Open, 24º and partly cloudy. Expected high today 29º. Skiing today is fair to good, hard pack skiing, getting a little fast with a lot of thin spots. Turkey, Woodcock, Snow Goose, Grouse and Peregrine are open. 16 km, classic and 6 km skate. The Chickadee is open today, recommended only if you have a strong snowplow.

We have now been open 21 days. Not in a row. We opened the 18th of December after the dump of powdery, fluffy snow, 44.8 inches which fell in about 14 hours. Ian was able to groom it, and that snow gave us 6 days of glorious skiing. Large amounts of snow are incredible hard on grooming machines, broke the bogey wheel on the Ranger. On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day it rained and that deep, beautiful snow, all but a few inches, pretty much melted in 18 hours. A few days later we then opened for season pass holders only for 4 or 5 days. We were only able to open with 3 km skiing after a shoveling party. Not that they were partying, just that it took about 15 people to get it skiable again. The storm that showed up for New Year’s turned out to be heavy, wet snow and was/is good base. We have now been skiing on that 3.5 inches of snow for 10 days. That snow is tired, thin and hard. BUT, it is skiing and we are happy to have 16 km of fair to OK skiing.

There are now snowflakes in the forecast. Starting Friday night, continuing Saturday, and ending Saturday night. The skiing on Saturday will improve if it really snows. But Ian won’t groom until Saturday night or Sunday morning depending on what actually falls from the sky.