Whew!  The busiest week of the whole year — and we don’t just mean the busiest week of winter, we do mean the entire year — is over. Once again the Gunflint Trail was the primary destination for skiing in the area, so our trail system was very busy.  Summer Home and Campground Trails were especially hard-used. Too many people out there on many days this past week.  As the week wore on, both sides of the trail system opened more tracked trails.  This helped spread out the trail use a bit more.

Luckily, we’ve received some additional snow on most days and with constant daily grooming, those busy trails stayed pretty good. Most of the system is groomed and tracked now.  Check at the lodges before you head out skiing in order to learn which trails are currently the best. 

When Bob came back from grooming the Poplar Creek trail, he said it ranged from poor to excellent, all on the same trail.  Overall, skiers are saying that they’ve been pretty happy with trail conditions.  Low snow for us on the Gunflint Trail is still better than “good snow” in many other areas.  We have snow in our forecast again. 

When you drive up the North Shore and the Gunflint Trail to visit us, don’t let the snow conditions you’ll see in Grand Marais and along the shore worry you.  When you drive up the Trail, you’ll start to see our deeper snow fairly soon.  Once again, our higher elevation has been an advantage.

A large percentage of people vacationing over the Christmas break left the area today, as many students need to return to school on Wednesday.  You should find the trails to be much more secluded now.