Winter Wonderland!

 

If you are hanging out in town you are probably unaware that Chimney Park is currently a winter wonderland. After we finished with grooming on Saturday it snowed another 3-4 inches. This brought the total for that storm to between 10-12”, depending on where you measure. For some reason the Railtrail & Rachel’s O have gotten significantly more snow this season.

The High School Team & the Shanghai University of Sport, part of the UW Team, did a time trial around Jelm today. Thus we hit it early & hard. Two passes with the roller and 2 with the tidtech plus some snow fence building and shoveling. 90% of it is awesome, there are less wind blown bare spots but they do exist so be mindful. 

Once we finished Jelm we rolled the Railtrail, Rachel’s O, and Porter. We have had a request to pack Lodegpole & Woods Creek Trail. We tried Lodgepole but hit a huge downed tree. We haven’t tried Woods Creek yet, we’ll see if we have time someday. I’m not sure we know exactly where it goes so that will be an adventure. Time for Gaia Maps & tracking the trail live!

Rachel & Christi will be out of town for a few days so we’ll hand it off to other crews. 

Get out and ski on some of the only trails with snow in the region. Its AMAZING!

What a difference a day makes!

 

We went from hard packed/icy conditions with lots of bare sports to beautiful, 100% coverage in 24 hours!

Upon our arrival there was about 4 niches of lovely, packable snow. We rolled Railtrail and around Rachel’s O twice. No bare spots, no rocks, just beautiful! We also ran around Jelm and reclaimed it for skiing. 100% coverage there as well. 

We skied a lap on Jelm and then jumped back on to try Lodgepole but ran into a huge tree that was a tad too much for this evening with a handsaw. 

We then took a lap around Porter. Thanks to Ella, Ben, & Tighe there were no downed trees and the trail buffed out fantastic. 

Snow was still falling when we left. 

Nothing but 100% Totally Worth It!!!

There is still some good skiing!

 The warm temperatures and the sun yesterday didn’t do the trails any favors. There are now substantial parts of Jelm that are beautiful to hike. You will need skis to get there so maybe a Chimney Park Duathlon is in order. 

The great news is Christi & Rachel got out to the Railtrail and Rachel’s O. There are a few small bare spots but once you are out there the skiing is AMAZING! We know, we took a fast, fun skate around it after grooming. Now is not too late to get out there and enjoy the day!

Hoping the forecast is correct and we’ll get some additional snow this weekend. We hope to be rolling some beautiful new snow tomorrow and Sunday! 

Get out there and enjoy the day!

Wow! Warm out there but the snow is still hanging on!

 We did a lot of work to keep the good stuff Ben, Ella, & Tighe have been doing. 

We used the tidtac to buff out the melt a bit. Jelm has some major bare spots but the rest is lovely. We put in some wind fencing at the top corner. Also, another truck drove part way counter clockwise up and around. We did get permission to lock the gate where they have been accessing the trails so hopefully that’s the last of the issues. We went around it twice to work on the ruts. 

The Railtrail buffed out nicely to the crossroad. Ella & Ben got the Bullard out so we started down the part of the railtrail we hadn’t groomed but quickly ran into downed trees. We took some out and then had to turn around. 

The places we hit are nice and better skiing than most of the state & northern Colorado. 

We’ll take a roller out to hit the full railtrail & the rest of the loops Friday. 

Enjoy and don’t forget to donate to help pay for our gas!

Change of groomer for a few days!

 Rachel & Christi will be headed out to see what we can do on December 24 & 26. 

Looking forward to continuing the work by Ben and Ella!

See you out there!

Bollards and Trees be gone

 We went back up today and took care of the remaining trees on Porters. We groomed Jelm View, Porters, and the Rail Trail twice wide so most everything is skate-able (we know you have been asking). The bollard on the Rail Trail has been removed thanks to the loaning of the Bollard Puller 3000 (handyman jack), so you may expect, in the coming weeks, the trail to be packed further out. There are the usual thin spots on the Rail Trail, Porters, and Jelm View. As we left today ~2 pm there was a lot of snow falling.

We tried...

We did a little bit of grooming and a lot of chainsawing.... the grooming being more of a method of transportation to the next down tree(s) than the main accomplishment of our outing. We took a lap of Jelm View and then started out counter clockwise on Porters. We were forced to turn around a little over half way around Porters when our second chainsaw battery ran out. We set tracks on the way back because why not. We'll head back up in the morning with charged batteries and keep working on the tree situation.

Weekend Grooming Plans

We plan to groom the trails Friday afternoon/evening. If there is substantial new snow we may groom or roll on Saturday or Sunday but that is not currently in our plans.

Don't trip over the track...

Ben was out there all day working on the trails! Jelm View, Porters, and the Rail Trail have all been groomed and classic tracks have been set (or at least attempted) on all of those trails! They are wide enough in most places to skate as well. After the large amount of snow we received last week, we've had some wind and warm weather. This has helped firm up the trails a bit more but has also opened up the usual bare spots on Jelm View and Porters. Where the coverage is good, it's amazing, and where it's not, it's pretty rocky. I did choose a particularly nice stretch of trail to take a picture...

We received very positive feedback about our preemptive post yesterday! Moving forward, we will try to post our planned grooming schedule ahead of time to help you all with planning. Most likely, our next grooming will be Friday evening.

Grooming tomorrow!

 We wanted to give folks a heads up that we plan to be out grooming tomorrow morning (as in Sunday Dec 14). We will continue to prioritize making Jelm View and Porters nice and may roll the rail trail if time allows. Hope to see you out there!

SO. MUCH. SNOW!

It has snowed so much in the last few days that we no longer need to (or can) measure it in inches. All you need to know that there is a lot of it! While we're super excited about the fact that there is this much snow, it has presented some challenges for grooming. We spent some time Saturday rolling Jelm View and Porters, but it was snowing so hard, you would barely notice. We returned this morning to blue skies and rolled Jelm View and Porters 2x each. They are still a little soft but are starting to set up quite nicely!

Let’s GOOOOOO!

 Got out and rolled the 8-10 inches of new snow this morning. We weren’t planning it, just planning to drop the machine but the snow was beautiful and we did a lap around the rail trail loop. Wish we had more time but it was nice when we left & still snowing!