Nice, new tracks today.

Open, 30º at 7am. Forecast high 35º. And it is snowing outside.

Heavy, wet, thick snow. 4 inches so far. Ian is grooming this morning. He will groom the “lower” 10 km for today. You can ski the rest, as back country skiing. It will just be more work. This is the kind of snow waxless skis are made for, and you need to “treat” those waxless skis. We use Maxiglide. There are a couple of other products out there. Once I didn’t have Maxiglide and needed it and thought hand lotion or lip balm probably would have worked. What about olive oil if you have nothing else. Chuck thinks all my other Yankee options are a joke. But….

Over the last 2 days the sugar operation has come together. 

New rig getting up to full speed Thursday afternoon.

The foundation under the arch is new and different. The evaporator is staying level so far. The contraption on top of the back pan is a pre-heater and steam hood. The pre-heater takes the sap from 33º to 160º before it hits the evaporator pans to start making it’s way around to come out as syrup. And the temperature of syrup is 217º. The pre-heater uses the steam created from the evaporator pans to pre-heat the sap. The condensation from that steam then collects and runs thru a hose into buckets and we have hot water for cleaning up. This rig also now sports a fancy new blower, not seen in the picture. The blower uses the wood more efficiently and burns hotter. A win/win all the way around. We have new syrup. We made almost 6 gallons yesterday and we will be boiling again by this afternoon.