Conditions: Northern Lights - poor overall due to stones and gravel; rock skis only.
I skated a few laps around Northern Lights between 8 and 9 am today. I avoided the steep climb and descent of Thicket Trail. N. Lights is packed, not tracked. Snow coverage is mostly continuous, but very thin. There are patches with lots of exposed gravel and small stones which Three Rivers had used to fill ruts last fall and are now mixed into the thin snow layer. Some of these patches cannot be avoided, so I strongly recommend rock skis. Be careful on the long descent just past the trail junction; there are lots of stones on the steepest stretch, mostly on the left side.

(Ron Refsnider)

Conditions: Pretty good; watch for "wash out" on multi-use trail.
The Glacier of man-made is nice and fast (Valley Trail). Northern Lights is pretty well covered. Lake and Creek trails have some grass poking through, but nothing too dangerous to skis; thin snow overall means not super-even trails. Did the full multi-use trail also, and though more even, it is a little softer -- can't dig too deep with poles, as the scanty snow allows for "tinking" on the pavement with every strike, and push off sometimes pushes the snow on that trail around, too, getting down towards the tarmac. Overall, given what little snow there is, the grooming is pretty nice.

(Andrea Ochmann)

Conditions: Slower after the new snowfall, great control, sunny, lots of skiers.
Skied the valley trail this afternoon with Stevie, fun time. Conditions were good, some sugar developing up the hills, not very fast but great control. Completely different than the day before when it was icy, wicked fast and lots of edging was needed. Many folks of all ages and abilities out today, Elm Creek's in full swing now, nice afternoon!

(Steve Evans)

Conditions: Fair, not groomed on Northern Lights.
Skied the Northern Lights trail and man-made trail this morning classic. No track and skate lane had all loose snow but fun to get out on real snow again.

Photos:

(Wayne Nelson)

Back to normal. My 5:30 morning ski was Birkie start perfect. Classic was firm fast and slick but klister offered great kick. Skating looked fast and pretty sweet.

(Jim Smith)

Conditions: Same as yesterday morning, bad.
Skied from 10 am to noon. Classic was icy, some of the track washed out. Skate was really icy, hard to control the skis.

(Keith Canny)

Icy, hard, not groomed. We tried skiing at 9:30 am. You could possibly classic on the flat, no skate skiing. The snow was very hard. The few people that were out there were calling it dangerous. We attempted to ski but left. The trails were not groomed for skate. Classic tracks were there and available to use but many people were choosing to stay on the flat and go back and forth skipping any hills. Wait until it's groomed before heading out. [ On Christmas Day, Three Rivers staff was on holiday break, thus grooming did not occur. -- Ed. ]

(Bridget Edgar)

Conditions: Interesting mix of new snow on top of a slushy, fairly firm snowmaking layer. Reasonably fast, but not icy.
Skied around 4 pm. Trail had definitely loosened up and was not icy nor did it have any hard ruts. But the snow was probably best described as moist brown sugar -- it wasn't a loose corn snow, it was a dense 2-3" layer on top of the snowmaking base. Definitely required a little more effort to skate, probably would have been a much better day to classic. About 10-15 other skiers out, pretty quiet parking lot. Trail lights had not come on when we left around 4:45, assumed it was the holiday schedule. I'm not going to complain - I felt fortunate to be skiing on snow with everything else in the metro bare ground.

(Bruce Adelsman)

Conditions: Early morning. Light were off and no grooming.
Temps were low enough for all the deep ruts from yesterday to be frozen solid. I felt it was too sketchy to ski in the dark. Returned home for another cup of coffee and a donut. Merry Christmas everyone.

(Don Callander)

Conditions: Wet, mushy, slightly dirty, but still good overall.
2-4+ inches of slushy snow across the whole trail base. The classic track existed on much of the trail. There were some dirty spots. Overall passable. Definitely could use some cooler weather to firm things back up again.

Photos:

(Ben Mullin)