Southwest Nordic Ski Club

Whew, what a start to the season and November! We didn’t quite have the hay into the barn before the storms hit us and we had to scramble to get the fencing up (a HUUUGE thank you to everyone for helping out with that), and see if we could maybe get on top of all of that 38″ to 42″ of early season snow. It has not been easy, and there’s been a lot of continuing pre-season issues going on. We didn’t quite have the machine situation squared away yet, so that has been a big part of it the challenges. On top of that, trees have come down, the lone snowmobile can’t quite handle deep snow, grooming equipment was buried and not quite repaired, etc., etc.

The good news is that we did receive a New Mexico Outdoor Recreation grant for the purchase of a good machine for trail maintenance and grooming. For once, we will have something new and specified for what we’re doing. Also, our old Cushman Trackster (a.k.a. “Kermit”) is finally getting a major transmission overhaul. It was losing hydraulic pressure and even leaking fluid, so it was time to completely pull it and tear it down. A HUUUGE thanks to Logan for taking that on.

There have been a lot of parts ordering and night-time repairs going on, but hopefully, we’ll be in a better position when December comes around.

Grooming has been occurring, when time permits for a couple of old guys with jobs. Hopefully, it’ll be more consistent once we get the machines back online.

This turned out to be a good season, if not a bit challenging to keep groomed at times. It was smooth sailing (mostly) until February, when high winds blew down a bunch of trees and debris, and that was on top of a tropical heat wave that settled in for about two weeks and burned up a lot of our great winter base of snow. Thankfully, we’d stayed on top of the grooming and the snow depth was good, so we were able to weather the challenges, so to speak. March was fabulous, with so many BIG snowstorms, but we didn’t have a fully-staffed grooming crew, so it was difficult to stay on top of the big influx of new snow. We managed and there were some great days in there, for sure!

Finally, we still have some fine spring skiing and there was even one last grooming this past weekend, with Kevin getting out and setting a fresh classic track to finish out the season. It was so nice Tuesday evening, with about 1″ of fresh snow on top from the little waves of precip that rolled through during the day.

Thanks to everyone who supported the efforts with volunteering and donations, etc. This is entirely a DIY volunteer program, so it belongs to all of you. We’ll put together another weekend of year-end volunteer work to get the fencing and signs down and stored away until next November.

The equinox begins at 9:06 PM MDT, so there’s officially one more day of winter skiing left, although it’ll feel like spring conditions, at least later in the day. It’ll be pretty nice this morning.

Things were fully groomed last night. Most of it will be nice, but there are some weird spots from the packing with a heavier machine. It was hard to groom through that smoothly. Otherwise, it’s nice. Still LOTS of snow

We may be signing off for the season. We’re out of groomers! It’s been a long season.

Have fun this week!

Well, that 2.5 week heatwave back in late February and March is a thing of the past, and the damage it caused is all but erased, other than some funky side slopes and rolls that weren’t there before. Otherwise, there’s a lot of new snow out there. But, it is spring (starting this week), so things are gonna change fast as soon as the sun starts shining in earnest.

We do have plans to groom a couple more times to get things smoothed out after the weekend. We did have it all packed, rolled, and relatively smooth by Friday evening, but we are REALLY scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of grooming volunteer coverage, so with all that new snow, it was best to save our powder and wait until things settled. We’ll post a new report once we’re done with the grooming.

Speaking of grooming — we need to recruit some more folks for next year. It’s not so bad once you get the hang of it, but it is a bit of a commitment. We’ve improved the process quite a lot over the years and will continue to do so, with new machines and equipment. It’s a lot more automated and modern that it was when all this began. If you’re interested, just email the contact form here. It is kind-of a good job for strong young men, but most of our groomers are over 40, and even 50, so it’s not a “young guy” requirement. We’ve also had a couple of gals pitch in a few times in years past. We do need some diversity 😉

Logan, Kevin, and Clay got out this afternoon and evening to get a jump on the packing and grooming of the trails and all this new snow. It was a booger to get around the trail system with the machines and roller, and especially a groomer.

Logan got things roll packed, but the subsequent effort to groom was not as successful. Machines got seriously stuck so it was mostly a dig-out effort. Everything did get packed out, however so some classic touring should be pretty nice. Plus it’s gonna snow even more.

We’ll attempt to groom more tomorrow and will send out an update.

Also a big thanks to Logan for cutting out the downed trees at the Pt-G cut-off!

Trails were seriously in need of some attention. Everything, including Camp May Rd, was groomed this evening. No classic track was reset. Skate and classic should both be pretty smooth tomorrow. New snow is forecast from Thursday through Sunday. That should be interesting.

Expect spring conditions. Front Hill has 3 short open sections on the lower part then it’s fine up to Pt. A. Use rock skis.

As predicted, winter is making its return after a late February meltdown. It seems to go like this every year now: just as we get a good base of snow built up and groomed out the way we want, everything warms up and we go through a prolonged dry spell that breaks the conditions down to either nothing, or to a point that’s hard to put back together. Thankfully, we didn’t quite get there this year, but things weren’t looking so good earlier in the week.

Actually, things skied pretty nicely after being regroomed Tuesday evening, but it wasn’t gonna last long if we didn’t get new snow. With today’s storm, looks like we’re back in business!

I’m not sure if we’ll get any packing/rolling done tonight, or grooming done in the morning, but certainly, we’ll get out by tomorrow evening to groom. Looks like another, even bigger storm is forecast for later this next week. We’ll keep it going until it really starts to break down. It should be pretty good for at least another couple of weeks with this weather pattern change. Whew!