Kenmore: Ski while the skiing is good

A beautiful weekend to ski to be sure. The sun shone, the skiers skied and the tracks were beautiful. I opted to ski out of P7 on Saturday under a brilliant sunshine. Haven’t had too much of that in the last month or so. Normally I wouldn’t go near P7 on a sunny Saturday (and fight for a parking spot) but with a weekend of races down low in the park I took a chance that some of the crowds would be down there. Proved a successful gamble as the lot was pretty quiet considering the beautiful day. I even managed to find some quiet tracks as I headed in to the practice loop at Camp Fortune. Everywhere else I skied there were mobs of people enjoying the day but on the practice loop – I counted 3 sets of tracks before me on the fresh corduroy. It’s certainly a fun loop with lots of fast transitions from steep up to steep down. Strangely the last km of the loop hadn’t been groomed recently but no bother, I skied it anyway and enjoyed it almost as much. Still a little ice in the trees that was falling here and there. I guess that won’t last much longer with Monday’s predicted rains.

Bit of an obstacle on trail 36... Maybe too thin for the groomers?
Sunday I opted for a “Petit loop du Meech” and skied out of P11. As I drove past P8 and P9 cars were overflowing out onto the road but P11 had only dozen or so cars parked there – sweet! Trail 36 hasn’t been groomed recently so perhaps that kept people away. That said I found it in reasonable shape. The descents were a bit of an icy torment but not unmanageable and the classic tracks on more gentle terrain were holding strong. Once I reached Meech Lake I chose to ski across it for P12. Bit of a cool breeze coming down the lake but the skiing was good. Decided to rewax before climbing McCloskey as the icy descents on 36 had stripped most of the wax clean off my skis. Fresh wax meant a short climb up to Ridge and then off down towards Fortune. Decided on one last exploratory run onto Fortune Lake where I rediscovered lucky trail 13

. It hasn’t been an official trail in about a dozen years or so and there was nothing lucky about it for me today. It had lots of branch debris to push through and “leg hold traps” (snow covered branches) lying in wait to slow me down but it was still nice to ski on an old trail like that. The sun even managed to hang on for me to finish my ski before the storm clouds started to take root overhead. Tough weather for the next day or so. With luck it won’t be as much of an impact on the snow as the weather men are predicting. I guess we’ll have to wait and see. Fingers crossed for some cold winds to whip the rain clouds into a snow bowl. Certainly don't want to see more freezing rain...