Unfortunately, for the trails on the west side of Naperville Rd, deep tire ruts have rendered the skate decks nearly unusable, although they mostly have an icy crust anyway. Snow cover is essentially complete except for a small area just west of the horse starting gates, which appears to be mainly ice-covered but might contain some rocks. It appears that the vehicle entered and exited the trail from the parking lot near the Forest Preserve District Headquarters. There was a 2-4" deep furrow between skate deck passes. By themselves, the individual bi-directional skate decks are narrow for skate-skiing except for downhill. The wheel ruts continued onto the Green Heron Trail; the Danada-Herrick Lake trail toward Herrick Lake along the south side of Arrowhead didn't have vehicle tracks. The parts in the open were icy, but in the sheltered area the skate-skiing was fairly good. But that area is part of Herrick Lake, not Danada. So, tomorrow I plan to try entering from the Herrick Lake end of the system. It appeared that classical skiing would be fairly good although requiring a lot of switching between ski tracks and wheel ruts. Due to the poor condition of the skate decks, I covered much of the distance double-poling in the classic tracks and tire tracks.

(Russell Schulz)