Author: SWNSC

Classic Track: No

Happy Spring to everyone! It’s always happier when we get into the good March flow of moisture. When we do see spring take off in full flight, the flowers and trees are gonna be amazing.

This week’s snow total, accumulated pretty much every day, has been impressive. There was a foot of new, heavy, wet snow up there this evening. I thought there was a lot from yesterday, but today’s total was even better.

Ben Southworth has been learning the ropes with all of this grooming business, and during these challenging March conditions, no less. After wading through the Sierra Cement to get to the shop and grooming implements, we had some digging out to do first. That was the start to a long evening.

Essentially, it was a bit of a struggle all evening. Heavy drifting and the deep, wet snow created some rough situations to deal with. We basically just broke trail at first, then finally did what we could with the groomers. The final result is not perfect, but with our newly procured YTS Ginzu groomer and good ol’ Tidd G2, we were able to get somewhat of a smooth, well packed surface by the end.

It still needs some polishing, but it should be ok for skate, and soft enough to be easy for classic touring too. We’ll see if we can get a track set in the next 2 to 3 days. That would be nice for the weekend.

So, get out to enjoy these late March conditions!

Classic Track: Yes

Trails were groomed and classic track was set. It had been above freezing for a long period of time, making them soft and not structurally very strong on the surface. While it was freezing up while I was out there, there are a few places where the machine tracks left somewhat of a rut, mainly where wind caused drifts over the past two weeks. More grooming traffic and settling will alleviate that.

There’s still a good snow pack, but it’s definitely spring skiing now with these warm days and less cold nights. The meadow trails had good cold snow and will ski the best. Parts of the tree trails were also still cold dry snow, but there are parts that have transformed into slushy corn snow.

We have probably two weeks of grooming/skiing left if we don’t receive any more snow. Conditions should be good tomorrow through the weekend.

Enjoy!

The snow gods have finally blessed our area with some of the Pacific stream of storms that seemingly everyone else in the West have been getting. We were missing out until early January, but now we’re looking pretty good. Groomers have been staying on top of things and will continue making improvements as we hopefully continue to get more snow (check the FB page for condition updates). Lots of happy skiers out there! There are also other places to go ski around the Jemez, such as the Valles Caldera, the Bandelier ski trails (just before the Caldera), lots of the old roads, and of course, San Antonio hot springs. Check out the picks of the Gibson family, who led a group out there recently!