Cross-country Skiing Part II

As I said, cross-country skiing became my favourite winter retirement activity, and my favourite place to do this was at the Glenelg Nordic Ski Club.  The variety of trails there was incredible; I don't think I could ever have skiid them all in one day, even if I did have the energy to do so.  And the grooming was outstanding.

This is the longer trail that I usually skiid when going in a group.  It was a large loop mostly through hardwood forest, but you had to do a short stretch through mixed forest and conifers first.  

This trail also had more hills and corners, so you had to be reasonably good with your skiis.  The little hill ahead in this view forced you to turn sharply at the bottom of a short hill, always a tricky maneuvre.

Once past that you rounded a pond and were into the large area of hardwoods, hilly in places, but very pleasant skiing.

This is the longest straight hill, and you definitely waited for the person ahead of you to finish or get out of the way in case they fell.  To make it worse there is a sharp left turn at the lowest point of this slope if you wish to access another group of trails.  I was skiing with a group one time when one of the group fell as he tried to turn left and broke his ankle!

After that it was a sharp right turn, down another steep curving trail that always challenged me.

As you went around a long curve toward the cars again there were a number of dead pines that tended to hold the snow in large clumps.  All in all this was a challenging ski for me, but a very enjoyable one.