Open, 23º and sunny. Another beautiful day for a spring ski. Forecast high 49º and sunny. All trails open, really good spring skiing. Fast in the morning and slow as the sun hits the snow and the temperatures warm up. The snow started to slow down about 9:30 am yesterday. The opposite happens in the late afternoon. In about 10 minutes the skiing can go from slow to fast. (Or fun depending on your point of view.)

Spring skiing yesterday was faster in the shade and slower in the sun. This might happen again today.

The road started to get muddy and soften in spots yesterday. It froze overnight, but will soften today and get soft in spots again. Remember, drive slow, aim high, don’t stop.

We are getting ready to sugar. Making maple syrup is a labor of love. Yesterday Ian and Sverre tapped the long tubing lines. Chuck and Sverre started tapping the buckets. Ian and Mindy put together two more lines on the hill above our house. Today Chuck and Sverre will finish the buckets and get tanks at the bottom of the tubing lines. Whew!

We always see the beauty of sugaring, but in reality a lot of sugaring looks like this.

All the tanks go out today to collect the sap. The biggest to the sugar house to feed sap into the evaporator. The small tanks go on the bottom of sap lines to collect the tubing sap. And the medium tank sits in the trailer to “gather” all the sap together, either emptying buckets, or pumping from the tubing tanks. The sap is then pumped to the sugar house. You got it, the sap is moved around, a lot!