We continue to get our daily dose of snow, a little bit at a time.    It keeps our snow looking fresh and new, but is a grooming challenge.  Yesterday Quinn was grooming in a snow downpour for awhile, which feels a bit futile!  The snow is clinging to the trees beautifully — it couldn’t be more photogenic out there.

The entire system was groomed 1/8.  Since then groomers on both sides have been out periodically to touch up some trails.  There was fresh powder in many tracks, but numerous skiers reported that the snow was enough to give them more control on hills but not so much as to be a problem.  

Quinn noted on one of his grooming runs yesterday through the Campground Trail that winter campers had dragged sleds over the freshly groomed trails.  Campers don’t all seem to realize that pulling sleds over a groomed ski trails means that the whole thing needs to be redone, wasting fuel and time.  We are happy to let campers go out on our packed down dog sledding trail, which is much easier and doesn’t destroy any grooming efforts.

 This morning, after an inch of snow fell yesterday afternoon,  both sides of the system are being regroomed.  Dan reports that he is  “out with the  snowcat today and plans to groom everything on the north side of Flour Lake as well as the North South Link, Wolf Point, the West End Logging Camp, Ridge Run, Moose Pasture and the upper part of the Beaver Dam.  There is a nice solid base for freestyle and good tracks for classic skiing.”

Quinn is out in the Pisten Bully and is working on completing the East Bearskin side of the system.  He is into grooming perfectionism, so it take him awhile to finish.   At this point mid-day Bear Cub, Oxcart, Poplar Creek, Summer Home and Campground are done.  We’ll update this later when he’s done for the day.

We have been lucky so far this winter that trails on lakes weren’t forming slush, but yesterday Quinn started to note some of the first serious slush pockets on our lake trail.   It might be wise to avoid that trail until the slush freezes up again.

More snow is in the forecast for the next few days.

Dan’s measurements:

New Snow Last 24 hours:  1.0 inch
New Snow Last 7 days:  2.25 inches
Trail Base: Snowcat packed: 8 - 9-1/2 inches
Snow in Woods: 16 -18 inches 
Surface Conditions: Powder, packed powder
Snowshoe trail:  Open

Total snowfall since November 1:  44.25 inches  Conditions:  Good to Excellent

Summer Home, Campground, Lower Beaver Dam, and Bear Cub were regroomed today, after a little bit of snow fell overnight.  Oxcart was also freshly groomed. 

Skiers report that the colder temps helped the tracks firm up very nicely.

Oxcart Trail 12.16.10

Here on the Gunflint Trail we continue to get a gradual accumulation of new snow. We never received the mega-dump of snow that made headlines in the Twin Cities, but we’ve received a nice amount of snow in regular 2″-5″ increments.  We enjoyed reading about the massive snowfall in southern Minnesota, but we like our snow in smaller doses, thanks.

Almost all trails on both the Golden Eagle and the Bearskin sides of the Central Gunflint have now been groomed at least once.  Many trails have been groomed several times at this point.   A few of the big, refrigerator-sized boulders still protrude from the snow in spots on certain trails, but that is to be expected at this point. A skier can see the big rocks well ahead of time.

There are some trails that have yet to be groomed.  Poplar Creek mysteriously still has running water over it in one area.  We had a run of -20 degree weather, so this is peculiar. 

The area old Old Logging Camp Trail in and adjacent to the BWCA has not been groomed yet, but should be done soon.

Not all lake crossings have been groomed.  Any lake trail that we can do with the snowmobile Tid Tech G2 groomer has been done, but lake trails that must be groomed with the much heavier pisten bully groomers have not been groomed yet.  Inquire at the resort where you buy your ski pass to get the most current lake crossing conditions.

Yesterday was gorgeous and sunny, but today we are back in the old cycle — snow, snow, snow.  Bob is planning to make a first pass across the lake from Bearskin to the Campground Loop today with the snowmobile to begin packing down that trail.  It will be quite awhile yet before we dare take the pisten bully across the lake, but this is a good early start.

Skiers have been out almost everyday on the groomed trails and overall they are reporting good early season conditions.  Bear Cub, in spite of several packing runs and being groomed with the pisten bully, still seems to be a little on the soft side.  There’s considerably more snow up there, so it probably will require more packing time.  Skiers are generally pleased with Summer Home, Campground, Lit Loop, Beaver Dam and Oxcart Trails at this point.

The forecast is for Bearskin to receive 2-4 more inches of snow today.  It’s coming down pretty seriously now.  Day by day, we’re building an excellent snow base for the rest of winter

After a bit of rain and sleet last night, Bearskin has received wet snow all day today.  The temperature was 36 degrees by staff housing this morning (usually our coldest spot) when the wet stuff turned to huge snowflakes.  This afternoon we see the temps slowly starting to decrease, but it’s still around 25 degrees outside the lodge. The forecast is for it to become a bit colder over the next few days.

The snow has been consistent all day, but hasn’t amounted to many inches — perhaps 3 inches at most.  It’s not windy here, so the snow is clinging beautifully to the trees again.

We won’t be grooming until it quits snowing and gets colder.  The trails that were groomed a few days ago are still available, but there will be quite a bit of wet snow in the tracks.   This is continuing to build a nice base for December.  Early season skiing should be the best it has been in years.

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.

We’re ready for winter.  The trails on the Central Gunflint system have been mowed and trimmed.  Trees have been cleared from the trail, repeatedly.  (It’s been a windy fall — sometimes those trees blow down faster than we can clean them up.)  The trail signs are up.  The pisten bully has been tuned up and repaired; the tracks need to go on, but everything else is in tip-top condition.  We even have a brand new roller, thanks to Uncle Bob Weber, our family’s talented welder.  All we need now is enough snow to started grooming.

The Bearskin snow measuring stick, as snow began to pile up today.

Bit by bit we’ve been accumulating snow during the past week.  We actually didn’t get the 12 inches of snow that the Twin Cities and Duluth received last week, but the snow we did get has stayed.  No melting here.  Today we’ve probably received another 4 inches and it continues to fall steadily. The forecast is for it to snow almost every day this week.

The lake just started freezing a few days ago.  Much of the fresh ice is covered in snow, so it looks deceivingly good.  Obviously, it’s not.  Any part of the trail system that crosses a lake will not be ready for a long time yet.

Andy and Bob are thinking they might get out to pack Summer Home Road as early as Monday, if they are lucky.  At any rate, it looks like it could be a nice early start to the ski season.  We’ll keep you updated.