Matt described it yesterday - the ridge is the place to go for great skiing. I set out to verify that the tracksetting has reached McKinstry - it hasn't yet - another skier told me the tracksetting reaches only to the old McKinstry (at the 2km to shelter sign).

I decided to bend to the temperature and go classic. my route was:
P10 => FP => #1 => lookout => #1 => Blanchet + 1km => #1 => CP => FP => P10. Up to Blanchet the classic tracks were hard, fast, and flawless. After Blanchet the tracksetting was as good as it could be but suffered from the problems of a newly opened trail: Demsis has concentrated on compaction with only a single classic track; the trail is uneven and there are still branches buried in the snow. With the exception the newly-opened section, the skating lane everywhere was hard, fast, but with enough surface to allow lots of control.

On the way back Demsis treated this old classic skier with new double tracks on both sides of the CP and FP - they were soft and well-formed -a great way to go back home to P10. As is only just, the skating lane was left undone; however, it was still quite good.

There are are snowmobile tracks on #9 (Western) so maybe the real skiers will soon be able to ski a real trail.

Burma is still closed. #2, #24, and #1b have not been trackset but have a hard base with about 3 cm of new snow on top and would be quite skiable.

After skiing the north end on the weekend and after my experience of today, my advice is to ski the ridge - that's where you're going to find the best snow and the best tracksetting.