The sun cast an orange glow over the hardwood forest and a chill wind blew through the Ellis River valley as a friend and I shouldered day packs and struck off to Rumford Whitecap Mountain early yesterday morning.

It didn't take but a half mile of uphill trudging to warm us up. Off with the headband. Off with the gloves. Unzip the jacket.

The trail was snowfree and running fast with water, stream-like.

This is January, right?

Hardly, say the weather conditions around me on this day.

Patches of ice finally appeared higher up necessitating some tiptoeing around through the trailside brush.

Then whole sheets of ice covering the footway and it was time to strap on Stabilicers to boots.

Icy trail high on Rumford Whitecap Mountain yesterday.

No more detouring now. With good grips on the soles and trekking poles clenched firmly in hand it was straight up the trail, laughing at the now less than treacherous ice.

Wide views opened up as the trees thinned, first behind to the west then to the south.

Huge islands of blueberries grow here on this spot in summer, their leaves turned a firey red in autumn when I last made this trek. But today just gray rock, bare branches and delicate ice patterns in little pools frozen over.

White stripes of man-made winter were visible on the flanks of the Sunday River Ski Resort. But mostly the terrain below and beyond was brown, splotched here and there with dark coniferous green.

Plenty of brown in this odd January scene from the alpine ridge of Rumford Whitecap. That's Sunday River Ski Area is the distance.

At the summit cairn above the trees and on top of the world for a few precious moments a cold wind blew, but nothing approaching a full-on winter cold.

Steam rolled up into the air in white columns from the paper mill in Rumford. The Androscoggin River snaked its broad way through the valley. And in between lay the jumble of the Oxford Hills and its now many familiar peaks.

Turning into the wind I could trace the course of the Appalachian Trail and its serrated route curving northward from the Mahoosucs and bent on Katahdin miles away.

Back at the trailhead and famished from the exertion we wolfed down sandwiches and chips and cookies, even though it was barely 10:30 am.

Then out onto Route 2 we barreled along to Sunday River, skis on the overhead rack rattling in the wind.

An open parking space at Barker Lodge and we were in.

Patches of blue shone through the gray and sun dappled the artificially white slopes as the quad chair whisked us upward.

Riding the Barker Quad: Brown to the right, white to the left.

Despite an uncooperative Mother Nature, Sunday River has clearly done its level best to open up sufficient terrain for the oppressed skier population. But on this day there would be no run down White Heat on White Cap Peak, as not a flake of snow lay on its headwall.

Caution: Snow, ice and rocks below! We need some natural snow!!

Nonetheless, as a season passholder and confident that winter will eventually make things right by us, a couple of runs down nearby Sunday Punch and Monday Mourning--with some snow here, some ice there, a rock (oops!) underfoot--were enough to satisfy...

And get us into the car just in time for the Patriots vs. Jets game blaring from the radio on WBLM, the ribbon of sunny Route 26 stretching ahead.

All good (excepting the outcome of the game for this weary Jets fan).

And you? Your weekend?