Stanley Snow Day

Stuck as we were in Alexandria, we didn't get to visit Hawksbill Cabin over the weekend.  We asked neighbor Dan if he could take a look at the place to make sure everything was okay - and asked him to feed Momcat.

Dan and Sally were out on their cross country skis, and made their way over pretty easily.  I'm jealous of that - Mary and I have snowshoes but not skis.  Maybe we'll break down and get some.



I was worried that in our little hollow, which is just on the start of the upslope to the Blue Ridge, we'd get a huge dumping of snow.  But the pictures Dan and Sally sent back don't look so bad - maybe two feet up on the roof there.  In 2010, Snowmaggedon (click on the label for more info about that one) we had quite a bit more snow up on the roof, and hired the roofer to come over and shovel for us.

It's really quite a pretty setting.  Hopefully there'll be some snow left next time I get out, I'd like to go sledding in the front yard!

Alexandria Snow Day

It's hardly news anymore, but we had quite a big snowstorm last weekend.  Today I'll post a few highlights from the dig out in Alexandria, following up on yesterday's post about Luray.

I'll finish up the series with a couple of shots of Hawksbill Cabin, taken by neighbor Dan, tomorrow.  I've tagged this post with Snowmaggedon, as well - that was what we called the 2010 storm, and the label will take you to my posts on that one.

This time, the snow began on Friday evening and continued until very early Sunday morning.  True to form, Sunday was a beautiful sunny day - perfect for all of us to start digging out!






I powered through our stairs and got much of the walks done, and then Mary came out to help.  She found the Equinox, buried over there under a huge drift, and got it most of the way freed.

We learned our lesson from past storms, though, and didn't clear the driveway out to the street - we decided to wait for a plow so we wouldn't have to clear the space twice.

This plan worked fine, except by Monday night the plow still hadn't come.  So we dug out anyway.




We also went around back to dig out.  This was a major storm, around 20 inches of snow with deep drifts.  So I decided to make sure that we could get out the basement door and the sliding glass door in the back of the house.

I also shoveled a path part of the way into the yard so Tessie could get out there (she prefers to go in the street though, I think because she sinks in in the yard).

As a final touch, I cleared the space around the generator - just in case we need to go on generator power.  We're all set!

Luray Snow Day

There was no shortage of coverage of the east coast's 2016 blizzard last weekend.  Mary and I stayed in and watched it from the windows in Alexandria - or virtually on Facebook.

Meanwhile, my friend David was industrious and rigged up his tractor with a plow blade and went to work clearing some of the roads out there.

One of the photos he sent of his progress was this one of the tractor parked in front of the building where we plan to ope Hawksbill Brewing next fall.  I guess he cleared the parking lot there - although that might have been taken care of by the Luray Fire Department, so he was just parked.

He also took a photo of Hawksbill Hop Yards all covered with snow.  The plants are all snuggled in, dormant for the winter.

As I posted last week, that won't be for long - we've already started working on plans for the growing season, which will begin in April!

Not Exactly the Snowpocalypse

We've had another March snowstorm in these parts - I just barely made it out of the Hawksbill Cabin driveway when flurries appeared this weekend.  I outran the storm on my drive, but it caught me when I got back to Alexandria.

We ended up with between six and eight inches of snow overnight.  It's very pretty, as a late season snowfall can be.

Thankfully, it will be gone soon, too.  Then we can turn our thoughts to the warmer times ahead!

Danger to Personnel (A Mini-bobs Tale)

So, I've mentioned the mini-bobs earlier this week - I thought I might revisit them and tell a little tale of my first discovery of them.

During my time in Berlin, my Air Force friends and I would make an annual trip out to the Harz Mountains.  We'd either stay in the Torfhaus, a small alpine resort in the Harz, or in a town down below called Altenau.  There is a reference to the Torfhaus in a post here:
http://hawksbillcabin.blogspot.com/2011/09/brocken-stasi-site-in-harz.html

The first time I joined one of these trips, it was late in the season and the snow was melting off of the little ski slopes up there.  The resort operators turned to icy hill over to kids - and to the 40 or so of us - to sled on, using these rental mini-bobs (they cost about $1 for rental, and in later years, we'd keep them for three days so we could sled at will).

