What I found out there yesterday is called "eastern boilerplate". I first heard these words applied to snow conditions in 1970, my first year in Deep River, so this is an expected phenomenon. For the non-technical people out there, boilerplate originally meant a piece of hard, flat, smooth steel intended for the manufacture of a pressure vessel. Paint it white and you have our ski trails right now.
In the equipment yard near the DRXC chalet, you can find the remains of a welded-up groomer that we made in the 80s to attempt to break up boilerplate. It was bent beyond repair by a hidden root after only about 1.5 km. The moral of the story is that we have no equipment to deal with boilerplate, even if we had enough snow to keep from hitting roots and rocks.
All of the set tracks are hard and bumpy, so the downhills are quite hazardous. These are ski-breaking, joint-dislocating conditions. Beware.
