Season Wrap-Up

 I'm sure you know by now that our ski season is finished. It was not a very good one. The first day of skiing for me was Nov. 29, 2023 and the last day of skiing was April 5, 2024. In between those dates, there were a few days of good skiing, a bunch of days when skiing was possible but not good, and a lot of days when it was not possible to ski at all.

In total, I skied 44 days this season. (Many of these days were not good skiing, just tolerable) Last year, the total was 52. The year before, I skied 79 days! There seems to be a trend here, and it's not a good one.

I've been doing a couple of things to try to maximize our skiing pleasure in the future.

First, toward the end of this past season, I acquired a very old, used ski trail groomer from Mono Nordic Ski Club. It's called a Tidd Tech Trail Tenderizer. It had been used very hard, and needed a number of repairs and replacement of worn-out parts. I've done that work, and the groomer is ready for next season.

The Tidd Tech grooms the same width as my old, home-made groomer - basically a 4 foot platform with a 6 inch transition on each side. It has two advantages over my old groomer. The most important is that it has the ability to handle hard-packed, crusty or icy snow. Across the front, there are 2 rows of very aggressive steel teeth that can be lowered into the snow and break up the hard stuff. The other advantage is that it enables me to start and stop track-setting, depending on the terrain, and the transition from one mode to the other is quite easy.

The other job I've been working on since the snow melted is something I call "daylighting". There are a few places where a trail passes through a dense stand of conifers, and the thick canopy of branches overhead intercepts falling snow, preventing it from reaching the ground. These places always have thinner snow cover, and are the first spots to turn icy when there is a short warm spell. I've been pruning overhanging branches high up in the trees, or in some cases removing entire trees, so that you can see daylight directly above the trail. At the same time, I'm being careful not to allow too much sunshine penetration from the south, to prevent snow from being melted on sunny days toward the end of the season. I will be doing more of this as I prepare for next season.

Hopefully, next season will have more snow and fewer days with above-freezing temperatures. Whatever happens, I will do the best I can with what we get.