Sunday, March 10, 2013

March 10 - A Tale of Two Cities-The Beginning of the End?

Imagine a great day like today, below zero at night, above zero during the day, stated 38cm snow base and finding NO GROOMING on what is supposed to be a "primary trail".  I don't think Craftsbury, Lake Placid, Mt. Ste. Anne would have such fantastic conditions and decide not to groom on a Sunday morning.  Well this is Gatineau Park and weird things happen here.

I went to P16, arriving at 9:30 for what I figured would be prime skiing.  It started out well with good fresh grooming but the groomer turned left at 36.  There was not grooming in the skate lane.  It was a skied out, icy crude.  So I stopped turned around and drove to P6.  Pity anyone who came here for March Break and went  there-what a disappointment.

So here is the other "city".  Although not fantastic on Ridge the grooming from P6 along the parkways up Penguin was good.  I detoured down 4 to the race course.  This was fantastic.  By this time it was 10:30 and there was only one other set of tracks disturbing the very good grooming.  Burma had seen lots of traffic but was in good shape.  All the way to 24 and back on the parkway conditions were very nice so overall my day of skiing was not ruined.

There were a lot fewer skiers out than I thought there would be and as far as I could tell there was no one looking at passes at P6 or P16 and P5 is now closed and with #50 left ungroomed on a weekend - is this the beginning of the end?

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