Last year we started Fall Camp as a weekend trip to break up the long stint between the start of Fall programming and Thanksgiving Camp. This can be a tough time of year to stay motivated, with the weather getting colder and school starting to get busy.
Almost every college team seems to partake in a similar camp this time of year, and in this year’s case Middlebury was actually overlapping with us in Lake Placid…they arrived to jump on the rollerski loop just as we were leaving one day.
We had perfect weather this year, which is a nice bit of karma after battling snow, wind, hail, and fog in NH for the 2021 camp. Since we arrived around dinnertime, it was already dark for our first workout…initially I had put us down for a quick jaunt over to Henry’s Woods, a local simple trail network. But I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to run up to Cobble Hill which involves a wooded trail to the summit of an old ski area adjacent to the Northwoods School.
With headlamps dwindling on batteries we scrambled up to the open, rocky summit and looked down on the twinkling lights of Mirror Lake and the town below. Then we turned off the lights, laid down on our backs, and stared up in unified contentment at a ski dense with stars. It was a mad dash back to a late dinner at the condo, but very worth the cool experience.
Turning off the headlamps and looking down on town
The next morning we were excited to have local club NYSEF join us for some hard rollerski intervals on one of the towns two (!) rollerski tracks. The loops at the jumping complex are great for fast skating, which rewards good technique and momentum through sweeping corners and turns. The leaves were falling like snow, and the team put in repeat after repeat hammering around the circuit.
With some lunch and study time after that, we knew we only had enough daylight for one of the easier, shorter high peaks (4,000’+) mountains in the region. Luckily for us, the tourists had cleared out by the afternoon and we could hike up Cascade without any crowds or parking hassles. The summit was reached right as the light hit golden hour, making an open and rocky summit even more spectacular. We got down with light to spare, and dinner at a reasonable hour this night!
Runnin up to the summit
Enough tourists still up top to have them snag a photo of us
After making some tacos and following them up with chocolate-dipped apples for dessert, we went to bed in anticipation of a long ski to close out camp.
While there are a few fun roads around Lake Placid to rollerski on, I wanted something unique and special for this camp…since we ski a lot in Charlotte, I was wondering if it would be possible to string together a route that brought us from the Adirondacks right to the ferry, meaning we would literally “ski home” from camp.
On Wednesday of last week I took my Subaru out for a little joyride, and spend a few hours just driving the backroads north and west of Elizabethtown with Google Maps and a notepad riding shotgun. It was an amazing fall day for that drive, and I worried that the unfriendly Sunday forecast would turn what I thought could be an amazing ski into a total slog…
But I was proved oh so wrong! What we experienced on Sunday was one of the top rollerskis of all time in my book, and the team seemed to agree. With scenic backroads and almost zero traffic at all, the group skied from Elizabethtown right at the base of the mountains, all the way to the Essex ferry. Skis were clipped back on once the ferry docked, and everyone skied all the way back to the Linseisen house in Shelburne where we were treated to an awesome food spread to cap off the camp. Pictures and videos from the ski don’t do it justice, but here is a map of the route, and a group photo near the lake looking back at the ADKs where we started from.
Of course, you know it wouldn’t be an MNC camp or trip without some video content as well…here’s a short collection of clips I put together on Instagram, which I then transferred to Youtube to view here. Looking forward to our next team adventure!
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