Into Fall

Hard to believe it but winter is just around the corner!

We spent an afternoon installing the new sign for the Rochester Gap Trail.  It's a great short 0.3 mile hike/bike up to a viewpoint overlooking the gap.

Galen and mom did a little trailwork as well.

I've been slowly working on the toddler tow extension.  Added 3 new towers to double the length (now 325' long).

Jay fabricated two more return wheels for the big tow so I was able to get those up on the new tower brackets that I installed last spring.

Fall is also a great time to ride bikes.. into leaf piles!

Who said you need snow to go sledding?

I also started building a drop jump.  The idea is to create a manmade cliff feature.  At first the board was waaay too high.

I brought it down a bit so that the ramp only slopes up a little bit.

It's a pretty solid 10' drop but with 2-3' of powder the landing should be fun.

We also got the rope up on the big tow.  It went smoothly except for the fact that we had to jump back and forth between two come alongs to get the rope stretched onto the tires.  We're thinking a battery powered winch might make it a lot easier next time.

With the first snowfall it made it feel like it was time to rally to get the toddler tow upgrades done.

We bought 1200' of 5/8" twisted poly-dac rope for $430 (including shipping).  Only needed 650' (they come in 600' or 1200' ft rolls) so a friend of ours who also wants to build a small ski hill for their kids in moretown is going to buy the extra 550' ft from us.

I stopped by Middle Mtn to see if Casey had any old extra riding mower wheels hanging around.  Sure enough he had several in the junk pile out back.  The extra third rim was used to lock the none drive wheel.  Jay welded a bolt pattern so that the other two wheels could be bolted together.  The duel wheel setup is the way to go.  I flipped one wheel on backwards so that both tires could be inflated without having tonremove the wheels. The rope sits in the groove in between the two tires.

The day after we hung up the rope our neighbor showed up..  ready to ski?

Bill (the master splicer) offered to splice the toddler tow rope so he came up and spliced the ends together.  Later that day I fired up the mower and the new drive wheel (along with the new rope) seems to be working really well.  Looking forward to testing it out once the snow returns!

Summer projects

Well I definitely dropped off the radar there..  It has been a busy summer but I'll try to recap the summer as best as I can and make more of an effort to keep this blog updated.

Once the snow melted it was time to wrap it up.  What a great winter it was!  The snow never really melted all winter as it stayed cold and powdery for so many weeks...

Here is Jay, Ted and Josh spooling the rope up at the bottom of the big tow.

It was a little sketchy driving the tractor and mini-trailer at the bottom of the tow given how tight the space was and the uneven ground.  At some point I should grade it out a bit.  Other than that we were able to get the rope down with ease.

Spring always brings excitement towards biking and new trails.  Galen got his first strider bike and I think it's safe to say he was hooked.

We spent a lot of evenings after work benching in a new short single track trail loop right behind the house.  We would bench anywhere from 5' to 15' of tread a night.  Galen was really into the digging too.

Galen and his friend Alice checking out the new trail that they named after our dog - "Tappy Trail"

I brought a load of lumber, PT base plates and cinder blocks with the intention that we would build Roxy a shelter over the course of the summer.  Well... everything still looks the same at this point.  We'll get there... next year perhaps.

We took advantage of late spring warm weather to wax up the skis for storage.

One morning I caught Galen sneaking out on his own for a ride.  He figured out how to put his red boots on by himself.  In case you're wondering his favorite color is red.

We also made a lot of headway on a short new singletrack trail called Rochester Gap Trail.  The trail is being built by RASTA members and a summer Intern.  It's only 0.3 miles long but it slowly climbs up to a pretty incredible 180 degree view overlooking the gap.  The trailhead is open for public use and is located across the road from the start of Hooper Hollow Rd.  RASTA hopes this will be the beginning of many more miles of single track trails in the area.

Here is Josh and our summer intern at the viewpoint.  Graham spent most of his summer working on the trail and did a great job!

We also built a pump track in the front yard.  We had extra dirt to work with as we finally got our lower field stumped.  We put a lot of hours on the tractor all summer.  The box scraper came in handy as we graded the field.  There were a lot of rocks too so time was spent picking rocks out of the field.

Here is the pump track during its beginings

Over the course of the summer we kept modifyingbit and adding inner loop options.

Final thaw

 Larry and I took advantage of what was the last snow accumulation of the year by getting out on the rope tow for a few runs early in the morning before it got heavy.  We took 7 runs and I made it to work by 9am!

Good ole Roxy started right up.  The rope was a little frozen in on the returns wheels (as I had to put in 1st gear for a bit to get it spinning before changing it back to reverse).  Note to self - grease the wheels this summer..

Here is a link to a quick video of Larry skiing that morning.

https://instagram.com/p/1Ruq8WMkTL/

The longer spring days make for nice sunset walks.

Galen I have been skiing just about every Friday at either Sugarbush or Killington on their free carpets.  For some reason Sugarbush moved the terrain park to the bunny hill.  I was a bit bummed about this at first (as it sort of got in the way) but Galen asked to hit a jump after seeing a snowboarder go by.  We then proceeded to ski over (without really getting air) every jump we could find.

The snow is slowly melting in the front yard..

Almost gone...  :(

With ski season in the rear view mirror it was time to introduce Galen to bikes!  We went down to Green Mtn Bikes and Doon hooked Galen up with a sweet red strider bike.  He was a little unsure at first..

Once he gave it a spin I think it was safe to say that he was hooked!

Groomer Ride

Galen and I met up with Ethan at Pico for a few runs before he had to work.  Here is Galen and I cruisin along.

After skiing we followed Ethan to his office..

The plan...

I think was more excited than Galen?

Riding the Groomah!

At the top!

Looking towards Rochester Gap.

Thanks Ethan!