Stumpy and friend

Last week brought several days of light, dry snowfall, perfect for backcountry skiing and for tracking. It's also vacation week, which means a steady stream of guests for the upcoming stint.

I skied in Friday afternoon in a snow squall that brought a fresh eighth of an inch to the valley. As I approached the first of the beaver ponds near the z-bridge, I saw two red foxes running toward me on the trail. I stopped and took off my pack for a picture, but when they were twenty yards away they noticed me and stopped. The fox behind went into the woods to the west of the trail, but the fox in front only paused and continued towards me, more slowly now. It was then that I identified it as Stumpy, the three-legged fox that's been denning near Zealand Hut.

Red foxes generally mate in January or February, so I surmise that Stumpy has found a special friend. This might explain why the two of them were too distracted to notice me as they were bounding down the ski trail towards me. I did manage to take a number of photos of Stumpy. I'll post these here by next weekend.

On Saturday I found a number of tracks: dozens of snow-tunnels left behind by voles, a few more fox tracks, and some moose prints and scat near the bottom of Zealand Notch by the Whitewall ledges. I also attempted a ski-descent from Zeacliff down the western side of the U-shaped valley that forms Zealand Notch. Unfortunately, the spruce and fir understory of the birch forest was thick enough that it was nearly impossible to link turns, and I mostly side-stepped and side-hilled my way down.

Today I'm in the valley (hence this post) for a meeting with the other caretakers and our supervisors. This is more of a social event than anything, since a chance to talk with other people our own age rarely presents itself at the hut. I'll return to Zealand on Monday afternoon, which is when a major snowstorm may also arrive in the neighborhood. Let's hope so.

Zealand Valley: New Hampshire's largest ski area!

Last week's stint at Zealand Hut was the most fun yet. I skied in on freshly-laid tracks through one to three feet of fresh snow from Thursday's storm. Matt and some guests had broken trail for me: Matt told me that it had taken him two hours just to get from the hut to the Hale Brook Trailhead, a little more than halfway down (typically, it takes us a little over one hour to ski all the way out to Route 302). I got in late that night, just after 5 PM radio call, but because of the extraordinary conditions, I arrived at the hut at the same time as, or before, most of my guests.

It was a busy weekend, both in terms of guest volumes (I had a full house Saturday night) and in terms of snow removal. But with over 40 inches of snow on the ground, I was in a splendid mood. Three guys from New York City came up for Sunday night and we spent the afternoon doing sick hucks off of local waterfalls, then we enjoyed dinner together over a couple of games of euchre. While we were skiing, one of them took this photo, on a descent I call "Employee Bonus" (so named because I've decided to keep its location a secret).

The author, fully committed on "Employee Bonus"

This week also saw the first ski descents of the season on the caretaker glades, Zealand Falls, the Sugarloaf trail, the birch glades on the east side of Zeacliff, and (one of my favorites) Thoreau Falls. Bretton Woods ski resort, which lies just over the minor ridge at the northern end of the valley, claims to be New Hampshire's largest ski area, but the Zealand Valley could swallow six or seven Bretton Woodses whole. We also get more snow, steeper terrain, no crowds, freshies that last a week or more, and you'll save $52 or $59 by skiing here weekdays or weekends, respectively. As for lifts, I've got a pair of high-speed quads that will take me anywhere I want to go.

What I'm reading now:

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord. Some French socialist philosophy to revolutionize labor-capital relationships in the Zealand Notch. Debord writes about "the spectacle": the superficial trappings of contemporary capitalism (the spectacle includes mass media, consumer goods, celebrity cults, etc., etc.) as the means and ends of an emasculated consumer society: "it [the spectacle] is the sun that never sets on the empire of modern passivity." It's a kick-ass book to read when you're living the lifestyle of a nineteenth-century housewife six miles from the nearest highway.

This is what you're missing, as you sit there on the internet.

Zealand Falls, before the storm (left) and after (right). Note my ski tracks on the left edge of the snowy photo. The falls make a nice descent that starts right from the Zealand front porch.

Winter, fashionably late

At last, the season's first major winter storm has dumped a respectable cloak of snow over the north country. Mount Washington observatory received nearly a foot, and the mountain valleys and notches seem to have received even more. I skiied yesterday afternoon at Wildcat- had the stomach for only three runs in the blizzard conditions, but they were lovely, with knee-deep powder on every trail. Though we'd only stayed for a little more than an hour, we returned to the car to find it buried in about two inches of new snow.

