It was a five star but even better it was a five swamp day - this has been my best ski day of this season. My route was FP, CP, #1 to my favorite swamp past #24, and on return #1, Ridge to Huron, CP, and FP back to P10. Sheila has described the excellent conditions on the parkways where they have been groomed. Between Huron and Champlain it's the usual ice and asphalt combination; however, I didn't have to take off my skis. Past Champlain, on #1, there is lots of snow: if Demsis had groomed, conditions would have been truly extraordinary; however, this morning it was hard and quite rutted so I resorted to double-poling in the classic tracks. On the way back the sun had had softened the ruts so that skating #1 was much more pleasurable.

With the exception of the lookouts coverage is quite uniform. Things are getting thin at the bench on #1. The sunny sections CP and FP are turning to corn snow so there will probably be bare spots in those sections in the days to come.

Today I have skied dry powder, renovated granular, hard-pack, soft wet powder, and corn snow - I never had to ski slow slush. That has to be the ultimate in April conditions.

The best, however, was crust-cruising the swamps. The surface stayed firm throughout the day with about 1 cm of powder on top from yesterday. I missed some swamps but I managed to enjoy the main ones - five in number.