Spring conditions means Thursday the snow surface likely was soft and a bit slushy in the top layers from solar heating, wind, and warm + Chinook temperatures. That soft snow then would have frozen in place overnight.
Just like at downhill ski resorts, in spring snow conditions, noon is generally when the snow surface can be warmed enough by direct solar heating to soften the ski trails and make them enjoyable to ski on once again. But only if it's sunny. If it's cloudy and cool temperatures the next day, that snow more often doesn't soften at all and if it wasn't groomed, it's best to give it a miss!
If the snow was groomed the evening after a day of + temperatures, then the skiing might be enjoyable, depending on whether the grooming freezes in place too, into boiler plate corduroy...that's no fun too...and that happens at ski resorts a lot, depending on the timing of the grooming.
Shaganappi wasn't groomed Thursday night, as we didn't have a volunteer available to do so.
Expect variable conditions Friday and the track setting to be variable as well. Because we are still building up volunteer grooming capacity, Shaganappi is not groomed and track set as well nor as often as it could be...the grooming team of volunteers is a work in progress!
Friday night there will be two volunteers out grooming and hopefully track setting, stay tuned to Nordic Pulse and/or this blog for confirmation.
Some SNO volunteers will be out from 1pm onward today relocating snow at Shaganappi. We will be harvesting snow from a huge snow pile in one parking lot and moving it onto ski trail sections that typically lose snow the fastest due to solar and wind exposure, trying to preserve the trails until the 3rd week of March when typically winter operations shut down so golf course staff can work on opening for summer operations as early as possible.
Boiler plate snow in early January with wind blown debris, likely trails are in similar condition today.
Boiler plate snow from January....