Tuesday, 30 December 2025

Probably Not a Ski Day

 I've labelled today as "probably" not a ski day. It certainly won't be a good ski day. I skied a little this morning, and it's possible; but that was on flat, level ground. Under current conditions, hills would be treacherous.

The wet, slushy snow of yesterday morning took quite a long time to freeze. As it did, some new snow arrived on top of it, from a persistent flurry that continued for several hours. The result is that we have about 3 cm of new powder lying on top of old icy crust. With the groomer, it might be possible to break up some of that crust and mix the old granular snow with the new powder.

I will try a little bit of grooming this morning, and see what the result is.

In the meantime, I do NOT recommend skiing here today.

The weather forecast says we might get more snow later today, in squalls. It would be nice if this happened, but you certainly cannot count on it.

NOON UPDATE: I've groomed a small loop, about 1 km long, and then skied it. The result is a small improvement over before, but not sufficient to make for safe, pleasurable skiing. Grooming under these conditions is also very slow. There are many tree branches and twigs on the trails, which must be cleared so that they don't get tangled in the grooming equipment. I have to stop and get off the ATV about every 20 metres to clear debris, which makes for very slow progress.

I will groom some more this afternoon, but the objective will not be to create good skiing today; it will be grooming "for the future", by preparing a better base as a foundation for future snowfalls.

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