— Surprise! 25 Skiers Have a Great Day at Bois-de-Liesse
The conditions have been frustrating lately. The temperature has been great for skiing for over a week and there is snow on the ground. But there just has not been enough snow in most of the local centres to permit decent skiing. Our scheduled destination of Gai Luron was closed and the P’tit train du nord could not even open the trail as far south as Mont Rolland in Ste Adele, our usual starting point. But it turned out that some of the parks closest to us, with their nothing-but-flat-trails, have managed to keep a bare minimum of coverage. So it was that one of our intrepid members skipped the skating and walking at Mount Royal on Sat morning to try skiing at Parc Bois-de-Liesse in Ville Saint-Laurent. She reported that, while the conditions were far from perfect, all the trails were covered and were completely skiable. So we made the decision to make Bois-de-Liesse our Sun destination with a 10 am start.
It turned out that this choice of venue appealed to a lot of people, with 25 BTers turning out. With a temp of -6 C and under cloudy skies, it was clearly a blue wax day. It was a breezy morning if you were out in the open, but we did not feel the wind in the woods. The ski tracks were often shallow on the trails, but they were still there enough to let us ski. There was a thin layer of snow on a hard surface, but that hard surface provided complete coverage. The conditions served to remind us that you really do not need much new snow at all to have skiable trails. The trails would probably have to have been rated as “poor”, but the bottom line was that they were still plenty good enough to provide us a fine morning of skiing! And this was a great gift on a day when most people had given up on the idea of skiing.
Most of the gang skied between 1.5 and 2 hours, with the lead group covering a distance of 15.6 km. Afterward, a majority of the participants made the ritual post-ski visit to a nearby Tims. Check the photos