Very good conditions. There was a pretty snowfall while we were out late this afternoon, just enough to dress things up and to make the kicking slow. Tracks are firm and deep throughout and the recent grooming cleared out a lot of the debris. Really fun ski. The skating looked nice, too.

(Catherine Winter)

The 1” of fresh snow made all the difference. The debris is covered. A couple icy sections aren’t completely covered but are in flat sections. Skating was great for all loops and classic looked like you could use hard wax again.

(Carol Hoklas Koos)

Loads of tree debris in tracks and on the skate deck. Water run offs have created nasty ice floes to the point of forming crevasses. Interesting to see the damage but I recommend going elsewhere, such as Boulder Lake this weekend.

(John Paulson)

Classic skied the lighted loops at night - except for the side loop down to the playground. That stretch can get dicey in marginal conditions so I avoided it. With the exception of trail intersections there was a nice track to cruise along in. Intersections were very washed out. There were some icy patches but they were easily spotted and navigated. There was one large "lake" at the A/B intersection but it's in a very flat area and directly under a light so it's very easily navigated. No ice patch surprises at the bottoms of hills or anything.

Photos:

(Ben Fornear)

Hard and fast! There's one large ice patch on the trail. A few smaller ice patches... a few crevasses that can be skied over. The tracks are hard and fast with some debris. I suspect the trail was groomed in the past few days, but it gets skied in pretty quickly! A few inches of snow would be great!

(Elaine Nelson)

Lester is being groomed right now (11:30). Fresh grooming is significantly helping the skate deck. This freshly groomed track makes it evident that someone is fat-biking the Lester ski trails. If you see anyone biking the ski trail, remind them that there is a multi-use trail adjacent to the ski trail.

(Kristoffer Osthus)

34F. Partly sunny, not much wind. The trail was great. Solid tracks. Not groomed since the dusting of snow Wednesday night. On most of the trail you can't tell that we had 24 hours of rain over the weekend. There are a few spots with ice / water flow. And a few spots where there's a narrow crevasse from one side to another. Kind of like a tomten dug channels for the water so that it wouldn't flood the trail. Easy to ski over.

Photos:

(Louise Levy)

I got a good ski in a Lester this afternoon, all the trail are open and in good shape. Just a few ice flows that need to be stepped around and a few spots were the rain melted a trench in the trail. They are all easily skied past. I classic skied and the tracks were great. Extra blue was kicking great, just needed to reapply once during my ski. A good binder is probably in order. The skate lane looked great, although it wasn't as firm as you might guess. It was softening up a bit on the uphills in the higher traffic areas. Overall great conditions, considering the weather the past week. Thank you City Groomers for working the New Years holiday!

(Matthew Ryan)

Recently groomed and in surprisingly good shape. Tracks are deep and firm. Skating looked nice. Debris is not bad. Watch for a couple of deep fissures running across the trail on the lower main loop.

(Catherine Winter)

Lester was freshly groomed, looks like just this morning. Tracks set, too.

(Annalisa Peterson)