Scouting the neighbors

Driving into Vermont with a New York license plate is fraught with peril. One must be on one's best driver behavior, lest one be grouped in with those relative few who have made a bad name for the state, fair or not. Similarly, one treads with care when asked "Where are you from?" One typically answers carefully and slowly in the hope that the first word conveys the idea that you're not "one of them."
"Upstate New York."
This is what I said last Saturday morning when asked that very question by one of two skiers who pulled up just after I did on Route 73 in the Brandon Gap of the central Green Mountains. There was little doubt they'd both seen the tag on my car. Turned out one had lived as a kid in the Catskills. The relief this offered was short-lived, however, as he went on to mention "the New York Times article."
The reference was to a piece the Times had done on what I'd come to visit: The non-lift-served, accessible-backcountry ski trails developed by the Rochester-Randolph Sports Trail Alliance. The non-profit group was written up for its work organizing and carrying out glading, mapping and signing trails in the Green Mountain National Forest for the use not only of their own members, but anyone, for free. The Times was relatively late getting onto the story, after it was done by the Vermont media and skiing-specific publications, including Backcountry magazine, as I recall. But the Times got the blame for lack of trailhead parking spots on mid-winter weekends.
And there I was with a New York tag. Ouch.
I knew about RASTA well before the Times article, I assured the pair as they booted-up and strapped on their climbing skins along the highway on this cloudless, mild early-spring Saturday. What I didn't mention, and should have, is my reason for coming: Groups hoping for something similar in the Adirondacks, or at last a little buy-in from the state powers that be for some minor widening of existing ski trails, point repeatedly to what RASTA has done in the neighboring state. I had made checking it out a goal for the ski season but only now, thanks to an unusually cold and snowy April, had I had a chance to see it for myself.
I've hardly exhausted the backcountry possibilities in the Adirondacks, but I have sampled what's there enough and read and heard about it from others to feel confident that there's little or nothing like the RASTA trails. What we have in New York is a couple of ski-specific trails dating from maybe the second FDR administration that have been rediscovered in the past 20 years by backcountry skiers. Then we have skiing both up and down on narrow hiking trails, often dotted with snowshoers and, at worst, pocked with postholes by inconsiderate and unprepared hikers. Yes, we have the slides, but those are a long slog from trailheads, for the most part, and, more to the point, dangerous -- they're called "slides" for a reason, after all. Yes, there are ample ski trails, and I am grateful for them but these are for cross country skiers -- relatively flat, narrow, meant for kick-and-glide. And yes, there are natural glades here and there and, I have little doubt, some not-so-natural glades.
But this isn't to criticize the state of New York. This is just to report what I saw in Brandon Gap.
I had limited time given a dinner appointment in Burlington Friday evening and a concert date night with my wife back home Saturday night. So I wasn't able to check out even all the Brandon Gap area trails. Also, skiing alone, I wanted to be conservative and safe and not venture out too far or take on sketchy conditions or overly challenging terrain, including the cliffs and rocks RASTA warns of on its maps.
I had the avvy kit -- beacon, probe and shovel -- in my pack in my continuing effort to get in the habit of having them for any tour, but this is not avalanche terrain.
What I found: 1. Well-marked skinning routes that seem to have switchbacks just when you need one, that allow one to see what you can ski down while also getting out of the way of anyone coming down. I never felt the need to use my climbing wires; the pitch in these spots was efficient but not excessive.

2. Glades to choose from. Glades sometimes wide open with multiple routes to choose from, and sometimes just wide enough. Pitch enough to make you pay attention but also stretches where you can let the skis run. Enough variety in underlying terrain to make it interesting but not intimidating.
3. Options. I had time only for the No Name area, but at the top of the skin-up is the Long Trail leading in either direction, both to other areas. From the map at the trailhead (and online) it was easy to scout out possible longer tours of varying durations and character.
The Friday afternoon conditions were just about perfect. I found fresh snow of oh, four or five, maybe six inches on top of consolidated granular. It was legitimate powder, if not exactly bottomless, but hey, it's the third week of April; what do you expect. Saturday, I arrived just as the snow was in transition, and had I been on a longer tour, would have stopped to treat the skins with anti-glop, but today it wasn't worth the trouble.

The skin up to the often-photographed No Name sign took me about an hour, but had I been more deliberate -- and in shape -- and not stopped to look around and take some snaps, it would have been maybe 45 minutes. The down could be done in just a few minutes, but I wanted to stop and savor it.
A couple tips: 1. Pick a gladed line and stick to it. They all head the same place. Don't try to find the perfect one. 2. Don't veer left. I did and found myself out of the glades and among New York-style thickets and had to cross two brooks.
I hope to make it back to see the rest of the trails at Brandon Gap. The Goshen Mountain area sounds especially appealing, with RASTA's description of low-angle meadow skiing -- I am always looking for a chance to let the skis run through open, powder-covered terrain, to get that planing-above-the-ground sensation that is so rare, whether in the backcountry or off lifts. I'd try to go mid-week -- though I would hasten to add that I'm spending some money in the Rochester-Randolph area on lodging, food, gas and the like.
In any case, those two skiers who might have been skeptical of a New Yorker? They pushed my car off the icy part of the parking area so I could make my get-away. Vermonters are nice like that.