“Where’s my instructor?”
Before I get started, I want to thank Chip for his trip report. We want to hear about poor conditions so others can avoid going to those trails. I’m glad the first half of his trip was fun, but I imagine it’s the last time he’ll phone me the night before a trip to ask for my advice. 🙁
Julian Smith from the National Team Development Centre in Thunder Bay
The conditions at the Canmore Nordic Centre are terrific on the man-made snow. There’s also lots more terrain opened up since the initial 2K of Frozen Thunder. My GPS indicated the perimeter loop, starting at the daylodge, was 2.8K. Within the perimeter there are, by my guess, about another 2K of trails.
There are some challenging hills at the Canmore Nordic Centre
The tracks were hard and fast but I wouldn’t consider them icy. I didn’t know what to expect, so I did my first loop on my Fischer Twin Skins and I had excellent grip. Later, wanting to see how waxable skis would perform, I used VR55(0/-3) and did well.
The snow guns on Banff Trail are waiting for colder temperatures to resume snow-making.
It was too warm for the snow guns to be operating, but the forecast for tonight is calling for -4 which is borderline for snowmaking. It starts turning colder on Thursday night and there’s even a bit of snow in the forecast, but not much. The ever-optimistic Snow Forecast is only predicting 3 cm for Elk Pass which is still not enough to start tracksetting. The Elk Pass contestants are slowly falling by the wayside.
A six-lane grid is available for training
The air temperature at 3 pm was +1, but the snow was nice and cold.
I enjoyed meeting Julian Smith from the National Team Development Centre in Thunder Bay. He’s in Canmore with a number of teammates for training. They will be competing in this weekend’s Alberta Cup races, so look for his name at the top of the results.
More trails have opened up since the initial Frozen Thunder started one month ago.
With the Alberta Cup competition on the weekend, there will be very limited terrain open to the public at the nordic centre. If the snow guns can operate in the interim, they might get a few hundred metres of Banff trail open. There’s a six-lane training grid available in front of the daylodge if you’re a beginner.
I also enjoyed meeting the friendly puppy named Selwin who was patiently waiting for her ski lesson.
Canmore Nordic Centre Nov 21, 2018
We tried skiing yesterday at CNC in the AM out beyond the snowmaking. We need snow ! https://www.facebook.com/groups/1294354243924226/permalink/2852665274759774/