ShiraDawn

Went Fri. 8:30 a.m. -2. Aspen from Chickadee parking lot to crossover to Bluestem. East Bluestem to tower back to parking lot via incoming Chickadee. Trail surface was still frozen from overnight. Only a few skiers had been ahead of me on Bluestem. Could use some more to help work in the tracks .
Who knows how long this will last as there’s a good…[Read more]

From John Kim:
tuesday ~1030 am start, areas skiied -as much as i could, wax – really !?
many of wp trails are on life support with icy trail conditions ranging from poor (unpassable/dangerous) to fair (at best). considering how good they were sunday, they have substantially deteriorated since. graveyard and blue sister trails have coverage as…[Read more]

BHP trails [Aspen,Bluestem] still a go as of this a.m. if you like high speed double poling on ice[which I do]. Not sure what tomorrow will bring though. Best track is on West Bluestem followed by East Bluestem and Aspen from Chickadee to stable.

Windsor Park Nordic Centre, Monday mid-day, +2° to +5°, partly sunny.
~10 people were skate skiing, including me. A family was classic skiing on almost non-existent tracks. (I thought Spring Break was last week.).
The snow was mainly wet sugar, with many short sections of slush on ice, and a few sections of sticky snow. With well-prepared s…[Read more]

Sunday 6pm-9pm. Started off on skate skis.GUR was somewhat soft from the sun but still ok. The classic trails became superfast at dusk. Switched back and forth from double poling down the trails to going back on the GUR. Fastest conditions I have seen all year. If things stay cool, trails will still last a long time, even if no grooming is…[Read more]

From Windsor Park Nordic Centre on Sunday morning:
Last day of operations for this season. Staying cool today so conditions should hold up . Thanks for a great season! 142 days is a record. Building is closing, but gates and access to trails will remain open.

GUR is a crusty mess of footprints,paralell grooves and deep x marks but still ok. Grade C- . Ive lowered my standards for skating at BHP somewhat. Where is that groomer?? , sheesh. GUR would be amazing if they would just make one pass to even things out . The west bluestem was quite fast at dusk and after a km of walker sabotage and I was…[Read more]

From John Kim on Saturday afternoon:
14.5 km – bluestem, aspen (partial), chickadee (partial). classic (skins). start noon; wax….doesn’t matter
don’t put away your skis just yet ! for me likely one of the best skis of the season today. tracks are better if you take aspen (east) from chickadee until it meets up with bluestem.. once on blueste…[Read more]

Birds Hill Park, Saturday.
Classic — the temp was just *below* freezing, cloudy: Aspen was very good, west Bluestem was very good, eastbound Esker was fair, the first 200 metres of Lime Kiln was poor, and *all* of Chickadee was obliterated with footsteps.
Skate — the temp was just *above* freezing, cloudy: The Group Use Road was very good. (I…[Read more]

7-9pm- Classic trails are mostly icy, but I found them not too bad by using my skate skis and double poling. Could be way faster if they were groomed. GUR was mostly a mix of crusty ice, fossilized x patterns, boots and a squiggly fat bike line. Just hard to always focus on balance. Would be world class skiing if the groomer would come out. The…[Read more]

From Al Stewart on Thursday afternoon:
I skated the Group Use Road this morning and found mid winter conditions at 9:30 am.
– 12c temp, soft and cold snow made for a slow ski. The glide did improve as the temp climbed and a few more folks helped flatten the track a bit. But honestly who would expect to find a ton of cold glide wax snow on March 31?

Bluestem Wednesday afternoon. Used our Salomon skin skis. Surprisingly very good grip and glide. Basically skier tracked with the new snow over the harder ice tracks. Double skier tracked the whole way around. No walkers on Bluestem but asked several walkers not to walk on the Chickadee.

Fresh , icy snow overnight was groomed this morning. Results were surprisingly good. Skate trails are in Excellent condition, Classic is 6/10. Brent’s Loop, Graveyard, Blue Oval, and all of Green (Sheepdip,Backslide, Bonivital and Homestretch) are also in great shape. [Report as of 11:30AM Wednesday, March 30]

Windsor Park Nordic Centre, Monday afternoon 1:00 to 3:30, -2° to 0°. Skiers on the trails: 4 classic & 14 skate (including me).

Grooming was in progress when I started. The skate track was extremely firm and almost solid ice-snow in the ungroomed places. The Ginzugroomer was able to create a surface ranging from “scratched” to a cm of sugar s…[Read more]

So, curious to see what the cold snap had done to the trails, I arrived at the park around noon Mar26, to the Chickadee parking lot which was dirt on the west side and packed frozen snow mounds on the other, but easily accessible by my sedan.
The Aspen trail to the stables parking lot was skier packed dual track,and back west to the Bluestem.…[Read more]

So, curious to investigate what Monday’s rain and high temps might have done to the conditions, I, ER,and AD hit the trails at noon. Debriefing skiers coming off the Aspen and Bluestem reported icy conditions at first with rapid softening,
On our ski on Esker and the Chickadee northern loop revealed soft tracks with a phenomenon never experienced…[Read more]

Birds Hill Park, Wednesday morning, -1.5° to +1°, skate ski on the Group Use Road.
The track surface was a mess of footprints, deer hoofprints, a kick-sled that created two thin 5 cm deep ruts and boot divots, and horizontal washboard/corduroy (which was actually the best part of the track’s surface).
At 8:00 AM, the track was a thin icy layer o…[Read more]