Update: The CNC’s trail report has the following information re: closures for the Ski Nationals March 18 – 25:
Closures will include Olympic, Centennial, King of Sweden, Osprey and parts of Meadowview and Coyote.
I’ve posted a couple more updates at the bottom of this post including the tragic news of a groomer being killed in BC.
There’s lots of nice, clean snow and beautiful tracksetting at the Canmore Nordic Centre. The only problem is that it’s wet. If you were classic skiing, you’d need to use waxless skis or klister. I used my Fischer Twin Skins.
Canmore Nordic Centre
The natural snow on Banff Trail and Meadowview was in great shape. I also skied on a few of the side trails and they were all excellent. Freddie’s Flip which is usually a lot of fun, and very fast, was “Freddie’s Blip” today. I actually came to a stop on the downhill.
Meadowview
If you can resign yourself to going slower on the wet snow it’s quite lovely. I think the skaters were having an easier time of it because the few times I skied in the skating lane, it was well-packed and I believe a little faster than the tracks.
Natural snow on Banff Trail
The late afternoon air temperature was +4ºC. The bad news is that it started to rain around 5:30 pm.
There’s a snowfall warning out for higher elevations in Banff National Park.
Be sure to read Pete’s story about the bear on the Trip Reports. That would be one to tell your grandchildren. It’s a reply to Chuck’s Trip Report on March 13 at 5:30 pm.
Canmore is hosting the Ski Nationals from March 18 – 25. The Relay Cross on Saturday should be fun to watch.
More updates:
In February, a 72-year-old man from Castlegar was killed by a falling tree while grooming ski trails. I’ve sourced a couple stories on it: Arrow Lakes News(Castlegar) and CBC British Columbia.
Some changes to the basic layout of this blog will be coming soon. I hope it can be accomplished without too much disruption. I would have preferred to wait until summer but the functionality of this blog is being affected now. The “Theme”(kind of a template) I am using is outdated and I have to change it.
Exciting that CNC is hosting the nationals… however it is not at all clear from the link above, Trail Sports webpage, or even the Alberta Parks trail report whether or not there are any trails open to the public. If so how is the access to them on skis? parking?
Let me re-phrase that… there is NO information other than race times and routes.
That said, as a spectator walking about it looks like an amazingly well organized spectacle that will have lots of excitement and opportunity for close-ups.
Only the XC stadium, Centennial and Olympic will be closed for racing. Parking will be tight on race days.