2 PM. Skied man-made snow trails only. Firm base. Some glazing in classic tracks. Flats and downhills were super fast, with excellent kick on hills with Salomon skins.

(Bob McKlveen)

With the warm temps, I expected mush, but was happily surprised by the excellent conditions. Skied North/Nature Center spur, return via main loop. All were good. Tracks were in good shape, except for a short stretch on the Nature center spur near the elevated walkway. A few downed leaves in the wooded sections, but a long clean glide down to the bowl. It was a great afternoon ski.

(Laurie Ford)

Skated the Lake and Hill natural snow trails, and all of the snowmaking trails. All were in excellent condition for skating and appeared to be in great condition for classic, with set tracks.

(Craig Wiklund, North Star Ski Touring Club)

Skied the Lake, Oak Knob, North, and Nature Center natural trails and the artificial back to the parking lot. All the trails were in great shape with excellent tracks. Only deviation from that were two spots where the tracks were set slightly too far to the side and dropped into some soft snow washing out the track, one each on Lake and North, but easily avoided. Skate deck looked very good.

(Dan Hutjens)

Excellent conditions everywhere at Hyland. Of course the artificial loop was solid as always. It's a delight to ski on the natural trails and not go round and round and round. Good tracks and a nice skate deck throughout plus it was sunny and above zero!

(Michael Gotzsche)

I'll open with expressing my sincere gratitude to everyone on staff at Hyland that was involved in creating the beautiful conditions there this morning. I started out with classic technique on the manmade loop. Classic tracks were deep and solid with great kick (I was on skins). I switched to skate and decided to venture out onto the natural snow trails. Classic tracks around the lake looked very good as well. The skate deck had been groomed recently but was suffering from a softball sized channel right down the middle of the trail (I've been seeing something similar at French as well so I'm suspecting this is related to the nature of the snow conditions rather than an issue with grooming). Anyway, back onto the man-made snow loop to finish my ski where the skate deck was the nice state of firm with good edging, but just a bit slow. I was using Fastwax HS 10 for glide (-10 F to 15 F) and it seemed that was maybe a bit warm for today's snow conditions.

(Leif Irgens)

The man-made 5k loop is well groomed again and classic track was not filled with snow in spite of the strong winds. The skate deck was solid with no drifts.

(Chuck Barden)

Beautiful morning for a ski. The light snow was filling the track but fortunately there was a young kid in front of me who was double poling the whole course (darn impressive). He packed the track to make my journey a little faster. Excellent coverage on natural trails.

(Kathy Bjornson)

Two hour classic ski today. Fantastic tracks on manmade snow loop, and good tracks on all of North Loop to Nature Center and across to Foothills. Tracks were ok on Lake. All in all, a fantastic day to be out and striding!

(David Uber)

Another pristine day at Hyland. Such a holiday gift to have these mid season conditions in December. The trail to Richardson was tracked today and in excellent condition.

Photos:

(Diane Pattridge)