Braintree Mtn Forest

Before a late afternoon doctor's apointment in Randolph I got out of work early to go check out the new Braintree Forest glade we cut with RASTA last fall.  The glade is off of Skidoo Mtn which is the 5th mtn to the north of us on Braintree Range.  I parked at the intersection of Riford Brook and Morse.

There were a few tracks headed up the trail which was cool to see as that means others are getting out earning their turns. I knew there would still be plenty of fresh powder to be had.

Here is the New England Forestry Foundation (NEFF) Map at the trailhead.  The glades are not on the map yet as the we're trying to slowly introduce the glades to public.  RASTA plans to create 2 more glades in the next 2 years.

Here is a screenshot of the E911 map on my phone showing where the glades are located.

I pretty much went straight up the trail to the base of the glades.  On my way up I bumped into Chris who was checking out the area.  He was backtracking down a side trail so I think he was glad that I was happy to show him around.  We skied up the skin track on the side of the glade.

The skiing was nice and soft with days old powdery snow.

Tappy had a blast.

We did two laps and I'm already looking forward to future RASTA glades in the next couple years!

Tower Brackets

The big tow has been running well so far with the new drive wheel setup (knock on wood).  Having the truck up at the top is definitely the way to go as we don't have to worry about the extra slack causing the rope to slip on the drive wheel anymore.  The extra slack also seems to make it so the the rope doesn't drag down into the ground as much.  The only downside is that we now have sags in between some of the further spaced return towers.  We'll slowly add a couple extra towers to keep the return rope out of the way.

The top needs a tower the most as the tow got extended a bit longer when we moved the truck.  Building the brackets for these extra return towers was pretty straightforward.

Since we now have a wide trail up to the top of the tow from our house I was able to use the snowmachine to haul the brackets up.

Getting the tower up in the tree (by myself) was a bit tricky but with careful planning it wasn't too bad.  Having snow to prop the ladder up made it easier.

Once I got the first lag screw in I wasn't  sweating up on the ladder.

Since I had the pole saw up on the hill (to shave the bark of the tree before fastening the tower bracket) I took some time to clean up Jay Way.  The heavy 2' snow storm we had eariler caused a lot of pin cherries and stripe maple trees to sag and break.

On a day after work with a little daylight left we went for a family ski.  Galen got to hitch a ride with me.

Elet hitched a ride with mom.  Here they are skiing down upper 101 before catching Jay Way to the bottom.

At the bottom we took a little break while I got our skins back on.

It was a quick ski back but everyone had fun (Elet slept the whole time).