Snow on the way

The red chair view of Shadow Lake and Mt Ball. Photo by Normand.

We’ve had some spectacular photos attached to the trip reports over the past few days, so I’m showcasing a few of them in this update. 

Valkyr range in BC. Photo by Alf Skrastins. 

After studying all the weather forecasts, it appears that Ribbon Creek, PLPP, and Canmore are going to receive the lion’s share(10-15 cm) of today’s snowfall with lesser amounts(8 cm) at West Bragg Creek. 

The Weather Network has issued a snowfall warning for Kananaskis.

Pipestone River under Merlin Ridge. Photo by Chuck.

Banff is in line to receive 10 cm which will do well to freshen up the trails. Lake Louise should get enough to cover up the pine needles. Calgary will be lucky to get 1 or 2 cm. 

We’ll have cooler temperatures at least until Friday. It starts to warm up again on the weekend. 

Not much grooming yesterday with the warm temperatures but I see Boulton Creek in PLPP was snowmobile groomed. Upper Telemark and Peyto in Lake Louise were groomed.
******

New grooming surface at the Canmore Nordic Centre

Mike Norton sent in the following article and photos:

(Click on the photo for a larger image)

Some of you may have noticed that there is a new type of Nordic Corduroy at the Canmore Nordic Center, this is a result of a Brand-New retrofit kit for the tiller on their new Prinoth Bison (the Silver Cat, not the Red PistonBulley) this new grooming surface was just introduced at the World championships in Seefeld a couple weeks ago and we have been lucky enough to get it at the Canmore Nordic Center. Prinoth (formally Bombardier) had to do something to gain an advantage over PistonBulley, this is certainly a good start.

If your anal about grooming like me, you will notice these things, most Cats come with an Alpine finish which is quite aggressive for Nordic skiing, after all, its called Alpine for a reason. Piston Bulley does have a Nordic combing which is much better than the Alpine finish and is on the PB Edge at the Nordic Center. All the Ginzugroomers and rollers have the Nordic finish as well.

The difference between the finished product is basically the number and size of the ridges or bumps, the smaller they are the nicer the surface is to ski on. Some Nordic centers have it and some don’t, I truly believe that the Nordic grooming surface is much better for us and its also much safer. We don’t have big heavy skies with metal edges, it can be quite terrifying trying to make a highspeed turn on a frozen Alpine groomed surface, especially in Classic boots.

Those of you out there with a Prinoth Cat (Sovereign Lake, Kimberly, Callaghan, Nelson) at your Nordic Center, you may want to seriously look into changing to this finish, it is a huge improvement to the user experience!