Author: Jesse Crocker

We decided not to groom Como today as was planned, there is about an inch of snow over very firm snow. The skiing is pretty good and grooming would only make things worse. Conditions are also ideal for skiing on Lake Como right now.

Trails at Chief Joseph Pass were groomed Thursday and we will be regroomed as needed over the weekend.

Larry Creek grooming update.

From the lower gate to the cattle guard is rough, there is about 30ft. of bare dirt a few hundred yards from the parking lot (take off skis type), otherwise it’s all snow the rest of the way to the upper gate.

I was able to make several passes on the road from the cattle guard up to the upper gate, it came out well. Below that I made one pass in and out.

Due to thin snow, mud and rocks I did not attempt to go on the skid trail routes.

More snow possible next week!

If you like skiing freshly groomed trails there are lots of options in the next few days. This is tentative schedule and definitely subject to change:
Wednesday: Lost Horse (Bitterroot Ridge Runners)
Thursday: Chief Joseph Pass Multi Use Trails. Larry Creek. Skalkaho-Rye(Bitterroot Ridge Runners)
Friday: Chief Joseph Pass Ski Trails. Como Trails. Skalkaho (Bitterroot Ridge Runners)

All ski trails at Chief Joseph Pass were groomed today.

Como was groomed today. We took advantage of the cold night and lower temps today.

Quick little downslope storm Tuesday night/Wednesday morning dropped a fair amount of snow up there. It started out a wet rain mix, but went to snow quickly, 3+” on the Lower Road, 6-8″ on Middle Road and 8-10″ on Upper Road.

It went down into the low teens last night and was clear out, that dried the snowpack out some more. The colder temps this morning allowed us to get to all of it without having to race the warm temps and wet snow issues that have been chasing us out early for the past weeks.

We used the rollers today to get the new snow carefully packed down over the old hard snow and ice under it, we were able to turn it into a much more skiable surface.

Not going to be very skateable, soft corduroy over 2″ of dense powder, the Lower Road might set up enough by the weekend due to the thinner snow cover and firmer snow under the surface. All of the upper roads will be too soft to skate but wonderful for touring.

This would be a good time to ski the Lower/Middle loop, use “Chute’ to connect them, it’s a well packed, quick hike between Middle and Lower Roads. Works out to be around a 12-mile ski round trip and skis best in a clockwise direction. There are trail signs at all of the key junctions.

Como was groomed today.

Should be firm enough for skating now, still a bit soft due to all of the new snow, but with 2 days of grooming this week we’ve got it more firmed up.

The crew was able to get to all of the trails this time. 550A was looking good when we left, we’ve tried to keep a path to the side of the truck ruts flattened out for skiers to get out to the gate and Shannon Gulch/Wolf Track. Skiing gets much better past the gate.

Spring conditions, got into the high 40’s up there by 4:00, tonight a chance of rain followed by 1/2 to 1″ of new snow by morning. Just barely going below freezing tonight so it won’t set up too hard.

Strong inversion, much colder in town than up there!

Best skiing is mid-day, gets really soft after 3:00.

Trails at Larry Creek were groomed today. The coverage is the best so far this season, and the grooming came out really nicely nice. If your looking for somewhere to XC ski Thursday morning this will be the place to go.

All trails except Lower Road were groomed at Como today. The conditions were not ideal, 6 inches of very cold snow on top of ice, so the trail is still very soft and not totally flat. It should be good conditions for classic skiing but probably too soft for skate or fat biking. The recent snow has also nicely covered the lake and conditions on the lake are good for classic skiing and fat biking but not for skate skiing.