12-17-11 Mount Elmore

Mt. Elmore is a new hike for me.  This is at the north end of the Worcester Range in Vermont.  I have climbed all the other peaks in the range and this one was the last to cross off my list.
It was 22 degrees outside.and a tad windy.  It was cold enough that my camera couldn't handle it.  This was the only picture it took before it died.
There was mixed clouds, the view was rather limited but I have a feeling with clear skies this would be amazing.

Almost a clear shot.  At least my phone managed to capture these.  It was damn icy at the top and I took my time.  And half way down I realized my keys (specifically just my house keys) had fallen down a hole in my pockets.  I hiked half way back up before just turning around.  Luckily it had fallen inside the liner so the keys were not lost.

Explosive New Cider

I made a new cider this month with unpasteurized local cider, honey, brown sugar and molasses. It hovers around 9% alcohol and tastes pretty good, much better than the first one I made. I think it will age well in the bottle.

However when it came to bottling I put in the normal amount of corn sugar I was suppose to and it seems to have produced volcanic results. the instant you open it it flows out of the bottle all over wherever you are standing (preferably a sink). So I made this label:

New (used) Car!

Due to the unfortunate failure of my 1983 Mercedes Benz 300SD Turbo I had to get a more reliable car. After two weeks of riding my motorcycle into December I finally found this

This is a 2000 Honda CRV. It is in really good shape and I am grateful, the person who sold it to was the original owner and cared for in a way most people never would and now it means I can go back to the mountains on the weekend.

Home Brewing Website and recent Brews

I finally got around to making a website for all the home brewing I have been doing. Please take a look, it is well worth your time... https://sites.google.com/site/greenmountainboysbrewery/home/brews

The most recent brews I have done would be the hard cider I made with local unpasteurized cider. It was tasty but not anything like Woodchuck or most hard ciders you are used to. The Champagne yeast made it more like wine than beer.

Here is the label. The name is an old joke from an underground paper my father and uncle did back when they were in college, sometime in the Bronze Age. This seemed a fitting honor.

I also made a bitter-ish brew that I called Wanker. It has only gotten better in the bottle and I look forward to drinking this for a while to come.

I have an imperial porter and another hard cider made with honey and molasses fermenting quietly in the corner.

11-12-11 Hurricane Mountain

I may have been to Hurricane Mountain more than once. Actually more times than I can count. Originally I was thinking of trying for Giant Mountain but the unfamiliar nature of the hike and the time required combined with a late start made me switch destinations. There was snow at the top. I had put on my trail running shoes, which were not enough for this. The mud was crazy too so wet shoes plus snow not ideal. Still it was nice to see snow.At the top the winds were in the 20-40 mph range, I was bundled up but I didn't dare spend too much time taking pictures because I didn't want Sal to get to cold. It was ana amazing view though.
The mountain in the distance is Whiteface, one of the few that have a ski resort on it. There were a lot of these, tons of swamp and bog. A new beaver dam flooded part of the trail and had to figure my way around to find the trail again.
Ready to rock and roll. This is my usual winter set up and as always worked really well. Even though it was in the low 40's most of the hike I didn't have the orange windbreaker on.
A parting shot. What an amazing view.

Chapter 2 new endings and old beginnings

I found a draft that I had forgot about:

A busy couple of days have left me puzzled. Some things I saw coming, some I did not. And again probabilities start collapsing like tunnels caving in on an unstable mine. Things are starting to resolve themselves again and I start being presented with life-altering choices. It is the time of the great deciders.


So how do I revisit the past to strengthen my future? What is the worst that could come of this? The question was never if she would change

Over the last couple of months a great deal has changed in my life.  I figure most of those who read this are friends and family so you probably know this all but still... this public spot is still sometime a good time to share what I am sure all of us have gone through.

If you have looked through more than one of these post there was the occasional appearance of Heather, my compatriot and girlfriend for the last couple of years.  Our paths have diverged so now this journey is with just Sal, my furry friend.  Since the woods were where we spent much of our time it took me a couple of months to get back to documenting this, and equally as long to not feel at a loss when under the trees without her behind me on the trail.

When I first started this blog it was a dare to Charlotte (http://mercuryinmotion.blogspot.com/) who had trepidation about starting one herself.  It has grown to document much of the last few years of my experiences, a reminder to myself of the things I have done and what I am capable of in those times when I feel like I have neither.

So I stand at another chapter in my life, terrified by all the changes that I have faced and the hard winter coming.  Unlike the generations before me my successes and failures are documented here, set in a digital stone so when I have lost my direction and can look through this again and remember where I have been.  And then the rest I leave to the whim of the Great Magnet to point me to where I need to go.

11-5-11 Snake Mountain

Snake Mountain was not a hike I had heard of but the route to the Adirondaks took me past it all the time.  Original plans of heading to Mount Washington were scrapped so this was a close and new place to go.  I had run into it in a random blog that I don't even remember how I stumbled across it that gave me the need to climb there (http://sobvt.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/snake-mountain/).  While the parking lot was obvious when driving down Mountain Road the trail head was hidden to the side of this building.

This is around a 4 mile round trip and some elevation gain.  The trail was very muddy but people has created secondary trails.  Apparently this is a very popular spot, the lot was completely full.

We managed to find a secondary trail which led us to this incredible rock ledge overlooking New York.  Sal was more intrigued by the pond to the right.

