After starting this blog numerous times over the past few days, we finally have a few minutes to catch up on the current ski trail situation.  We’ve been patiently prepping the grooming equipment and waiting for snow.  Tracks went on the pisten bully this week and the Tidd Tech G2 snowmobile groomer was tuned up.  We have a new roller, and earlier in the week we received enough snow to try that out.  We rolled Summer Home, Campground, Lit Loop, Oxcart, and Bear Cub Trails on 11/22, resulting in fairly good early season skate skiing with “rock skis.”

The big snow started on Wednesday night, into Thanksgiving morning.  This would not be considered perfect timing for lodge owners with a full resort, lots of staff off for Thanksgiving, and a turkey dinner to eat sometime during the day! Amazingly, we did get a first grooming completed Thursday on Summer Home, Campground, Oxcart, and the Lit Loop.

It all blew shut overnight.  @@

Snow continued yesterday, but Bob groomed all those trails again (except for Oxcart) on Friday.  Most of our guests with Thanksgiving reservations weren’t expecting a ski weekend, given our recent history of no snow on these dates, but they were eager to get out on the trails so we kept grooming in spite of the falling snow. Skiers reported relatively good early season conditions.

This morning Bob is out in the Pisten Bully again, with the goal of getting Beaver Dam groomed for the first time. The first grooming of any trail is always slower.  We cleared fallen trees, long grass, and big branches off the trails repeatedly this fall, but we experienced a lot of wind damage again recently that will need to be cleaned up as the groomer gets to it now.   Still, the unexpected early deep snow has given us a nice head start on the ski season.  In the upcoming week we will continue to groom the rest of the trails. 

 Any trails that cross over water will not be available for quite a while yet.  East Bearskin Lake started to freeze a week ago and if you look at our webcam now, the lake looks just like it does mid-winter.  That’s deceiving, as the ice is not in any way passable yet. 

We  feel fortunate that our equipment was ready to go when the unexpected early snow fell; there are a number of trails in the area that aren’t being groomed yet because equipment wasn’t available.  Historically, big snows in our area have been arriving later; we haven’t received this much snow by this date since 1995.  The surprise new snow has created a great opportunity for guests to sneak in an early season getaway at an exceptionally good price. Our early season special is going from December 1-17, offering three days for the price of two days. Many of those dates are already in Value Season, with the lowest prices of each year.   Unless we get some bizarre weather change, trails should be in great shape for all of these bargain dates.

During the ski season we try very hard to update this blog often, but realistically, we are sometimes too busy running a resort to get around to writing this.  If you are wondering about current ski conditions, there are lots of additional ways to check on our trails.  We post trail reports on Skinny Ski often; many of our regular local skiers and guests also post reports there. (Thanks!)  Our Facebook site and our Daily Photo site on Flickr both take so little time to update that they are often updated very rapidly, before we get to the blog.  And you can always call our front desk (800 338 4170) or e-mail stay@bearskin.com  for quick answers.