Groomers finally were able to get out on Willow's trails. The warm temps and wet snow were frustrating for everyone. All trails were rolled on Thursday with grooming and tracking scheduled for early Friday morning. The road into the park and all of the parking lots are snow covered and slick. Be careful!

(David Thofern)

Choose to snowshoe instead of ski today. However got to peek at the Orange Trail. Nicely prepped for a set of tracks. Beautiful.

Photos:

(Ginny Ballantine)

Awesome coverage! The skied in classic tracks on Orange and Yellow single snowmobile track was welcome relief...mostly not yet groomed...snowshoers are living it up!

(Peter Rayne)

Groomers had not been out since Tuesday, and several inches of fresh wet snow covered the trail. The skate deck was tough slogging, but I managed 5k. Classic skiers made a nice path on both sides for some double-poling. I called the park and the groomers were out, but it may take a day or two to groom all 26k. Its a winter wonderland out there.

(Nick Schneider)

All the trails were rolled late afternoon into this evening. Additional rolling and final grooming will be dependent on when the snow ends and when snow moisture is suitable for grooming.

(Bill Callas)

In an effort to widen out some of the trails we groomed out the classic tracks on yellow, silver, loop trails on purple and one side of blue in anticipation of new snow. We also groomed the skate deck side of those trails. Full system re-grooming will depend on when the snow stops and how wet the snow is.

(Bill Callas)

The skate deck has been re-groomed and is relatively soft. We left the tracks alone. There was an a little new snow overnight and in most places ski tracks are packing that down somewhat covering the icy bottom of the classic tracks. There is a tree down on Silver to ski around so some of that is not groomed.

(Jeff Roberts)

It looks like the oak trees finally decided to admit it was winter and drop their leaves, so there is quite a bit of leaf litter out there. Some thin spots as the warm weather rolled in but overall a good time. I got overzealous on a downhill on the silver trail and ended up sliding halfway down the hill with my face. It took me until I was finished to realize my sunglasses came off and are probably imbedded in the trail somewhere for future archaeologists to study as they contemplate how I survived that full-scorpion face ski maneuver.

(Joe Osterberg)

Had a very enjoyable first ski of the season. Sun was shining, no wind, 11degrees, great set tracks.... what more could you ask for? Willow is so beautiful and one of my favorite places to ski near the metro. Some debris on trails but overall a very good ski. Thank you groomers.

Photos:

(Woody Croatt)

Excellent conditions on all trail segments. Full depth classic tracks with no windblown snow in them. Skate deck was a little soft for intervals but it will firm up tonight and tomorrow. By a small miracle of Christmas, not a single walker had set foot on the ski trails!

Photos:

(Andrew Brown)