Even the bright shiny orb called the sun was out on Saturday which has been a rare sighting in the last couple of weeks. With sunny skies I headed up to P19. I figured the upper part of the park would be comparatively quiet and I wouldn’t have to fight for a parking spot with the hordes of skiers clambering for P10 and P7. Sure enough I was rewarded with easy access and relatively quiet trails. After skiing the lower valley and up 55 to Taylor Lake I took a tour up to the Pontiac lookout on trail 56. I thought this was a “backcountry” trail and would receive no grooming this year but looks like a skidoo ran up to the lookout at some point recently. Perhaps it was the maintenance crews trimming and cutting fallen branches. Unfortunately they hadn’t pulled a grooming sled behind them so I was left with a somewhat flat track to ski up which slowed things up a bit but no matter. The warm sunshine and shiny ice on the trees made up for the slower skiing. Love this trail punching through the tall pines. Reminiscent of the skiing at Vernon although the pines are 2 or 3 times as tall out there. Also did a quick ski around the Ste Cecile loop and it too was in pretty good shape – free from branches and logs and reasonably well groomed. As it was somewhat cold out I wore my wonderful new fleece layer (just purchased). Unfortunately it proved too effective and I over heated 10 minutes into my ski… gonna have to assign that fleece to -20C (and colder) skis and work on a layer that works for… ummm, “slightly cold” conditions.
Mind your head under the arch
Sunday I got one of the last places to park at P7 and checked out the backountry trails skiing 6, 22, 17, a bit of 11 and 8 along with sundry other groomed trails. To be honest I prefer the backcountry trails with some fresh snow as today the tracks were somewhat hard packed and “skied out”. Still they proved a sometimes interesting challenge to negotiate so a good afternoon was had. Still a few branches here and there to dodge but – unlike my last post – there have been enough skiers smashing through them that the blocks of ice are mostly gone. Not quite so painful if you fail to duck at an inopportune moment. I could have used a few layers (inches?) of binder wax on the skis today though. Icy trails and blocks of ice left in the track as they fall from the tree branches above did short work on my wax. I was forced to stop a few times to reapply some fresh wax or flounder helplessly up the climbs.
I must say I am impressed with how quickly the crews have worked to clear the trails from fallen debris after the ice storm. Having done a little “post ice storm” clearing myself in the past I know it to be long, labourious work. Skiing the trails over the Christmas break and seeing trails choked with bent over trees and down fall it’s hard to believe most of that has been refreshed. The NCC website suggests 80% of the network is now free and clear. That's 160km of trails cleared so good on them to work through this. The only big ticket omissions at this point are Ridge to the Fire tower and trail 36 but hopefully those are on the work sheet for this week.
Can I have a do-over on Christmas vacation?
No comments:
Post a Comment