Although it’s not officially winter yet, Centennial Woods is definitely looking very wintery. When I was last here, there were a good amount of leaves off the trees, but now, almost all of the trees have dropped all of their leaves. The Only exceptions to this are some of the diseased maple trees I observed earlier and the beeches. While these trees haven’t dropped their leaves, the leaves remaining on the tree are very dead. With all these leaves falling, the composition of the forest floor has changed and now instead of being primarily covered in pine needles, there is a thick layer of leaf litter. There’s also a lot of pinecones on the ground. Since it’s getting colder out, I didn’t see very many animals. There were some birds flying in a flock overhead (maybe migrating) but I didn’t see the squirrels and chipmunks that I’m accustomed to seeing.
While many phenological signs indicate that it’s winter, there still isn’t any snow. Burlington got some snow last week, but it has been pretty warm past week, so any snow that accumulated has since melted. Having no snow sure makes it a lot easier for me to get to my site, but in the past, this would’ve been a problem. This is because Centennial Woods used to be home to a ski hill. The hill, officially named the South Burington Kiwanis ski area, was opened in 1962 and operated for five years before the rope tow and associated machinery were accidentally burned down by children who were playing with fire. At first, I wasn’t sure of the accuracy of this story, but I saw some information online that gear of the rope tow, one of the lift line towers, and some supports, can still be seen in the area. So I hiked in a little deeper than usual and after a whole lot of up and downhill, I arrived and found the remnants of the ski area. The gear was rusted and the supports were charred, but it was very clearly a ski area, although the part of the forest that contained the ski trail has since grown back. There used to be many of these small, local ski areas in Vermont, but due to current trend in towards large resort areas, many of these areas closed. It’s incredible to think that less than fifty years ago, there was a ski area on the University of Vermont campus.
References
“South Burlington Kiwanis Ski Area.” New England Lost Ski Areas Project, www.nelsap.org/vt/sburl.html.