Not a bad weekend of springlike skiing on the trails. We definitely lost some snow over the weekend and areas of thin cover emerged with a few bare spots but still a handful of folks enjoying the late season skiing opportunities. Grooming Thursday, Friday and Saturday evenings on Skaters Waltz and North Loup. Skating was relatively fast in the earlier part of the morning and then softening up and getting a bit slower as the day passed, each day. A handful of folks classic skiing using “no-wax” skis or crown skis and reports were good. North Loup has the best coverage of all the trails and skiing should be possible Monday morning if it doesn’t rain as much as forecasted. We are done grooming for the year unless we have a snowfall over 4″ then we would pack out Skaters Waltz and North Loup most likely. Thanks to everyone who came to Maplelag and skied on the trails. It was a great year. Check back later in the week to see how things are holding up after the series of lows pass through
Another nice morning on the trails. Not quite as cold last night with clouds moving in early morning and hanging around until mid afternoon. The trails softened a bit earlier and not as fast but still some fun skiing. A good size group of skiers hitting the trails throughout the day. A handful of classic skiers as well hitting the trails that still have remnants of a track and reports were good. North Loup and Skaters Waltz groomed at dusk today and even though the air temp is in the upper 30’s, the freshly groomed is freezing down and getting crusted on top, which is what we want!! If it stays clear tonight it will be hard and fast in the morning but if it clouds over, it will just mean softer conditions a bit earlier. A few areas of thin cover on Skaters Waltz and one spot on North Loup but still skiable throughout. North Loup holding a bit more snow, as usual and should make it fine until Monday morning. We are most likely done grooming for the year unless we get dumped with fresh snow later in the week!
Another cool day with temp staying below freezing. Sunny conditions softening the snow just enough for good edging on Skaters Waltz and North Loup. Grooming from yesterday holding nicely for skiing today. A couple laps late afternoon found fast conditions as sun was falling west and very nice skiing for March 19th. Grooming on North Loup and Skaters Waltz this evening for skating. Should be nice transition skiing from 9am to noon then getting softer with warmer temps forecasted. Crust skiing on the classic trails should be fair to good from mid morning on.
After four days of temps in the upper 40’s, we cooled back down to the upper 20’s on Wednesday. Jonell has always wanted to try her hand at grooming so today we groomed Skaters Waltz. We made four passes total and the trail groomed up very nice. I was expected southern exposed areas to be bare and water in low spots but the entire Skaters Waltz trail has excellent coverage with just a arm length section of trail that is “thin”. Overall the coverage on the trail system is very good. Skate skiing on the groomed surface early this afternoon was very nice and about as good as it gets for spring skiing. Fast but enough loose for edging and speed control. Temps not warm enough to make it mushy and the surface was very nice. Should stay cool until Friday when we will warm up again. We will probably groom again on Friday and also try to groom out North Loup. The classic trails still have definition of tracks and would be okay skiing during the transition time. This time of year it is hard to know when conditions are going to be just right but when timed properly, can be some nice skiing.
Not quite as warm today as Sunday and Monday. Froze down again this last night, making for crusty conditions early then getting soft in the afternoon. Once again, skiing was very nice this morning during the transition period before the snow got soft and slow. The coverage today didn’t look much different than the photos below. Most noticeable were the tree wells a bit bigger. The trails will be closed until Thursday afternoon. Even though we plan on skiing in the mornings, we can not provide any emergency service if so required so for safety, we will have the trails closed. It looks to be a bit cooler tonight and tomorrow so we might try grooming a bit tomorrow morning. Grooming most likely to occur on Skaters Waltz and North Loup with no classic tracks to be set.
