The NCC ski trail page shows (for the first time this season) that Gatineau Park ski trails are now considered “open” (well, a few of them at least).
The NCC ski conditions website still says
- % Recommended Network “0 %,” and
- Recommended Starting Points “None”
but they also say
plus
- Maintenance work has begun on the Parkway network (compaction only).
- Please Note: Patches of asphalt are exposed on the Parkways.
The following courtesy of xczone via TriRudy:
Partially groomed from P10 to the T junction. Rock skis to be safe but you may be able to get away with good skis. Thin coverage. Only parkways at high elevation are good today. Too many rocks on ridge still.
The weather office is calling for 50cm of snow in Chelsea this weekend.
Although Twitter has been ringing with celebrations of “lots of snow” in Gatineau Park the fact of the matter is there is “just enough snow” to get a real ski in. Here’s a photo of the north loop from P8 showing plenty of pavement. Not the most encouraging place to start, although the view south toward Penguin looked much better.
In contrast, below is the view up Fortune Lake hill from P10. That’s where I skated. There was snow all the way up with only a few places where the blacktop had been exposed though I could feel the pavement beneath my ski poles with every stride.
The sequel:
As reported by Jo-Ann I skied yesterday, via Fischer Crown waxless, to the intersection of #1 blue and the old #10. I could have done the additional 1km+ to the tower without problem.
Up to the Wolf Ridge I found conditions difficu. . .
P12-trail 40, 24, Ridge to Wolf, along Ridge to trail 2 to P12.
Having almost skied yesterday, Ron's last report inspired me to get out today for a final farewell ski. Now that I've seen how much snow is left on the "dark side" of the . . .
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.
The NCC website reports today that after Friday they won’t be updating the trail conditions unless there is another dump of snow.
Oh, and their server is on the fritz again and doesn’t seem to be listing which trails are which that can’t be skied on.
Ah well…
There’s still coverage from P12 (probably) to the tower - there was 2 cm of new snow yesterday which made the surface more even and much cleaner. There are some bare spots but not substantively more than on the weekend.
I skated from P12 wit. . .
