Ford

The unbearable attraction of crusted snow in March

Yesterday afternoon the fine weather lured me out on the crust with snowshoes. As I marched along, camera in hand, surrounded by exquisite March beauty, I kept yearning for a good freeze. If this snow were hard, I could drive the golf cart all over it.

Alas, I have a fatal attraction for crust, starting in my early years in Westport with expeditions on mountain and lake, and I’ve never lost the urge.

It was a particularly fine March afternoon when Don, Bob, John and I borrowed a ski-tow rope from Ansley Green, tied it behind my 1960 VW Beetle, and tried skiing on the the Little Rideau.

I was first up because they were my skis and I had had one lesson. Don Goodfellow drove. The Beetle would only do forty-five on the crust, so I tried to get a bit more speed by cutting side to side behind my tow. I found I could jerk the light car sideways if I came up beside the driver, braced myself and pulled.

The vibration from the rough, hard surface up through the skis made it feel as though every bone in my feet had come loose and was pinging around inside the boots, but apart from that it was a thrilling ride on the vast, icy surface. I swung to the right, checked on Bob Conroy in the passenger seat, ignored John Wing making faces at me through the narrow back window, then whipped all the way around to Don’s side and gave a massive tug. The rope broke.

I still can’t believe I did this, but I kept my balance in that sideways slide for a very, very long time, until I stopped. After that I didn’t want to ski anymore, and no one else wanted to try it either.

Next weekend John had access to his dad’s favourite toy, a mint, military-surplus Ford Jeep. Again it was a cold March day, but the series of thaws and freezes during the week had reduced the snow pack to an asphalt-hard crust, while smoothing the landscape out just enough that we thought we’d try to explore the Upper Mountain by Jeep. There’s a campground on the site now, but at the time it was just granite and brush, and the Jeep picked its way over the large mounds with little difficulty. There’s no thrill quite like driving on the crust.

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