Category: Trail Report

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.

Trails at Como are getting very icy, it’s pretty advanced conditions all over. Doing any more grooming would only make the trails more icy, so we will not be grooming again until we get at least a few inches of snow. It looks like that might happen this weekend, and if it does we will groom early next week.

Ski trails at Chief Joseph pass were groomed yesterday(Thursday). Multi use trails were not groomed.
We also now have an online map showing were the groomer has been in the last 7 days. Location is only reported every 5 minutes, so it doesnt show exactly what was groomed, but it’s good enough to get an idea of what area the groomer has been in.

Como update from Chief Groomer Tony:

Como was groomed today.

Strong inversion, much warmer up there, topped out in the 40’s this afternoon, it has not been below freezing at 5500ft. since 3:00 am on the upper trails.

Volunteer crew had to bail out mid-afternoon, got too warm and the snowmobiles were overheating working in the soft, wet snow.

Top Road did not get groomed, still quite skiable!

All the ski trails at Chief Joseph Pass were groomed today. Multi Use Trails were not groomed today. Should be a great weekend for XC skiing.

Our volunteer grooming crew spent 5 hours on the trails at Lake Como today, and for the first time this season all the trails are groomed. The corduroy is a little rough in some sports because of rapidly warming temperatures. But the warm temperatures worked very well for filling in the many large ruts and holes in the trail. Beware there are some spots of bare on on 550.
This weekend should be great conditions for skiing and snowshoeing. Once the snow has setup overnight it should be good conditions for fat biking as long as temperatures stay bellow freezing.