Conditions: Fresh groomed corduroy with shoveled snow over the ice puddles.
Great skiing today on the 5km. This most recent grooming has helped to smooth out the trail. Really good conditions for this minimal amount of snow.
Thanks to Dave and John and everyone else who has been helping for all the great grooming efforts!

(Bruce Bauer)

Conditions: Good coverage on the 5K loop and special K, with about a dozen icy patches.
Skied mid-morning on wonderful natural snow, with even a few breaks in the clouds for the glowing orb! Trail was a little uneven, but I'm spoiled by the manmade conditions in the Cities. Plenty of snow, except for the sections where they had water pooling yesterday, which are now frozen -- most of those are short and shoveling might help. Trees and bushes were covered in snow, very pretty, with a few of them overhanging the trail. The 10K side was ungroomed. I'd recommend B skis because of the ice patches and a few sticks, but otherwise I didn't see any thin areas or rocks. Very happy to be on the real stuff!

Photos:

(Bruce Adelsman)

Conditions: 4 inches heavy snow; rolled and groomed this afternoon; Good.
5K loop packed and groomed the fresh snow ; beautiful skate deck result, with a few wet spots one can ski through. Winter Wonderland! I thought of this beautiful thick snowfall as "Boyd's Gift" (Boyd Christiansen, long time Duluth XC skier, died Sunday).

Photos:

(Dave Arvold)

As Dave said, surprisingly good. I did a couple of laps around the 5K, including Special K, at about 11 AM Thursday. Some sections quite good, but lots of short "skating rink" sections, where the quads burned trying to keep going straight (even with a fair amount of off-season roller skiing!). First two pictures are looking both directions from the same spot (near 1 K marker) to show variability of conditions. One big difference from previous years, trail is cut a good meter to 2 meters wider. Should be great when (not if, I'm an optimist) we get real winter.

Photos:

(Tim Holst)

Conditions: Fair-- Skiable, and just groomed.
Skied the 5 K loop at 3PM. Packed and groomed for skate only. Surprisingly good, with how wet the snowfall was. Only rare rocks, and some slushy patches, but didn't have to take skis off to get through. Thanks to John for grooming today! Didn't go on the 10 K, but believe it was not completely groomed or skiable.

(Dave Arvold)