Merry Christmas! Light fluffy snow falling Thursday morning with a couple of inches coating every little branch and twig. Trees flocked nicely with frost, beautiful morning! Grooming yesterday morning on the skate trails and a few of the classic trails. A fun day on the trails yesterday with the local HS hockey team out for a team building ski and Holiday guests enjoying the upper 20 temps and silky snow. Grooming on 20km of trail. We had a quick moving band of snow move through Tuesday dropping over just an inch of damp snow. We started packing the snow right away in the open and start areas than hit up Skaters Waltz and Suicide Hill. We also groomed 4 classic trails, setting track where the coverage was better and lifting the track setter where thin. Total km of track set around 7km. The new snow groomed in really nice on Skaters Waltz and we were able to disperse the damp snow in some of the low spots etc. and also leveling the trail a bit. The tracks should set up with the cooler temps snow.

Trails active this week and past weekend with skiers from high school teams for ski camp. The trails held up well to the high volume of skier traffic….nearly 3000 skier passes on Skaters Waltz! The reports good  from the skiers. Kids happy and smiling to be on snow! Some kids logging nearly 100km of skiing over the weekend, skiing before breakfast, in between meals and night skiing! Great work to all the skiers and coaches.

Trails that have been groomed and open: Skating only on Skaters Waltz, the extension and North Loup. North Loup has a few rough sections and caution must be used with “rock skis”. Packed and groomed but with no tracks for  classic skiing on Sap Run, Sukkerbusk, Rootin Tootin, Twin Lakes and JibFly. Other trails are open for “bush whack skiing” except Bullhead lake. The lakes are to be avoided with un safe ice. Wavy Gravy, Roy’s Run, and Island Lake open for bush whack/make your own track skiing.

Total snowfall since December 15th=8″, compacted base on trail 1-4″. All trails have sections of good coverage and sections with some rough spots. Early season conditions, ski with caution and enjoy! Total snowfall since December 1st, 14″.

Check out the new Maplelag weather station for current temps and weather trends.

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6231903433105762593

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6231636607234648065

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6231253394369189681

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6230988423236620913

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6230149303000155633

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6229760338671950641

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6229418924103609361

We received around 3″ of snow the past 24 hours. As of 6pm Wednesday, still some flurries swirling around as the cold front pushes through. Definitely some of the coolest weather we have seen in a while! We packed and groomed about 20km, spending most of the day grooming Skaters Waltz minus the kamikaze section and also Sukkerbusk. Not enough new snow to set tracks but Sukkerbusk will be fine for no track classic skiing and the main loop of Skaters Waltz ok for skating. We are preparing these two trails to be in the best condition possible for the High School Nordic ski camp this coming weekend.

A check of the trails skate skiing late afternoon found nice early season skiing with a few rough spots. With the expected high volume of skier traffic, there will be some rough spots to open up but ski with caution, avoid the dark spots and should hold up okay. Skating allowed on Skaters Waltz and the extension. All other trails will be classic, no tracks set. We packed out North Loup but need a few more inches to have safe skiing there.

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6229034082009328641

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6228930563474706417

Despite another warm weekend, we are still hanging on to some coverage on the trails. Over the weekend had a few flakes of snow, no rain, and the ground is frozen with frost 6″ down. A check of the trails late Sunday found some trails better than others including the main 4km loop of Skaters Waltz which has coverage the entire loop with a combined 300 meter section spotty coverage. (The area we have worked on this week, farming snow to). Sukkerbusk another early season trail we are ready to get in good skiing condition once the next snowfall occurs. We have hauled in a few more loads of snow including a few loads from the local ice arena.

With the base that remains from snow last week, it won’t take much fresh snow and proper grooming to have the trails open again for skiing. Think Snow!

We have installed a personal weather station and local weather information with switchyard cam can be found be clicking here.

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6228226893615123585

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6227493216091163505

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6226734998819557617

Light snow falling this afternoon. Just under an inch of new dry fluffy snow. Snow forecasted tonight in to tomorrow with 3-6″ forecasted for Maplelag.(Check out the webcams for snowfall) We are ready to pack and groom out any new snow once an inch or two has fallen. We have had recent cold days and mornings with the cold temps over the weekend near 0 on Friday. The temps have been good for setting up ice on the ponds, sloughs and lakes and freezing down the ski trails.  Little Sugarbush lake, lake Maplelag is next two, mostly froze over on November 22nd and than completely froze over on the 26th.

The coverage of snow we have on the trails survived the warmer weather earlier in the week. The coverage is thin but the hard and crusty snow layer making for a good base for the next snowfall. It won’t take much to have good early season skiing. We need 2-3″ additional snow to officially open the trails for safe skiing. We have been skiing a bit on the trails, mainly throwing off branches, deadfall etc.

We had 2-3″ of snow Thursday last week. We did our first formal grooming on Friday, combing and smoothing out Skaters Waltz, Sukkerbusk and Suicide hill.  The main purpose of grooming was to help set frost in the ground in these trails since the ground was not frozen yet and try to preserve the snow on these select trails during warm weather. It helped!  We did have a few skiers out “rock skiing” early on, making way to Suicide Hill which has the best coverage on the trails.

Overall the trails are in fantastic shape, thanks to a mild and mostly dry fall which allowed us to clear the trails up until the most recent snow. The formal mowing was finished the middle of September but since then we have been clearing leaves and deadfall of most of the entire trail system, except for the AMA sections.

We had a beautiful fall of color with some fantastic scenes in the forest. Photos of the fall color can be found on the fall color page or Facebook page.

The Twin Lakes mountain bike loop is now open for fat biking this winter. Latest report click here. 

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6222255047363133825

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6221165223415467233

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6219661487400169457

https://plus.google.com/photos/117475008862763984699/albums/6219336686782445985