Garry and I were hoping that Paul had filed a report, as we did meet him as we were setting out. Mine is going to be a bit negative, sorry about that. Paul did use the word "crunchy" when we were speaking with him. He had skied a loop of 51 and 53.

Garry agreed to go classic - 5th time this year, a record. We had fantastic winter weather, beautiful scenery and a memorable, if exhausting ski. Everything was groomed and had hardened thoroughly. Some of the tracks were excellent, many were very thin, wiggly and icy. The grip wax worked well in some spots and not at all in others. Conditions were somewhat icier on the north side of 51 than they had been on 53, so we gave up our plan to ski all of the wooded area of 55 - it was just taking too long without reliable grip. Trail 50 was in generally poor condition, both for skating (very hard, and marked with snowmobile tracks) and classic. In fact, the classic lane completely disappeared on the last downhill.