This was going to be day to visit an old friend - Lusk Lake via #54 black with a nice easy run down #54 green - starting from P16 and commuting via #50. When I got to the end of Lac Philippe there was a single ski track on #54. Being a Chardonnay-sipping dilettante skier on Madhus Tetrasonic skis I decided that it would be much too much effort climbing up to Lusk Lake on narrow skis waxed for tracks through the deep fluff - so I continued for about 1 km beside Lac Philippe and then returned to P16. If only a brigade of real skiers on real skis had gone up laying down a good track everything would have been fine.

Notwithstanding the situation with #54, conditions were fine throughout: #36, #50, & #52 were trackset this AM and are in great shape. For the skaters, the Demsis ridge has largely disappeared with a good, wide, flat skating track in most places. In some places there was a bit of a ridge where the tracksetting was difficult such a tight curves and the Meech Valley wind-tunnel; however, it’s not a major problem and I probably wouldn’t have noticed if I hadn’t been looking for it.

For reasons unknown I had problems with my kick wax. I started off with Swix blue V30; then changed to Vauhti carrot which didn’t work much better; finally I switched to Swix VF30 (fluor predecessor to VR30) which seemed to work better. Perhaps the problem was that the snow is just getting a touch old.