Wirth

Good—and better now that we threw snow on a bunch of portions.

I went to shovel at 3:00 this afternoon as the trails at Wirth, per my last report, could use some TLC. We hit the trails and shoveled the top of the hill by the houses, the bottom of that hill in the woods, and then headed over to the new little loop back by the maintenance shed. We threw a lot of snow on the lead-in to that section, which is now not dirty, but the outlet was in such bad shape that we left it to a Pisten Bully and/or a snow machine, hopefully. We then headed off the race course to patch up a dirty hill with a southern exposure in the woods which was particularly mulchy/dirty. Still, there is 8-10 inches of pretty dense snow on the golf course and in the woods, which makes shoveling much easier than it has been in years past when we patched up the course with two inches of slush.

When the sun went down, I made a loop of the trails to check them out and they were generally in fine skis (most of the earlier movement was done in one of the bins which we used to carry snow behind the sled, which nearly led to a couple of tree encounters). The "newly fallen" snow will need to be groomed out some, and for now is very soft, but hopefully it will set up well tonight. There are some scattered thin spots and it is quite firm, but fast and with an edge. I also skied the new loop up by the snowboard hill and it is Mount Itasca-steep—the climb and ensuing downhill will add a degree of difficulty to the race this weekend.

I wish I'd brought my camera as it was a gorgeous afternoon to spend outside.