We are planning on having a snow party next weekend  – 15 Feb – to include sledding, XC, and snowshoeing with in-door games after a pot luck dinner.  We have snow shoed three separate routes through the woods across the road:

• A short 30 minute loop through our woods  starting at the gate, across Ridge Trail to the apple trees, over to the spring and up to North trail exiting into the meadow to return home
• The lollipop loop, a 60-90 minute trip through our meadows, up Kirkland’s hill, looping through the woods and returning back down Kirkland’s hill and our meadows.
• A 2.5- 3 hour trip which encompasses the Lollipop Loop, but adds a ski through past appliance alley through the woods to stream side trail, up through the woods to the old foundations, across the logging road and back to the Lollipop Loop.

We have snowshoed over these trail several times and done basic trail maintenance to remove down limbs and trees.

This afternoon we did an exploratory shoveling the snow off our pond to check on the ice and continued shoveling for about 90 minutes.  We cleared a 15 x 30 rink and a short loop.  The pond ice had a lot of water on it and we are hopeful it will all freeze smooth tonight. Maybe we can add ice skating to our snow party activities.