Terrace Oaks and Wirth/COLL

Before taking her to the airport (and she got out!) my sister and I took the 5k loop around the outside of Terrace Oaks. This was just after witnessing an accident 200 feet in front of us on 35E when some moron lost an SUV in his blind spot and changed lanes in to him. Fun. The skiing was fine, with some detritus on the trail and a few sections which were a bit dirty, but it's a good base, and it's slated to snow just a bit.

After dropping her at the airport I swung by Richfield and picked up Jakob to go ski. He's back from Duluth via San Francisco and hasn't skied yet. I suggested Terrace Oaks which he pointed out was a bit technical for someone who'd not skied. Terrace Oaks was out because I'd been there and Hyland because, as he said, "Hyland sucks." So it was off to Wirth. We parked at the beach and headed up the Loppet course to 394, where the grooming ends. The trail is in terrific shape save, perhaps, the climb up to the road crossing (but the downhill is fine to go up). And the snow is slow over by the freeway—what's new? It started snowing halfway through and by the time we got to the bridge it was coming down pretty good. Jakob suggested we ski the course backwards (with our headlamps on, we hadn't needed them yet) and we did, and there are a few hills on that course, up and down, which are not meant to be skied the wrong way. We also found out that the snow was pretty thin going up the road to the Flower Garden but, uh, that should be short-lived.

I can only get to two trails at most, on a good day! Check out all the trail reports at skinnyski.com