Outdoors

Published
January 26, 2013

Skiing in Maine: Gonna ski around the clock that night

Thanks to years spent following my champion skier father around the slopes, I’m used to putting in long days on the hill. I hardly spend a day skiing that doesn’t start with the first chair and end with the last. It can be exhausting – eight hours straight is a long time to ski, after […]
Published
January 26, 2013

Allen Afield: It’ll be declining stripers forever without conservation

Stripers Forever (SF), a conservation organization that monitors our striped-bass resources, recently pointed out that the recreational catch of wild stripers along the Eastern Seaboard has dropped from nearly 29 million in 2006 to 8 million in 2011, thanks to poor spawning in Chesapeake Bay as well as over-harvesting by recreational and commercial anglers. Each […]
Published
January 26, 2013

Deirdre Fleming: Maine snowmobile industry humming along as strong as ever

Snowmobiling in Maine is one of the biggest eco-tourism engines in Vacationland. But it’s even bigger than that. The culture behind the $325 million industry that provides 2,300 full-time jobs goes beyond what’s spent in corner stores and gas stations. A look across the country, across the continent, heck, across the planet, shows that the […]
Published
January 26, 2013

Uplifting experience for some

Skiers who skin their way up the hills may be a minority, but their passion is forcing resorts to reconsider policies.
Published
January 19, 2013

Deirdre Fleming: Snowmobile race series expected to be a huge draw in northern Maine

When the International Snowmobile Festival, shared between Madawaska, Maine, and Edmundston, New Brunswick, fell apart three years ago, Madawaska was without a winter festival to draw tourists for the first time in a dozen years. In its heyday the three-day international festival brought in 1,000 people, said Jean Ouellette, a member of the town’s snowmobile […]

Published
January 19, 2013

Birding: Christmas count delights from around the state

This column is the second of three in which I will describe some notable sightings of Maine Christmas Bird Counts. We’ll take a tour around inland portions of the state this week. The next column will cover some coastal and off-shore counts. The Lewiston-Auburn CBC on Dec. 22 produced a nice mixture of lingering species and winter […]
Published
January 19, 2013

Best Bets

THURSDAY Full Moon Hike 5 p.m. in Jefferson The Full Moon Hike at Hidden Valley Nature Center will include an owl prowl, led by Sheepscot Valley Conservation Association naturalist Lynne Flaccus. Coyote tracking, winter tree and twig identification and winter camping skills are also on the schedule. There’s a $5 suggested donation. Reservations are recommended. […]
Published
January 19, 2013

Snowmobiling: Snowpacked happy trails there for the riding

So far, Maine has been blessed with a white winter and while the warmer weather early last week may have melted some of the snow on the southern coast, there is still plenty of good snowpack in the western, central and northern areas. “With the exception of this minor January thaw, riding conditions have been […]
Published
January 19, 2013

John Christie: Waterville Valley regaining its grandeur

A few times every ski season I like to spread my tips a little and explore some undiscovered (by me) ski area either in Maine or beyond, or to revisit a favorite or two of mine outside the state that I’ve neglected for a long time. The neglect is excusable, as we’ve got such great […]
Published
January 19, 2013

Hunting: What’s in a name? It depends where you are

More years ago than I care to remember, I came across an elderly bird hunter and asked how his morning had gone. His response included some mention of flushing a few partridge. I was still a student of wildlife biology and, thinking I knew it all, dismissed his identification as the ramblings of an old […]

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