Brad, Tristan and Payton were visiting from Manitoba
That was one of the questions I was asked today by a skier at the Canmore Nordic Centre.
By early afternoon it was sunny and +6. The snow was wet, so I used my klister skis and they worked very well with good grip and adequate glide. It’s difficult to get much speed up on the wet snow. The GPS says I reached a speed of 36 Km/H somewhere today, so I’m pretty happy with that. Most of the trails at the nordic centre were trackset early this morning. We had a couple cm of new snow yesterday. A few skiers said conditions were good for classic(with regular wax) early this morning.
I was pleasantly surprised at the conditions on the competition trails above the daylodge. It was the best skiing of the day. The snow seemed to be more uniform, with none of the shady area/sunny patch situation below. You could go fast on the downhills without being in danger of coming to a fast stop on a sunny patch and losing your balance.
I had barely got up the first hill on the Banff trail when I met Brendan McCracken pulling a chariot. He skied in the Canmore SkiFest over the weekend. With his relay partner Kirk Howell, they did 222K to win the 12-hour event. I checked Zone4, and saw the 24-hour winner was Leighton Poidevin who skied 384K. Wow! and congratulations on an amazing accomplishment.
The gentleman on the left was from Vancouver, and on the right from Philadelphia. Old friends who decided to meet up in Canmore because of the skiing.
It was a wonderful day for stopping and chatting with everyone. A lot of visitors from out-of-province were skiing today. Further on, I met Brad and his two daughters who were visiting from Manitoba. It turns out that Brad was on the Manitoba provincial ski team in 1990 – 1994. He raced against Robin McKeever back in the day. They’ve had very little snow in Manitoba this winter, and have only skied a couple times before today. That was verified by another couple from Winnipeg who I ran into at the daylodge.
My GPS indicated that I spent only 1 hr and 10 minutes actually skiing, while stopped time was 48 minutes, but an enjoyable day nonetheless.
Rhonda and Ray have posted some updates on conditions in PLPP, thanks. The cougar tracks sounded interesting.
