Bonus kilometres

-Tara, Siobhan, and Ashley were trying out skate skiing for the first time at the Canmore Nordic Centre-

Yesterday’s snowfall allowed me to have a pleasant ski at the Canmore Nordic Centre today. I skied aimlessly on the man-made snow which was freshened up with the 8-10 cm of new snow.

Canmore Nordic Centre

When I arrived at 1 pm I had my waxable skis in hand, but talked with a skier who was just finishing and was advised to use waxless. Good decision.

The tracksetting was excellent, but the snow was already becoming borderline wet. For the remainder of the week, with overnight freezing and daytime highs around +5, I expect it will be back to the typical spring skiing conditions: icy and fast in the morning and soft and wet in the afternoon.

I saw plenty of divots in the tracks where someone’s sticky wax was pulling the fresh snow up and exposing the icy layer underneath. At the mine meadow, I skied out on the natural snow of Banff trail and it was exactly like Ken described: skiable, but the new snow was only a thin veneer over a base of land mines.

You’ll see in the photos the snow around the daylodge is looking pretty tired, but the training grid was still present.

Siobhan, in the top photo, said I was the first person ever who knew how to spell her name correctly(it’s pronounced shiv – ON). In my deprived childhood, we didn’t have television so I read a lot of books, and I think it helped me to become an accurate speller.

Cameron, who is in the photos, and is also a fat-biker, sent along this link Best practices for fat-biking on groomed nordic trails. If fat-bikers adhere to these rules, it will go a long way towards their acceptance on the ski trails.