Unfortunately there are deep tire ruts throughout most of the Herrick Lake-Danada complex, making skate-skiing mostly difficult or not feasible. The section of the Danada-Herrick Lake trail between the Bluebird and Meadowlark trails that didn't have wheel tracks yesterday had fresh tracks today. Despite that, skate-skiing is generally better toward the Herrick Lake side: More of the trails have only a single set of tire ruts, so there is space between them to skate-ski. And, the section of the Green Heron Trail from the Washington St. trailhead going NE (the part going NW is "Closed for Construction") has tracked-implement tracks that have obliterated most of the the wheel tracks and form a narrow, minimalist "groomed" skate deck! Beware, though, there is a fair amount of salty-sandy ice chunks on the trail. I threw or scraped a lot of it off the trail, but with the nature of salt and also my not always being willing to stop for that, there's still some on the trail. Again the trails appear to be in fairly good shape for classical skiing, albeit requiring a fair amount of switching back and forth between ski tracks and tire ruts. ( So why don't I just ski classical? I registered for the Pre-Birkie skate-style event, so I need to train for that!) Hey, at least we have the condition of snow-covered trails to complain about, instead of no snow like last year!

(Russell Schulz)

DuPage County FPD does a decent job of grooming after a snowfall but not much follow up grooming. These are some of the most beautiful trails in Chicagoland area. Downside, within hours of grooming, hikers, fat bikers and vehicles destroy the skating lane. Decent tracks are laid on either side of trails, however, vehicles have wiped these out in many locations. Clearing of junk trees is ongoing on West side and trail section is closed.

(Jack Brandli)

I only went about one mile on the red trail and the blue trail. They groomed a partial depth classic track but there are deep tire tracks on the skate lane in places. It was much less icy than the nearby Arrowhead golf course.

(John Dawson)