Skiing in to Zealand in so much good stuff will be tiring, but Matt will have broken the trail for me when he skis out this morning. This stint at Zealand could offer the first downhill backcountry skiing of the season... stay tuned.

Mansicle Hunt

This past weekend, instead of the usual hutchecking tour, I found myself skiing the longer-than-usual Gale River Trail towards South Twin Mountain with huts manager Mike.

A fellow's car had been parked at the Gale River road junction with US 3 for nearly three weeks, and he was presumed lost in the woods. He had set out in late January, during the cold snap that brought lows down into the negative twenties. Unfortunately, he had few people at home who noticed that he was missing- Fish and Game only began to act in mid-February, going solely on the note he'd left on his car.

Last weekend, a number of groups traced his assumed route from Route 3, up Galehead, over the Twinway toward Zealand. Helicopters also flew over the route and canine teams searched near the logging roads in the Gale River Road area. Mike and I skiied from the Beaver Brook parking lot to the closed Gale River Road, then kept on skiing on thin snow until we reached the footbridge. From there we hiked (there was so little snow that I only wore sneakers) to Galehead Hut, where we scouted around for signs of old tracks, then onward to meet Matt (the other Zealand caretaker) on S. Twin.

It was uneventful, but the nature of the trip was still somewhat macabre. The running joke was that we were probably looking for a frozen "mansicle", although the weather that day was beautiful: sunny and mild, as it had been for most of the previous week The guy for whom we were searching allegedly had a penchant for bushwhacking, and though we were looking for off-trail tracks, it was unlikely we would see any three weeks later. After the intense involvement of so many people last weekend, Fish and Game has decided to call off the search.

During my stint next week, I'll probably creep myself out a few times as I imagine a frozen body somewhere in the vicinity of the hut (which was, according to his note, one of his destinations). But after the fruitless search, I prefer to think of a diffent scenario. After all, if someone wanted intentionally to disappear without a trace, this guy found a pretty good way to do it: park your car at the edge of a wilderness, leave an ambiguous note, and leave with nothing but what you've got on your back. He could be frozen. But it's not impossible that he could be lying on a beach in the Virgin Islands, a completely new man. Time will tell.

Stumpy the fox

Ever since the cold snap of three weeks ago, the Zealand Valley has hosted a second permanent resident to keep the caretakers' company: Stumpy, the three-legged red fox (vulpes fulva).

In the past couple of summers, Stumpy has denned in the vicinity of Mizpah Springs Hut, where the hut crew identified and named him. Foxes typically stay within a two-mile radius of their dens, but they will often wander further away, particularly in the winter. (so says the Peterson Mammals field guide). Stumpy's sojurn from Mizpah to Zealand, across Crawford Notch and Route 302, was approximately 8 miles.

Stumpy, like most foxes, is most active at night and early in the morning. Unlike most foxes, he is very accustomed to being around people- a characteristic that is not to his advantage. I suspect that some high school students we had at the hut last weekend might have been feeding him before I returned to the hut for the evening. Feeding wild animals is contrary to basic backcountry ethics for the good reason that it dulls the animal's necessary survival instincts. Besides that, it's a rather contrived way to "interact" with wild nature.

Nevertheless, I'm happy to have Stumpy around: I'd heard almost no mice around the hut this past week, and I suspect that our newly resident predator might deserve some thanks.

Stumpy's tracks, on the Zealand Trail. Note how the prints are grouped in triplets.

An able-bodied fox's tracks, for comparison. As a fox trots along, its hind feet generally land in the prints left behind by the front feet, so that it leaves behind a fairly straight row of evenly-spaced tracks. Cats, wild and otherwise, leave prints like this as well.

What I'm reading now:
The Interrupted Forest: A History of Maine's Wildlands by Neil Rolde
Maine's northern forest is the largest uninhabited woodland in the lower 48 states, a remarkably expansive blank spot on the map full of rivers, lakes, mountains, and wildlife. It is also a privately-owned wildland, one that provides the raw materials for Maine's vital forest products industry. In the past ten years, forestry regulations, globalization, and increasing pressure for second-home development have combined to threaten the viability of the forestry industry, and with it, the de facto conservation of the northern forest.

Rolde presents the recent political and economic issues in the context of a very broad geologic and anthropologic history. The context may be too broad, as a narrative thread is sometimes hard to piece out from the scattershot of facts presented. But Rolde is also a former state legislator, and his presentation of recent history at least is certainly worth reading.