This would have been fine if we stuck to the plan, but instead we made last minute decision to get back on the highway sooner and ended up going the wrong way. Then we had to get off (toll) and get back on and go most of the way we had come on the side road, which meant we still had a big toll, and had wasted almost two hours. Oy. If we had stuck to the original plan, of taking the turnpike, we would have been better off. If we had stuck to the secondary plan of getting back on at the specified exit, we would have been better off. But we are stubborn and didn't do any of these things.

The rest of the trip was unpleasant, dark and hungry. We didn't want to stop because we just wanted to get home. (at least we wanted to get home now!)

We finally did make it home around 3:30 am. We will see if we learned our lesson.

And that's all I have to say about that.