Crunch time

The "snow" is now becoming crunchy, but it takes time for the cold to penetrate below the surface.  In case you missed it, it was still raining quite hard at 0300h (3 a.m.!) this morning.  What is not obvious to the eye is the water still running under the snow and waiting in  large puddles for foolhardy groomers to break through and make a huge mess.  After a day or two of freezing temperatures, we will see if anything useful can be done.  Don't hold your breath.

Holy razor blades, Batman...

that was a close shave.  Last night, it rained much more than anyone forecast -- YIKES.

To make the crusty new snow useable, some additional grooming was done this morning on M and parts of S and H, for skating and classic skiing.  S-loop is so bumpy now that I am recommending extreme caution there.  S and B should be strictly out-of-bounds for all but expert skiers.

Got snow....sort of

After the snowfall tapered off this morning, the skate areas were rolled and K was track set.  There was a chorus of crunching sounds as this was done.  There are deep potholes on H and B from the recent rainfall.

A track will be set everywhere later today after the skier traffic decreases.

Bring your ice skates, pray for snow

The DRXC trails are suitable only for ice skating, but this is not recommended.  No grooming equipment we have will make any impression on the glassy ice and XC skis will be extremely hard to control.  Reports are that there is a lot of debris on the trails, and the tiny dusting of new snow has made this hard to see.

FYI, Mount Martin SC is closed and PAXC had no skiing late yesterday.  The loss of snow in Ottawa during the week of thaw and rain has to be seen to be imagined.  Two weeks ago, Ottawa had about 50 cm of fresh snow on top of the crust and they now have even less on the ground than we do!

Wet is bad and sad

There can be no trail grooming until we get some new, dry snow.  Setting a track is already impossible in the hard-frozen snow on most of the loops and the predicted consecutive thaw days will make this situation worse.  So sorry.

Snow is beautiful, not to mention fun!

There has been a little new snow and we groomed everything today, so the trails are as good as possible.  The crust is precious thin on top of the bumps and it is so hard that we couldn't pulverize it even if we wanted to.  So, you skiers have a newly set track of sorts in a bit of new snow everywhere, but don't expect mid-season skiing.  Enjoy every bump -- they are ALL very obvious!

Happy New Year

Reports are that the real snow on top of the crust is still fun, but getting skied off, notably on R-loop.  Since the crust is still covering the rocks, it makes little sense to disturb it now as it is precious thin.  Best to wait for snow, presently in the forecast for Thursday.