I had a great day on the nordic skis in Canmore today. Lou was still sore from skiing earlier this week, so while she hit the climbing shop sales down in the town, Jane and I tackled a 14 km 'blue' (intermediate) circuit. The skiing was great fun, and once we got clear of the general zoo that surrounds the day lodge, it was reasonably quiet on the trails.Overall, the grading of the runs at the Nordic Centre seemed a bit soft compared to West Bragg Creek, where we usually ski. Black runs at Canmore are fairly wide (4 m+) and because they're groomed, you get plenty of friction for braking on the downhills. The black runs appeared similar in difficulty to parts of blue runs at Bragg, and I saw nothing at Canmore that approached the conditions encountered on the Telephone Loop trail, scene of my hand-breaking episode in 2008. That run is considered to be either blue or black (like my hand afterwards). It seems that Nordic ski gradings are even more subjective than climbing grades.
The big blue loop that we skied ended after about 13 km, 1 km from the day lodge. After that, you're on blacks, or Shanks' Pony. It's a little bizarre that they've created an intermediate loop with no consistent finishing section. Oh well - it gave us a good chance to ski some black runs and find that they're not as bad as you'd expect. We had fun, and no nasty falls (unusually for me...)
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