Reality Check

I’ve seen a number of tweets, trail reports and TriRudy submissions in the last few days talking about how the skiing is still good if you get high enough into Gatineau Park. The NCC trail conditions page even showed the Fortune Parkway as skiable as recently as yesterday (today they show zero percent of the trail network open).

So today I went to find out for myself.

There is still skiing. There were 10 cars in the parking lot (P10) when I arrived. The people I met were all wonderfully happy that there was still skiing.

They were also willing to put up with plenty of very large patches of asphalt and a number of places where the snow was so scarce that it was like a Scottish highland road; one lane with passing places.

Here’s what it looked like just above P10.

There were certainly areas like this, just above Keogan

and I was told by numerous people that once you get past the few hundred yards of snowless parkway at Huron, the conditions are great out toward the fire tower.

But frankly, the season is over. It only the keenest and most enthusiastic skiers who would be willing to take on the walking spaces to get to these dwindling ribbons of last winter’s fun.