‘Twas my birthday tendays ago, and on that fateful day we took a train ride on The Snow Train. This winter has been almost devoid of snow, and it was my wish to see some, hence this trip. As luck would have it, it snowed profusely in Albany the few days prior, so we had snow anyway! No matter, since the train itself was part of the fun.
It was an early start (the above photo was taken on the way back), and we woke before the cats to get ready and depart. The trip was about 2.5 hours from Albany, but happily our first-class tickets (in the glass topped ‘dome car’) gave us access to food service. A hearty breakfast was thus enjoyed:
I look young in that shot don’t I? Not bad for 40 winters…
Speaking of winter, here’s one of the views we enjoyed as the train followed the course of a river northward:
Yes, that’s ice sheets floating on the river. Very arctic it was.
Gore is a ski resort. I’ve never skied before, and would love to. It’s a pricey pasttime though – a beginners session including rental ran to about $80 for an hour. We my compatriots eager I would have done it (and damn I should have – it was my birthday after all!) but alas they were not so we didn’t. [Insert comment here from KLS that I wasn’t even remotely dressed for skiing!]
We did, however, ride the gondola to the top of the mountain.
It was early when we arrived, and still a little overcast. Gore mountain is over 3000 feet high, and from the base you couldn’t see the top of the Gondola since it disappeared into the clouds. Here’s what that looked like from the gondola car:
It was frigid at the top. As in beastly cold. As in why the hell did I keep suggesting skiing when I only had jeans on and the winter wind bit through the denim like knives cold. Here I am freezing to death atop Gore mountain:
And here’s Jim looking bemused in the gondola car on the way down:
I think that beanie cap may be older than me 😉
Here’s KLS and myself being badasses:
I’d never been to a ski resort, and was quite intrigued by the goings-on. Don’t let these pictures mislead you – there were plenty of people there. Gore has over a dozen ski routes, and many different chair lifts and paths to cross-country ski. It all seems like a lot of fun. If you’re dressed for it 🙂
After lunch we headed on the bus to another part of Gore where they had innertube sledding. I’d been looking forward to this since I haven’t sledded in years. Here’s what it looked like:
You can see, in the above two shots, that it had cleared up by the afternoon and was in fact getting (relatively) warm. This meant the snow was starting to melt, which meant the sledding runs were quite slow (or so the guys told us). As it turns out, the inner tubes only went to about half the distance they would have if the snow had an ice layer (although the guy told me when it got too fast they actually closed the innertube runs).
Getting to the top was no real work for riders, since they used a lift to pull us up a hill:
You can see the cord on the right of the image. That attaches to a rope connected to the tube, and you sit in the tube as you are pulled up. Once at the top you just walk to the start of one of the routes, sit in your tube, and are pushed off by an attendant. We did this for about 90 minutes, which meant about 15 times down the hill. A lot of fun! Here’s what one of the runs looked like from my perspective:
After sledding it was time for the train home. It was a relatively early departure, and we got home around dinner time. Of course the best was yet to come – after dinner I opened my presents 🙂
