Caught up with the groomer around noon today. Trails are fully recovered from the twin calamities of weather and walkers and are skiing great. The fresh snow from the past couple days has covered any debris, and aside from a couple of fallen trees that didn't quite make it to the ground, there's very little evidence of how torn up it was back there. Tracks on the more recently opened trails are predictably soft and slow, but great to see everything opened back up.

Photos:

(Tim Lupfer)

Many of the best trail sections (in my opinion) were still closed from the Christmas storm that downed several trees. We ran into some snowmobilers on the upper back half clearing trees and only had the snowmobile tracks to ski on for a good bit. Slow moving. Still, love this trails, so quant, so peaceful, worth a try, plenty of snow.

(Joel Sundstrom)

Four of us skied the connector trail to Tettegouche breaking trail the whole way once we left the Northwoods Ski Trail system. Props to the folks who have clearly been working hard to open that network. There were fewer trees, branches, and brush across the trail than we were fearing and great conditions for breaking trail. More open in the lowlands and wetlands than I remember from years past.

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(Fred Sproat)

Groomers have done a phenomenal job to get a roughly 4km skiable loop open. Track is deep, solid, and pretty fast. Debris is largely not an issue. Unfortunately, the majority of the small downhills are littered with deep boot prints. The hill before the the second snowmobile crossing is the worst. It's still skiable, but I'd advise caution and a bit of luck. You don't want to catch a tip in one of those.

(Tim Lupfer)

Good conditions, a little uneven in spots and typical tree debris you'd find on a trail through the woods. Only one loop open due to blow downs but ran into some volunteers on the trial that had been working on clearing other loops.

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(Brian Winter)

The storm obviously wreaked havoc and there was a lot of debris, especially at the beginning of the trail where the conifers are most dense. The lovely people who maintain the trail had cleaned up the downed trees (that looked like a lot of work) and groomed a roughly 3km loop. Other trails are not open yet--looking at them, there are many downed trees in the way. Still pretty, still good skiing, and great to be out.

(Diane Mancini)

Had hoped to ski Northwoods this morning but the parking lot is buried in 3 feet of snow. The snowmobile parking lot down the street was being cleared of snow and heavy equipment trucks are piling the snow multiple stories high!

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(Karla Anderson)

Wonderful trail today. Great tracks most of the outside loop, set most recently by skiers not groomer. Glad to get some km in before the storm. Only knock was sticky wet snow.

(Matt Miller)

I went out late afternoon after a couple inches of fresh snow to cover the ice from the refreeze. Skier tracks from prior to the snow were still visible as I broke new trail, pictures show before and after I went through. Be cautious on the downhill right after the first cut-off, there is some new drainage that has not been completely filled with snow yet.

Photos:

(Brad Anderson)

A great day to be out on this beautiful trail despite some rivulets flowing across many low sections. Be careful at those spots. It looks like it was recently groomed, but some snow had accumulated.

Photos:

(John Bankson)