I started seeing the term "black powder" in use about maybe 4 or 5 years ago. I don't often use the term but it certainly would characterize much of the awesome road skiing we have 15-30min from campus by car. I am really not a big fan of rollerskiing personally. It was never one of my favorite things to do for training and I would always much rather trail run or even a road run to rollerskiing. However after having grown up in Vermont, gone to college at SLU, and then coached a bit out west I can say with some experience that the rollerskiing we have nearby campus here is some of the best there is. For some reason the back roads in Northern NY nearly all get paved and are fairly well maintained or at least don't get beat up to quickly. These are the kinds of roads that in most states would be dirt or gravel or perhaps some chip seal if you were lucky. For this same reason the road biking is really good here to. The picture here is about 2/3rds of the way through a drop off point to point ski this past Sunday. The guys went for 3 hours and covered a little over 30miles. I would guess that in that time we saw perhaps 15-20 cars. It still can be dangerous but most of the time we have the road to ourselves.
It was a really great OD workout a slight rain, just enough to keep you cool. Of course I didn't ski much of it myself while running support with the van and nursing an injury I probably only got in about an hour, enough for coach though.