 The view was breathtaking.  You are standing on a cliff overlooking the very flat Champlain Flood Plane and the Adirondacks looming in the distance.  And such a clear day.  This is looking north west.

And directly west.

 There used to be a hotel up here and the concrete foundation is still there.  There were two people with a tripod taking photos.

 The Hotel was literally perched on the edge of a cliff, straight down for at least a hundred feet.

 Another foundation in the woods.  I continued onto what were V.A.S.T. trails (Snowmobile trails) for a while but finally turned around when it started going down sharply.  I don;t think anyonw had been where I was for a while, the leaves were undisturbed.

 I returned via the secondary trail and spotted a small trail going off by that cliff overlook.  It is a Peregrine Falcon nesting area. It restricted use by climbers for certain periods.

 This it the pond that interested Sal.  There were these little pockets of water at the very top of this ridge.

This a really nice excursion, the views, given the hike, had some of the best bang for the bucks on this side of Lake Champlain.  And the side trails that got me out of the traffic of all the visitors helped.  If you go, remember this is a wildlife management area, that means hunting is allowed.  Dress and control your dogs appropriately.

10-29-11 Camel's Hump Summit

This is a hike that I haven't done for a long time.  In fact the last time was when Chance was alive and by the end I had almost crippled my right knee.  That seems like a lifetime ago, perhaps that is because it was at this point.  And yes, there was snow on the ground.

 Sal seem glad to see it again, and to be honest I was too.  It was the ice stream that went down the trail I was less excited about.  Managed to only slip a couple of times and caught myself each time.

The summit was... remarkable.  I had started the hike at 8AM so when I got to the top in a surprising fast hour and fifteen minutes (2.1 miles and 2,600 foot gain one way) there was still fog in the valley.  The drive there I saw an incredible sunrise and the peak rivaled that easily.  Below is Lake Champlain and New York.  I saw mountains I have never seen before.

 This is looking north towards Mount Mansfield.  What a crazy range of mountains.

 This is looking towards New Hampshire.  I am sure Mount Washington is the one in the background.

 The fog turned all of the peaks into islands.

 Honestly just wow.

 Sal concurred.

 On the decent I passed huge hoard heading towards the top, I had left early enough that there were only three cars when I arrived.  When I left there were more like 30.  And the crowds going up were dressed for shopping not for climbing a mountain.  Perhaps I am getting snobbish about it because obviously they climbed it and no one died.  Here is the shadow of the beast.

10-16-11 CAT Camels Hump

Sal desperately needed to run so I took him up to the Catamount trail at the base of Camel's Hump.  I have been up this trail a lot and know it well so I decided to go off trail for a bit.  I found this stunning waterfall that had eroded the rock.

 Sal had to inspect it of course.

 From all angles.

 There were numerous paths from what I am guessing was logging roads now overgrown.  There were obvious camping spots so someone knows this area as well.  I will need to come back and camp there at some point.

10-9-11 Magic Hat and Gliders

In the course of the weekend we went to Magic Hat.  The brewery is located just down the road from where I live.  It is cool to go and taste what is being made and fill a growler.  There is a huge metal tower there as well, perhaps an old holding vat?  This is looking down inside.

 There was a stunning sunset, this is taken from Perkins Pier.

 In the parking lot was this.  It took me a second to realize what it is.  That is right, a glider trailer.  The mountains around here must make great gliding.

 Then dinner at American Flatbread with their wood fired ovens.  Really tasty Pizza.

10-8-11 Stowe Pinnacle

An old highschool friend named Greg came up to visit me for the weekend and I planned a small hike up the Stowe Pinnacle.  It is an outcropping on the Worcester Range and a steep hike at that.  Spread throughout the hike were cairns, this one was at least 6 feet long.

This was also in the middle of the woods, I could stand inside of it, it was huge.  No clue why, but I don't see why not so I guess it makes sense.

 It was a very busy hike, lots of people on the trail.  The trailhead is very close to Stowe town center.

 The view from the top was stunning.  There was barely room to stand let alone sit.

 For such a short but intense hike it was an amazing view.

This is Greg enjoying the sweet sweet victory.

9-29-11 Little River

From a motorcycle ride to Little River State Park.

Home Brewing Beers

I have recently taken to homebrewing my own beer.  It is something one of my friends does and it intrigued me, plus the access to a local homebrewing store made it much easier to start.  The top container hold the beer which has been fermenting for about two weeks, in this case I am transferring it to another container to bottle.

This is my first beer, it looks much darker in the container that it was given it was a weizen (a wheat beer)

 These are the bottles, cleaned, label free and sterilized for bottling.  Unlike most beer manufacturers my beer has sugar added just before bottling to reactivate the yeast in order to carbonate it.

 Once the beer is pour carefully into the bottles it is capped with this thing.  Once sealed it will sit for a week or two to carbonated and the flavors to condition.

 Bottles now capped, waiting for labels.

 The first beer I made was a weizen, or a wheat beer.  There were some problems with the temperature in cooling the beer before adding the yeast which gave it some strange notes, but still palatable.  This was the label I made.

The second beer was a porter and it turned out much better, silky chocolate maltiness and smokey undertones.  The Green Mountain Boys Brewery refer to my home town of Bennington, VT and the militia from the Revolutionary War who got drunk at a tavern and then invaded Fort Ticonderoga with little planning an whole lot of luck.