It’s that “Yes, we have snow!” time of year again. While the rest of the state wonders what happened to winter, Bearskin still has ample snow.

Step outside any cabin right now, and this is what you’ll find:

Those are 11 inch tall mukluks, pretty deeply buried in the snow. So while we’ve lost a little snow over the last week of warmer temperatures, we had so much to start with that it didn’t matter that some disappeared.

Which brings us to our yearly warning:  try not to worry about the snow as you drive up north and see brown grass and splotchy snow cover along the way.  Most ski trails along the north shore have closed.  As is becoming increasingly typical, rain and warm temperatures along Lake Superior decimated much of the snow cover.  Keep the faith! When you go up the hill to the Gunflint Trail you will see the winter wonderland return. Panic averted; yes,  you will be able to ski!

Which is not to say our snow is as perfect as we’d like it to be.  A week of warm temperatures made it icier than normal.  Our new Pisten Bully is well equipped to renovate icy snow, so Quinn and Bob have been out on the trails repeatedly for the last two days, tilling the snow and forcing it to behave nicely. A few inches of fresh snow on the surface over the next few days would really be appreciated. Try to see if you can make that happen for us, OK? 🙂

Here’s a Golden Eagle measuring  report from earlier this week.

Central Gunflint Ski Trail Conditions on 1-23-17

• New Snow Last 24 hours:  Trace”
• New Snow Last 7 days:  5/8”
• Trail Base, Staked:  Average 10”
• Snow in Woods, Staked:  Average 14”
• Groomed with classic track:  70 km
  Groomed with skate lane:  58 km
• Surface Conditions:  Old snow
• Total snowfall since Nov. 1:  47.25”

Comments:  Despite the warm weather this past week, we still have a lot of snow and good skiing! No green grass or brown dirt here!

The trail base did shrink a little during that stretch, from average of 12 inches to an average of 10 inches. Skiers are reporting good skiing still, with wax-less or red wax for the best results for classic. The classic track is also holding together well.

Almost everything is being re-groomed for the upcoming weekend. Skaters seem very happy with the surface.  Quinn reports that he thinks the classic tracks are B to B+ — not as perfect as our tracks usually are, but not bad considering the warm temps we’ve had. If you’ll be here this weekend, skate skiing might be your first choice for the conditions but both skate and classic skiing should be quite good..