Hi all,
My apologies to those chasers I didn’t work yesterday from HB/VD-035. My fingers were getting dangerously cold. These gloves with the fingertips open just aren’t doing the trick. I’ve been following the threads on cold hands, but any good suggestions on gloves that are warm on the fingers yet allow enough dexterity to do a reasonable job of working the paddle?
BTW, I had the most amazing snowshoe trek, it was so beautiful it’s hard to imagine I’ll ever see anything like this again. Conditions were absolutely perfect. Temperature about -6C (around 20F) but virtually no wind, and I was above the fog line so there was a cloudless sky with the sun to my back.
I started at the tiny village of Les Rasses (near Sainte-Croix) and went up to Le Chasseron (http://www.chasseron.ch), a distance of 2.76 km and a vertical climb of 396 meters. Normally 400 meters is no big deal, but this was with snowshoes on, so it took double the time going up (but faster than normal going down). The first two-thirds were in a forest, and it was magnificent. We’ve had the snowiest December in 43 years, so there was a good base with a foot of powder on top. The pine trees were all encased in brilliant white; it was like weaving in and around through one Christmas card scene after the next. The only sign of humans was the sole track of the cross-country skier who thankfully gone up the trail beforehand – with that amount of snow, all trail markers are well hidden so I might have found it difficult. The trip up was so gorgeous that although I could have taken a ski lift back down, I opted to go through this spectacular area once again.
Such discoveries and experiences are what SOTA is all about!