Not quite as cold this morning with morning temp at -6. Clear skies, light winds, should be a beautiful day on the trails. Tracks will be set on a few trails and grooming/packing continues on Sap Run, Mother Hen, JibFly, Poki Loki, Mother North Star, Sukkerbusk, Twin Lakes, North Loup, Skaters Waltz, Suicide Hill, Double Green, and Kristin’s Kutoff. Will set tracks on the above trails except Skaters Waltz and North Loup which will be groomed/open for skating. Lucky’s Loype will have a track set as well. Has been skier packed the past few days. Other trails will be packed later this week. A handful of folks on the trails Monday as the ski teams waited for the roads to clear out. Snow depth in the woods ranges from 8-14″ and we have compacted this new snow to a base of 4-6″. We were packing the during the snow storm on Sunday as it fell to get the most out of the snow and things are looking great. Trail photos below from Monday.
A good old fashioned snow storm today. As of 10pm Sunday night, around 10″ has fallen and looks like maybe and inch or two more before everything is all said and done. The ski teams from Minneapolis got snowed in so skiers spent the afternoon having fun on the trails, even though temps were below 0 and heavy snow was falling. In the woods, the wind wasn’t so noticeable and coming from the East, very little drifting on the trails. Grooming on about 30-35km of trail with a minimum of three passes of packing with the roll compactor after 2-3″ of snow had fallen, getting the most out of the snow and some trails seeing five to six passes. Cold temps should set up the snow nicely where packed. This is a fantastic start to the season and we will spend the week packing out other trails and begin tracksetting middle to the end of the week for the next batch of skiers. The trails will be open this week with limited services in the lodge until Thursday afternoon.
A great day to be outside for the skiers at Maplelag this weekend. Frosty trees providing a nice background for skiers on the lake and handful hitting the better sections of trail, mainly on Suicide Hill. Did feel a bit raw with high humidity and a breeze from the East but all in all a nice day. Forecasts still calling for big time snow tonight on through Monday morning. We will be happy with any snow we do get and are ready to groom the trails.
Flurries off and on with temps in the teens today. Another dusting of accumulation. Loop on lake groomed this morning. This afternoon, Nordic teams from Minneapolis Southwest and Wayzata came to Maplelag for a training camp. The kids have been skiing on the lake and working on technique and endurance. The storm forecasted for Saturday night and Sunday looking better all the time. We don’t want to get our hopes up too high but we are ready to pack out any new snow that does fall and get the trails in good skiing condition. We flooded the rink one more time this morning and the skating surface is getting good with a few bumps here and there. We will flood surface a few more times when we can.
Few flakes of snow in the air this morning. A dusting of new snow the past 24 hours. Thirty degree temp change in 12 hours as we went from a high of 30 yesterday to 0 degrees this morning. Grooming on the lake today with some tracks set in the deeper snow. Grooming again on the lake in the morning. Also groomed a loop that we have been skiing on that includes better section of trail. The base is very very thin and rock skis are in order. The ice rink was flooded again today and skating has been fair to good and should improve with more floodings. We are keeping our eye on a possible storm this weekend.
