February is the BEST Month!

Posted Sat, February 20, 2010 - 11:33 PM
skiing, stateparks

The last couple weeks have just been great for winter sports. We've had relatively warm temperatures - upper 20s in the day (sometimes higher) and teens at night, along with a high proportion of clear skies. With the sun moving up higher and higher, and the days getting longer, this has been a fabulous month to get out skiing.

Last weekend I drove up to Wild River and went for the longest ski I've ever done - a three-plus hour continuous tour of the Sunrise Trail to the Deer Creek loop. It was so warm, I overestimated my clothing requirement and had to change after 20 minutes - but toward the end, as the sun dipped below the hills west of Deer Creek, I had to change my mind again. That was right after I scared up a bunch of wild turkeys, about a dozen and a half of them strutting from the marshy Deer Creek flats into the hills to the west.

Yesterday I left work around 4:30 and went for a evening ski at Lebanon Hills, the entire outer loop both east and west of Pilot Knob Road. The sunset was gorgeous and the trails were nearly empty, as they often are. That $20 season pass to Dakota County Parks was one of the best purchases I've made this year!

I went to Wild River again today and stayed out for another two hours, in near identical conditions to last weekend, except that the snow was a little faster after all the sunny days. I warmed up by checking out the skate trails in the southwest corner of the park, which have the steepest hills in the park, both up and down. The trails were hard and untracked, but still pretty fun. Then I changed clothes (of course) and did a counterclockwise loop down to the river, up and back through the campground. Here's a few snapshots from the trusty iPhone.

Mitigwaki Trail, overlooking the Dry Creek valley.

There were some intimations of it last year, but this year it really feels that I'm much improved with wooden slabs strapped to my feet. I originally learned to ski "on my own", and for several years I really treated it as a hobby and didn't bother to learn good technique, expunge bad technique, or take the time to practice enough. This year, I've just been paying attention to what other skiers do, focusing on efficiency, and most importantly, getting out much more often.

Along the St. Croix River.

I that think my initial forays into skate skiing have helped a lot, too. Learning a different technique has helped me to note the things I can improve while on classic, and vice versa, my prior experience has prevented me from getting frustrated and giving up on the much trickier balance and body position requirements of skating. There were about ten people in the intro class I took at Elm Creek. Three of them, including me, had years of experience on skis. The rest were mostly newbies. I'll leave it to you to guess which folks were waiting for the others (and there was one poor guy who spent more time on the ground than on his feet, I think. He was a good sport.)

A nicely running creek.

That doesn't mean I'm about to start racing, and I'm still a little leery about giving up waxless skis for the wild world of green, blue, red, and sometimes klister. But either way, I'm enjoying the sport more than I ever have.

Trails on the prairie.