Acadia!

ACADIA PHOTOS

Snowman and I have been talking for 11 years (yikes!) about going back to Acadia in the winter...

The reason is this: When we were seniors in collge, we took a trip up to Bar Harbor over spring break. How we decided upon Acadia we cannot remember. Why we decided it would be a good idea when neither of us really had any true winter hiking/snowshoeing/etc experience is beyond us too. But needless to say, we rented snowshoes from the outing club, brought our xc skis, drove up without making a reservation at one of the half dozen hotels open in Bar Harbor in the middle of winter, and proceeded to ski on the carriage roads and snowshoe up Cadillac. On said snowshoe, we were woefully underdressed and unprepared for the open expanse of the summit cone, where it is almost always windy, and where it was pretty darn cold! Silly novice hikers... Anyway, to make a long story short, we've been wanting to go back to experience the park in winter ever since.

And with all this glorious early season snowcover this year, how could we miss the chance to go on our days off?! So off we went! After a stop at Dunkin Donuts, we hit the highway to make the three hour drive up to Bar Harbor. We checked into the Aurora Inn, one of the few places open in winter, ate our PB&J sandwiches, changed, and headed to the visitor center to start our ski. Ours was one of the few cars there without some sort of snowmobile rig attached, as this was a weekend day and the park road is a virtual snowmobile highway in the winter (at least when there's snow). The connector trail from the visitor center to the carriage roads was untracked and marred by lots of footprints, but once we hit the carriage roads, the wide trails were double-tracked. Hurray! And it was great skiing. The snow was a bit soft and slow, but the trees were snowcovered and there was great afternoon light. Wonderful! And with the carriage roads, although there were climbs, they were fair and led us past wonderful ponds and up to some great vistas of Eagle Lake and the mountains. We had a great 2.5 hour ski, and were pleasantly surprised to see about 3 dozen people out touring along the trails on their skis. It's always great to see other people out enjoying time on their skis! By the end of the ski, I was pretty tired and we were both hungry, so we quickly showered and headed downtown. Walking the streets of Bar Harbor in winter was a bit otherwordly... in comparison to the streets in summer, filled with people, eating ice cream, buying kitsch and bad t-shirts, at this time of year most of the inns, restaurants and shops are boarded up and closed. We've never seen the streets so empty. But we had a great early dinner of nachos (in a hubcap no less!), pizza and beer at Geddy's, and then slowly walked back to the motel, our stomachs way too full of food to feel good!



Our nice server at Geddy's had suggested breakfast at Tapley's, an early morning eatery in the gas station at the edge of town, so despite feeling like we should not eat again after our huge dinner last night, we fueled up with eggs, homefries and toast before our skin up/ski down Cadillac Mountain on Monday morning. It was already 40 degrees at 9:30 am! It's the January thaw, I guess... The road, which is 3.5 miles, winds its way up along the flanks of Cadillac at a pretty mellow grade. So, for those of you who don't know what skinning is, basically we were suited up in our telemark gear, and the skins attach to the bottom of the skis, allowing you enough traction to slide up the mountain. Then when you reach the top, you take off the skins and ski down. Easy, right? Well, it's a slow mode of transportation, and the skis and tele boots are heavy, and as we made our way to the top, I got tired, my feet hurt, my ankles and heels were rubbing inside my boots, it had gotten really windy and I was fighting to move forward. UGH! But finally, we made our way to the summit and stopped for a lunch break at the summit gift building. After some food and a change of socks, I felt better. We stripped the skins off our skis and got ready for a ski down. Cool!




However, the warm temps and soupy skis, along with the mellow grade of the road, made for some really slow skiing. In fact, a lot of the way down involved much double-poling and griping on Snowman's part. Still we can't complain too much, as we did manage a few turns. We'll chalk it up as an adventure, and part of a great weekend!