22Feb Trail 50

Today, for skating on Trail 50, the conditions ranged from ok to poor.  According to the website there was grooming yesterday.  However today it felt like fresh grooming because both sides were very soft with plenty of corduroy visible.  There was then a snowmobile driven down the middle.  The snowmobile helped by making it nice and firm.

As one approached Lac Philippe there was significant deterioration.   There was more snowmobile traffic and lots of hiking on the trail.  Even the grooming itself, from yesterday, didn't seem to have flattened the skate lane between the Lac and P19.  This stretch was really bad.

Trail 54 was in the best shape but it too had a snowmobile track down the middle. 

10 Feb-Penguin,Ridge, Burma etc

I left P6 around 9am to skate toward Penguin.  I was pleasantly surprised by how firm the skate lane was however the firmness lasted only for 100m where the groomer had turned off toward another trail. 

The parkway was slow and quite messy.  I am not sure if it was groomed or not.  The tracks did not look good either.  Things improved at Penguin.  There was a small ridge that ran along Ridge that was decreasing the skate lane forcing some degradation of the new tracks but overall Ridge was in very good shape, much better than the parkway.

I turned right at Fortune parkway, it was not in good shape, again I could not tell if it had been groomed or not.  I turned at Burma and was very happy to see that it had been freshly groomed.  It was in excellent condition although it is a touch narrow. 

After Burma I was back on Ridge again until the top of the hill after Wolf.  It was in good shape and quite firm.  In spots there was snowmobile tracks.  24, 2, 1b were all in very good shape.

I came back along the parkway and it was soft in the middle.  Lots of skaters seemed to be having as much trouble as I was.

Hopefully they will get the replacement groomer here soon to improve the parkways.  Overall the conditions were slow again but the grooming was very good everywhere except the parkways.

Trail 50, 54 9Feb

As one would expect there was fresh grooming everywhere.  Still it was a slog, at least for me.  The snow was quite slow and still needs more time to settle before we can get the skating up to speed.  50 itself was groomed but then as is pretty routine a snowmobile had gone over it between \Herridge and 55.  It didn't even take the turnoff to the snowshoe trails at Lac Philippe.  For some reason the road leading to P19 wasn't great.  However trail 54 was fantastic.  Nice flat surface for skating and excellent tracks for classic.  In that snow I think 54 is the hardest "green" trail in the park.    It was a great day to be out.

Feb3 Trail 50

Fortunately Trail 50 has been returned to is previous glory of a few weeks ago.  Grooming was fantastic.  Unfortunately a snowmobile then went on the section from Herridge to the camp grounds at Lac Philippe. The damage from the machine was minimal decreasing the rating from 10/10 to 8/10.  The section to Lac Taylor was perhaps 7.5/10.

Why they can't coordinate the grooming with the snowmobiles going out for chalet maintenance is one of the great mysteries of Gatineau Park.  Still, a great day on the trails today.

Feb 2-From P2 to #24

Skated from P2 up to Penguin and then Ridge to #24.  Then came back along the parkways.  Overall conditions are good and fast.  The quality of the trails depended on the time the trails were groomed yesterday.  A few had become quite hard but everything was good overall.  In some sections the Demsis ridge is making a return.  This diminishes the skating area and is forcing everyone into a smaller space causing part of the trail being "skied out" sooner while 1/3 is in excellent shape.

(Watch out for debris, particularly on 24 where some sizable sticks are stuck in the snow and will damage ski bases)

Seems to me that we are not seeing really fresh grooming for Saturday morning.  Recently the trails have been groomed early on Friday rather than very early morning Saturday.

Jan 27-Trail 50-not so good

A few weeks ago I reported that grooming was fantastic on trail 50 but alas it was not the case today.

I left P16 at about 9:30 for a nice skate.  There was fresh grooming with some ridges but overall it was ok.  Unfortunately the groomer at turned down 36 and there was no fresh grooming between 36 and 52.  For this  stretch it was skied-out and rutty with a trough about 2 or 3 feet wide running down the middle.  The trough was not very deep but still there should have been fresh grooming.  After 52 there was again some grooming.       Unfortunately it was quite poor with the same kind of trough but now it was deeper.  It was like this all the way to P19.  The trough meant that the effective skate lane was very narrow.  This same type of sub-par grooming was in place on 55.  Overall the grooming for skating was not very good.  The tracks looked very good, so for my diagonally minded friends they would have had a great ski.  Its too bad that such a great trail on such a lovely day cannot have quality grooming to match.

Jan 25

Left P3 around 12:30.  It didn't look there was any fresh grooming until I got onto #5.   It was very freshly groomed.  At the bottom of Pink the big groomer was heading up the hill.  The Gatineau Parkway, Penguin and Ridge were all very well groomed. The Champlain Parkway was also excellent.  It seems that the only area that didn't have fresh grooming was the Parkway at the bottom of Pink to P3.  Not sure if it was groomed much earlier today and was just that much firmer?  I saw 3 or 4 groomers this afternoon so everything should be in good shape for tomorrow.