Friday, February 19, 2010

GREAT! conditions, despite equipment problems 2/19/10

As the title says, the conditions are, "...the BEST I've ever skied since I've been skiing up at the trails!" As Chuck Calef exclaims, and he's been skiing up there for a long time.

The snow conditions are really great up there right now and the SWNSC groomers worked hard this week to clean everything up and get it into tip-top shape. The new Viking snowmobile (please donate!) is just fantastic and is the main reason we've been able to get such work done, including the new outer meadow trail addition.

Unfortunately, Chuck Calef himself, ran into problems while running the little "Kermit" snowcat -- it has something wrong with the fuel delivery system and is dying on us in some pretty precarious locations. Denny Newell went up late yesterday and rescued it back down to the garage, despite the problems.

Afterward, he and Dave Wykoff spent several hours grooming with Jennifer Sublett from the SF Nat'l Forest Service, who is working closer with the club on its mission to provide an improved winter xc skiing & snowshoeing experience in the Jemez Mountains here in Los Alamos.

John Bernardin and Tom Berg did a lot of grooming work last Monday to clean up the weekend traffic messes and left the trails primed for great grooming last evening -- thanks to those guys too.

Also, give the Espanola Ranger District (SF Nat'l Forest Service) a call to say thanks for their input on our volunteer efforts this year. They've also hired Lynn Bjorklund to help oversee recreation programs, and she has already put together a much nicer, more accurate map of the trail system -- something we did not really have until she made the effort to GPS the entire system correctly herself. Along with Jennifer Sublett's efforts, things are improving dramatically. These ladies follow the tradition of coordination between the SF Nat'l Forest Service and SWNSC that was started by Miles Standish (USFS) and Tom Berg (founder of LANSC, predecesor to SWNSC).

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