Today was the last day for the groomers to track the ski trails in Gatineau Park. I told the folks at work not to expect me too early and went up to the Park this morning for one last ski on freshly groomed trails. This morning I waited until the groomers had a reasonable chance to roll through the tracks (they seemed to start later on weekdays than weekends) and started up from P10 at about 8:30. The Parkways were nicely groomed but when I skied out Ridge road it was still being worked. One side had been done past Huron and out towards the firetower so it was pretty good but unfortunately I had hoped to ski down Burma one last time. Not to be this morning as the crews hadn’t gotten there yet. Instead, after a ski along Ridge to 24, I turned around and skied back to Penguin and then looped down around the Doldrums to get to my car. It made for a nice ski on a sunny day. A good ending to the “formal” ski season. P10 and P8 were pretty full when I started and finished so there were a lot of other people taking advantage of the trails one last time as well. I skied past people taking a few last photos of the ’08 season or chatting about the winter gone by. One for the books indeed even if it was only the 2nd snowiest winter on record.
Even without grooming the skiing should be good for a bit. There is still a lot of snow in the Park (only a handful of bare patches) so the classic skiing should be good for a while. My only fear is that – in a rush to get spring/summer activities underway - the NCC might have the remaining snow on the Parkways plowed to allow for cleanup and motorized access at the usual time of year. Fingers crossed against that but we’ll see what comes.
2 comments:
Hi Ken,
Great last morning. You're right about the late grooming...it's been slipping later and later all winter. And yeah, I hope they don't plow the roads!
Indeed - a great day to finish to the (grooming) season. Of course I've never seen "closing day" so busy... cause its usually been just a few miserable patches of crust at this point. I expect the later and later starts by the groomers had something to do with the amount of overtime the contractor had to spend this winter - probably a lot more than anticipated. I would assume they tried to save a little money at the end of the season.
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