Glenelg Nordic Ski Trails

The Glenelg nordic trails are our nearest really good extensive cross-country ski trails.  I've skiid around to see others, but I keep coming back to these.  I've been out there several times already this year, so I'm going to share a few photos of the trails over the next 3 days .

This first group were taken earlier in January, on my first visit when I skiid the main loop.  The trails are all groomed, and they have an excellent email notification system to tell you when trails are ready after the most recent snow storm.  On this day it was snowing gently the entire time I was there.

It's mostly a hardwood Sugar Maple forest, but there are a few areas of reforested pine and cedar, as above.  Not much of it is flat; this is a nice gentle run down to curve around a pond.The volunteers who do the grooming here are excellent - they know to lift the tracksetter on steeper slopes and around corners - which makes for excellent skiing.

After that you're skiing through the rolling forest, looking through the trees to the surrounding hills.  This is a glacial moraine, and quite hilly.  It's also a County Forest, so it's public land.  The ski club has an agreement to maintain and use the ski trails in the winter; there's also a snowmobile trail.

The trails are really well laid out, with a variety of gentle and steeper slopes, and there are a number of nice long gentle runs like this one - though you have to go uphill for every part you go down.  I like going down the hills a lot better than going up!

It takes me over an hour to do the main loop, sometimes a bit longer if I'm stopping to take many pictures.  On this day we'd had lots of fresh snow, so the evergreens in particular were white.

In one place there are a number of dead pine trees that have become overgrown by taller maples now.  They seem to hold the snow in great white globs.  Shortly after this stretch, I finished the loop with a final downhill run, and headed home.  Tomorrow - 'down in the swamp'.