No Grooming on Gatineau Park Back Trails

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Last winter I was skiing on Trail #8 in Gatineau Park and asking every skier I met whether they thought the grooming improved the trail or made it worse.

Grooming trails that the NCC mark with a black diamond is different than grooming the parkway system and different skiers have different opinions on whether back trail grooming makes things better or worse.

For instance Harold Blount at his website advocates for no grooming at all on these trails.

The NCC is planning a change to their grooming of these back trails starting this winter; no grooming.

They’re interested in hearing what skiers who like these trails think of the change but they are most concerned about safety and their ability to extract an injured skier. One of the worries is that a rescue snowmobile could get stuck on an ungroomed trail. They are actually doing simulations to practice getting a downed skier out in a sled pulled by a rescue team on foot.

So skiers need to be aware of this. Best practice is to ski in groups and to have a cell phone or two-way radio with you. A rescue may or may not take longer without a snowmobile but why add minutes or hours because no one knows you’ve ripped your ankle to shreds.

There are a number of other questions surrounding the grooming issue and I invite you to discuss them a little using the GuideGatineau forum.

For instance if the NCC are not bringing snow machines into these back trails fallen trees and branches will be more difficult to remove. Should the NCC work with trail users to keep these trails clear? How safe is it for volunteers to ski with bucksaws in their packs?

The trail condition reports at the NCC website have at the time of this writing been persistently marked with big red X’s as being not recommended. But they are in great shape for this time of year. The problem is that without grooming them the Park is only beginning to rely on reports back from ski patrollers to find out if they should recommend them.

There are other issues; will we see more snowshoe tracks on these back trails?

So what I’d like you to do, if you are a skier who uses trails like #8 and #17 is to visit the GuideGatineau discussion forum and see if you have opinions to add.

More than that, as the season progresses, if you learn to love or hate the grooming situation come back and comment again.

Note: Comments are closed on this post because I want to direct discussion to the forum thread.