It's been a great few days seeing old and new faces out at GANC enjoying some great early season snow! All of our crews have been putting in hard work to get ready for this coming weekends races, and starting tonight through race weekend, we are going to be doing some intensive work to get our final product ready. That means a lot of snow cat traffic, stadium set-up, snowmaking work being done, which is going to take up quite a bit of the available snow surface for skiing. We will be closing and diverting traffic through the system through our foreseeable future, so please bear this in mind if you plan to come out this next week. This is perhaps our most critical step to host an incredible race, so your patience and support means a whole lot to us!

(Erik Blow)

Great skiing out at GANC. Nice skate deck and classic tracks. Super fun to be so social seeing old friends while getting in a good ski. Thank you Erik and Spirit for getting things going and putting in so much work for the race next weekend!

(Matthew Ryan)

We will continue to have our stadium loop open today, as well as up the downhill musher alpine run to the road crossing. Tracks were set this morning and look great! As always, please bear in mind that we are actively snowmaking so keep an eye out for equipment, personnel, and those red snow cats that make it all happen. We will be closing off portions throughout the day to start moving snow around in the upper loops, so please respect any signage or barricades. Thank you!

Photos:

(Erik Blow)

The snowmaking crew are giving thanks to great temperatures these past few days and nights and have made a lot of great progress in getting the snow down at Grand Avenue Nordic Center. After assessment this morning, we will be opening our stadium to skiing up to the first valve house and to the bottom of the alpine runs. We are still making snow on the rest of the system and will be travelling around with snowcats, snow guns, ATV’s etc, so please stay to the designated areas for everyone’s safety.
We are working as quickly as we can to open more, but are weighing that with making sure that we have enough snow where we need it to be before moving on to avoid closing areas down unnecessarily. There may be times where we need to adjust where we are open to accommodate for the distribution of snow with our cats, and final blade work in preparation for the CXC Cup Super Tour race next weekend. Please respect the areas we need to close to do this work to make this great event happen; the groomers thank you!
We hope to see you all out soon enjoying your first laps of the season!

(Erik Blow)

As many are aware by now, we are well underway in our snowmaking efforts here at GANC for the impending SuperTour races December 4th and 5th. We’ve been making great progress with some agreeable overnight temperatures and there’s a few more cold nights in our future to take advantage of! Despite what seems like an abundance of skiable snow from afar, we are not quite at the point to be open for general skiing as we are still in the process of pushing out, moving equipment, and getting everything set up for the races. Depending on how things play out with how much more snow we can get out before the temperatures shut us down again, we may be able to provide something to the public. Please keep tuned to hear more if that turns into a reality or not. Cheers and happy (hopeful) skiing!

Photos:

(Erik Blow)

The course had its final mow today and snow guns are in place waiting for snow making temperatures. The first scheduled race of the season is the Duluth SuperTour, December 4&5. We'll be making snow specifically for that race weekend and course, then returning with the snow guns to make our minimal 18" base throughout. All eyes are on the thermometer.

Photos:

(Larry Mishkar)