Went for a ski after work last night. The sun is staying up a little longer now and conditions remained cold all day so I was hopeful for some nice tracks. Got more than I bargained for when I pulled into P12. The groomer had been by in the afternoon and no one else had skied since. I had untouched corduroy all to myself – Sweet! While technically the trail up from P12 is “classic only” I chose to skate the fresh tracks. Most of the trail is too steep for the groomer to put in double tracks and the flat spots that do have classic tracks I double poled. Besides, I was the only one out there. Time to be a little self indulgent. Once up the escarpment and on to 24 and Ridge road, others had found the fresh grooming so I had to share…. But it was still pretty nice. I skied out to McKinstry as the sun was setting. Conditions were beautiful all the way out. A couple of the south facing, exposed hills were a little icy but for the most part it was excellent snow. Once to McKinstry the fresh grooming stopped but the track beyond looked totally skiable. I decided not venture on to the firetower as it was starting to get dark. I still had a ways to go and while I know the trail well enough that I could probably ski it with my eyes shut I’d rather not have to prove that fact. There’s not much moon currently and out here there isn’t much ambient light from the city so once it got dark… it got pretty dark. The ski back was pretty nice though - more downhill than up made for some fast skiing.

As I was descending the second last steep hill to the parking lot (almost home) I noticed a dark low figure rumbling up the trail towards me. I was moving pretty fast and sudden evasive action was required, not to mention my adrenaline shot through the roof. It was pretty dark and what light there was was dead flat. I hadn’t seen another soul on my entire ski and suddenly something was coming out of the gloom at me and it clearly wasn’t a skier! I was in the woods here after all and it was just a week ago that this roaming fella was spotted over at the Luskville falls (none too far from where I was). Before I could do much the two of us were hurtled together and desperately trying to avoid each other in a flurry of skis and limbs and poles. Turns out it was a big lovable dog trying to be friends… and picking the wrong time and space to do it. Its owner came running up apologizing profusely (he wasn’t on skis either!)… but come on! The ski trails are supposed to be dog free and especially not unleashed dogs for just this reason – to prevent sudden impacts at high speed protecting both skiers and dogs. I'm a dog lover and certainly don’t want to skewer some poor dog with my ski poles – something I was preparing to do if it proved to be a marauding bear coming back from a garbage bin raid along the Meech lake road. The dog owner did park next to my car so they must have known a skier was out there. Sigh, no harm done to either of us thankfully so it was a beautiful ski with some excitement thrown in. Never a dull moment.