One thing you can always depend on after a snowfall: the Canmore Nordic Centre will have the trails groomed and trackset by the following morning.
Natural snow on Banff trail
We received 5 cm of new snow overnight and it was just enough to freshen up the trails. There are still residual pine needles on the man-made snow kicking around, but not enough to annoy me.
The natural snow on Banff trail had a few spots where there were more than a few needles but weren’t anywhere near thick enough to be described as a “carpet,” and had no effect on the enjoyment of my skiing. The wind was nothing like yesterday, but occasionally it would gust quite violently, and I’m sure a few of the needles on the trail came down today.
Meadowview had excellent snow cover and almost no debris
Meadowview was fabulous with clean snow and good tracks except for one short section of about 30 metres where a couple big trees had fallen across the trail. The trees have been removed, but there’s still a lot of debris on the snow. In the open areas, the tracks were a bit windblown.
Two large trees were blown over in yesterday’s wind on Meadowview. They are now cleared from the trail but left behind a lot of debris.
With thoughts of pine needles and warm snow(air temp was +1°C), I went to CNC prepared to use my waxless skis. Fortuitously, however, before starting out I talked to a skier who was using wax with reasonable success. Swix VR50 performed adequately. Not great, but again, it wasn’t slipping enough to annoy me. It seemed to work better when I was climbing the hills on Meadowview, so the snow must have been colder at the higher elevation.
The Banff trail report indicates 8 cm of new snow in the park. Cascade valley and Upper Bankhead were trackset today.
