They say the darkest time of the night is just before dawn. The harshest part of winter is now upon us, the month of February. If there ever is a month of the year that is just nasty and terrible, it must be the month of February. This month is cold and wintry, following the previous two and half months of cold winter weather. It’s not fun.
February is the month when the cold breeze seems the coldest. It’s when the salt on the cars and the roads seems the harshest. It probably is not the harshest weather of the year, as already the days have gotten somewhat longer, and we are past the coldest days of the year, but it still seems like winter continues to have us in it’s fangs. Our heating bills will continue to be high.
February is going to be a tough month for all of us. Maybe Merle Haggard should have sung, If We Make It Through February. The only upside to this month is that once we make through February, it will be March which will eventually lead to a thawing out in April. The grass in April will be brown, and burn bans a-high, but then things will green up and the beauty of spring will return in May.
February is just a single month. It’s not the nicest month, but as all things come and go, it must come to a pass. Look at the upside — it’s the shortest month of the year! Maybe the Ground Hog this year, for the first time, will actually be right and say no to six more weeks of winter! Let’s make it through February and towards nicer weather in the spring.
The month of January is the coldest month of the year, if the thermometer is to be believed. It’s not the grayest or snowiest month of the year, or even the most harshest month of the year (a time reserved for February). While the days are slowly getting longer in January, the growth in daylight is small compared to months to come.
We will go out skiing and snowshoeing, spending time riding snowmobiles and enjoying nature’s gift of the snow. It won’t always be perfect weather, but like every season we must make the most of it. It’s winter, and it only lasts for about half of the year in New York State.
There will be days where we will go outside, and the mercury won’t even reach 0 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind is whipping down from the North. There will be days and weeks when the roads are covered with ice and snow. People will struggle to find parking spots in the city, as parking spots are replaced with ice covered patches and snow banks. Driving will only be nice this time of year, because the insides of cars will be toasty. It’s going to be very winter-like out there for the next month.
At the same time, there will be the much needed winter thaw. We might finally for a few days loose all of the snow, and it get up into the balmy 40 degrees range. Winter doesn’t always mean that it’s going to be supercold, and indeed, we must certainly will see a brief mud season during January for a couple of days when the sun makes us think of a false spring.
January is when we get over the Christmas Season high. The lights on the trees are taken off, the Christmas trees are dumped into the brush pile to be chipped sometime when spring comes in another five months. The colorful wrapping the presents have come in are now charred down to nothing but ash. New Years Eve celebrations are just a memory, as we wake up hung over on this first day of the year.
We will all promise ourselves to do better this year then last year. Whether or not we will live up to it in the new year, is a totally different thing. Maybe we will do good for this month of January, then fall down in subsequent months. Regardless, in many ways, January is a month of great hope that we can change and overcome our human fallacies. A benchmark, that is pretty meaningless, but one we must find ourselves embracing every year.
I was up in Addison, Vermont to watch the demolition of the Champlain Bridge and I figured while I was up there I would go for a hike in the afternoon to see some of the beautiful vistas of the Champlain Valley. I have only been hiking once before on the Vermont side of the lake, and never down in this part of the Champlain Valley.
I really was hoping for a nice clear day with blue skies. What I got instead was heavy snow squalls and cold winds whipping along the mountain. I am sure things would have been quite beautiful if that was the conditions. Yet things where just a bit snowier throughout the day. This is what it looked like 3 PM when I was done hiking and reaching my truck to return back to Albany.
Regardless, it was a beautiful hike up the mountain with the trees being snow covered and the trail easy to follow. Everything looked so fresh from the morning’s snow, and the on-and-off sometimes very heavy snow throughout the day. As you can see, the trail is easily accessible on foot in the summertime, and in the winter by cross country skis or snowshoes.
There are occasional trail markers up the mountain, including signs on turns for the Summit, but a few side trails so you will want to make sure you have a map. Fortunately, you can get one from Vermont DNR with on Snake Mountain WMA. One thing with that map is it doesn’t include a lot of the switchbacks, so you might think you have gotten off the trail even though you haven’t. For the most part, it’s not bad, as it’s an old woods road.
The view off the summit of Snake Mountain is one of the most remarkable ones (so I’ve been told on the Internet), but not a day when it’s snowing. You can see a little of the farm fields below when the snow let up a little bit, but it pretty much was a blind view. I was seriously disappointed, after driving up to Addison from Albany, NY and seeing neither the demolition of the bridge or off Snake Mountain from the snow.
At times walking around the Summit of Snake Mountain I couldn’t really tell if it was snowing as much as I was up in the clouds. It was cold and the wind was whipping around, and visibility was really poor.
It’s winter out, and it is snows in Vermont. The moral of the story is while hiking is delightful in fresh winter snows, it also means that visibility off the mountain really isn’t all that great.
