Nordic Pulse

Sunday 16-April'23

Short: The last day of snocat grooming was Saturday 15-Apr.

Long Version: With above 0 C temperatures overnite, any machine massaging of the snow surface, expedites the turning of snow-ish surface in late April are typically thin, so it is pretty difficult to justify grooming. Have a second coffee, review your lengthy spring ToDo list and wander in a little later in the morning/afternoon for your daily ski slog. You should still have front row parking.

For track skiers, there may be some diminishing sloppy/icy seconds for the next few days of well used tracks on Tigger, Pine Flats, Underdog/Topdog & Up the Creek as they were set Saturday 15-Apr for the final time this season. The Western Portage portion & a few other dodgy bits of Tigger are showing their true colours (brown/black/earthy), but you should be able to tiptoe thru them or do a 180.

The end of the scheduled grooming season is nigh. The snocats are well past their regular hibernation date. Altho the snow is mostly holding up well on some trails, ski traffic has dropped off precipitiously, the recently groomed trails are seeing copious quantities of post-holing foot & paw traffic (and not just on the dog trails).

It is time to wrap grooming up for the season. Looking back, our first grooming report was scribed 27-Nov, ~140 days ago. Some members admit to being past their 160th day of skiing. Good season.

That said, there may be some ad-hoc sporadic non-daily token skidoo/ginzoo grooming over the next week or 2, should the overnite temperatures be appropriate for grooming. Don't hang by your thumbs waiting for it to happen.

Dog Trail Parking Lot Closure: Access to the dog trail barking lot will be closed for the season. When you take your dog(s) for a ski, it would be greatly appreciated by all the dog-free skiers if you would ski directly to the dog trails from the main parking lot, and pick up after your dog on the way. 

Trail Closure: The east leg of Dogonit is closed.

Bear aware: The bears are foraging.

Santa's Duck Pond aware: The field at Santa's cabin is part pond, part ice swamp, and growing dirt beach.  Up the Creek is still accessible on the ungroomed snow that is not submerged. The "Toilet Loop" trail is the pond/beach/swamp bypass to get back and forth from Greenway Corridor to Pine Flats.