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 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.
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.
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