Just down the street from Dad’s house in E-Town, NY is the mighty Otis Mountain! It was kinda sleepy when we visited (January 2010), but apparently
it really gets going at times.

Sarah and I did a little downhill skiing while we were there. (I trudged to the top once, following the path of a decaying chair lift. After expending a couple buckets of sweat, I had a quick ride down on virgin snow. Very nice!) Not bad having a personal ski slope in your backyard!

But there’s also a man-made ice wall. Jeff, the owner of the place, redirects water from a nearby stream to the top of a rock wall and, in winter, it makes a formidable palace of ice. (A recent breach in an uphill beaver dam almost took the place out recently.) You wouldn’t catch me scrambling up this thing, but it made for some neat pictures down at the bottom.