That's where the story begins, on a trip in 1984, when we first stayed down in Altenau.  Before I get to that, let me share the following instructional video about mini-bobs:



After a day of cross country skiing, and visiting the little pubs that dotted the slopes and the town of Altenau, we retired to our rooms at the little Gasthaus.  We'd ordered up a couple cases of the local Altenauer pils, and the proprieter's forethought was to put us in the basement rooms, so our parties would not wake other guests, who were on the top floor.  After a little while, someone had the great idea to break out the mini-bobs for a midnight run - I think it was Guey, Manky, and Gappy, whose actual nicknames are used in this story, since the statute of limitations has long expired.

Off they went, finding an acceptable launch point not too far away, as the story goes.  And the fact that there was a ledge down there, 20 feet or so downhill, which they'd seen in daylight, didn't trouble them at all.  Neither did the stonewalled creek at the foot of the little 60-foot hill - come to think of it, it was very similar to my front yard at Hawksbill Cabin.

So the story goes that Guey went first, yelping as he hit that ledged and launched.  He landed on down below, and they could hear him slide on down the hill out of sight.  Then the sound of another launch, some ice crunching, and silence - followed after a second or two by the plaintive cry of "help!"

This is why, at the end of many sled runs, I will also cry "help" at the finish, in honor of Guey's mishap.  He'd sledded off of the stone wall and down into the creek bed.  After slipping along the ice, at last he broke through, and was partially submerged in the shallow, but cold, creek at the bottom of the hill. This didn't stop hit partners in crime, as they all made a pass or two down the hill, before the Apfelkorn wore off.

Afterwards, they made their way back to the gasthaus, where the party had continued in my room.  When they arrived, they announced their accomplishment, followed by the exclamation "pig pile!" - whereupon they jumped on me, sitting on my little bunk there.  They were covered in snow, and of course, at least one of them was soaked with freezing cold water.

We had a good time, and I took the fun in stride.  However, the next morning after we checked out, we found that there was some damage to the little bed from having the four of us piled up on it.  I'd arranged this trip, and went to the innkeeper to let him know about the little problem - this wasn't the first time we'd had an accident there, and it wouldn't be the last.

I settled up with him for about 200 marks - less than $100, which he said would be the cost of the repair and replacement of the mattress.  We split that between the four of us, a small cost for a great memory.

And that's why, at the end of most mini-bob runs, I will yell "help" at the bottom of the hill.

Mini-bobs, Revisited

So we got these mini-bobs a few years back, when just by chance I saw them for sale at an outdoors store in Clarendon.  Now, I'm sure that the clerks thought, "What the hell is this big dude going to do with those mini-bobs - they're for the kids around here!" And sure enough, they do have some nice sledding hills over there in Arlington.

But what I had in mind was to use them to sled down the front yard at Hawksbill Cabin.  We've had enough snow to use them at least once a winter - but the winter wonderland that greeted us this trip provided the best conditions yet for using them - as seen in the videos.



It took a little bit of work to build the sled run - I mentioned how the snow was frozen and crusty on top, so you'd break through.  That was happening with the little mini-bobs too, and it would bring you to a sudden dead stop after a few lurching attempts to get started.  No fun, in other words.

Eventually, I trudged down the hill in as straight a path as I could make, using small foot steps, and then back up in the track.  After Mary and I both made a pass on this route, we had the makings for a good track.  We sledded a good ten times each the first day, when the video of Mary and Tessie was taken.  Overnight, the cold temperatures set us up for a great second day of sledding, and that is when the video of me was taken.



There is a story that goes with the mini-bobs.  Frequent readers may recall that I discovered these toys when my Air Force buddies and I would go to the Harz Mountains in Germany for winter ski trips, taking a break from all the winter recreation that we had available in Berlin - mainly Guinness curls at the Irish Harp.

I think I will revisit the story of those Harz trips in a post tomorrow.

The Snowshoes

A while back, Chris, Tom, and I took a weekend trip out to Dolly Sods Wilderness in West Virginia for a hike - there's a label for Dolly Sods on the blog, if you'd like to check that trip and hike out.  Later that year, Tom and his wife went back out for a visit during the snow, and they took a walk around the ski resort there using some snowshoes.

That seemed like a good idea to me, and after the Snowpocalypse winter we had (also a label on the blog, if you'd like to check it out) I got Mary and myself a set.  This weekend was the first time we'd had enough snow to break them out, so we took them over to Hawksbill Park in Stanley for a wintry walk with Tessie.

We probably should have know from the difficulty Tess was having getting around in the snow that conditions weren't optimal - the freeze thaw cycle caused some bridging, where there is a hard crust on top and soft snow underneath.  So with each step, you'd crunch through the hard layer down to the soft below, sinking in about a foot, and the snowshoe would catch on the lip as you made your next step.  It made for an awkward and unnatural motion, so we only stuck it out for a quarter mile or so - a nice loop around the little scout cabin, although we had thought we might adventure out onto the half mile nature trail if things went well.

Meanwhile, Tessie was having a great time on the family outing.  I think she got the most out of the weekend, with all the fun she had being with us and romping and exploring everything.

We decided that better conditions will be after a fresh snow, when everything is still powdery and the shoes sink into a soft footprint.  We'll look forward to doing that during some future snow storm.

Mary went out for another short walk in her pair around Beaver Run and back in our wood lot on Monday.  She took the dog with her - Tessie enjoyed every minute of being outside with us this weekend!

Wintry Weekend 2014

We've had snow before, but it had been since 2010 that we had more than a foot on the ground at Hawksbill Cabin.  Our neighbors had warned us about it - even posting a photo of them cross country skiing around their yard.  We were looking forward to seeing everything covered in white, but waiting until Saturday morning to be sure we would drive and arrive in full daylight.

It was a beautiful sight, but the house was cold.  There are always these tradeoffs...we turned up the heat for the rest of the day on Saturday to get the mass of the house warmed.  Once that is done, it will hold heat pretty well (although there's a draft off of the picture windows.

I was looking forward to trying out some of the winter sports gear we've accumulated over the last few years, and I will post about those adventures in the next few days.

For her part, Tessie seemed to enjoy the change, even though the depth of the snow made things difficult for her.  She was a trooper, running around the backyard exploring.

When I took her out for a walk in the wood lot Sunday, I didn't expect that we'd get such a great view across the Jordan Hollow property from our back property line.  It was spectacular though, looking across over the little 10-acre field that borders us, now growing into a second growth forest, and then to the old inn, and off to the western foothills of the Blue Ridge.

You've got to find the balance in the end - we don't get weather quite this intensively every year, more like every 3 or 4 years - it's pretty, and it's fun to get out in...but truth be told, it's cold.  Spring is coming.

Sled Run

I’d heard about snow out in the valley last week, and sure enough, when I arrived at Hawksbill Cabin on Friday that’s what I found – a couple of inches of base with a crusty glaze from sleet and freezing rain over the top of it.  Add a little snow plow drift at the base of the driveway, and I couldn’t get up the hill in the dark.

In daylight the next day, Chris and I postponed our planned hike and decided to do some other adventures, starting with a sled run down the hill.  We used the minibogs, the little miniature toboggan sleds that I got at a store in Arlington a few years ago.  There’s a photo of them here, and an embedded video of me talking about how we used to sled on these in the Harz Mountains of Germany before taking a test run on one of them below.

Now, apparently, I have bored my readers with a similar video a couple of years back.  That doesn’t make our sled runs down the hill any less fun.  In fact, as a reward for reading through this post, here is a blur video that kind of celebrates the fun: