On Saturday, the moment had arrived for Vero and I to go cross-country skiing! I had managed to acquire an old pair of three-pin boots from someone at work. Actually, I haven’t even met this person. My friend Steve was asking his father about some spare ski boots and his office-mate heard him and said that they may have a pair I could use. They were a perfect fit (although I think the leather needs to be broken in a little on the left side. It was quite tight!) and we were good to go skiing!
We headed to Orleans to pick up the skis from my garage and applied some wax to them. We decided to head out to Mer Bleue to do some skiing as the National Capital Commission indicated they had some trails there. I assumed that it was down Mer Bleue road but alas, this was not the case and it’s around Anderson Road. This may put a kink in my ‘skiing every day after work’ plans and may have to find another trail to hit up.
The parking lot was full so we parked on the side of the road. Some poor soul had the same idea but went to far into the snowy shoulder and the vehicle had tipped into the snowbank a little. It was gone by the time we got back so I guess the tow truck had come and left.
We strapped on the skis and headed down the dusty (snowy) path. Right away, I noticed two things: the trails were not groomed and my skis were WELL waxed! Vero and I couldn’t figure out if the trails are generally not groomed or if it was the simple fact that it had snowed a lot in the past two days and perhaps the NCC hadn’t got around to grooming the trail. I’ll have to ask a few people around town if they know.
The trail is quite nice. It’s in the woods and once in awhile you can get a good view of some wetlands in the distance. There are a few options of trails to follow so we decided to go all out and take the #50 trail which I had read was around 5 kms. We moseyed along and I must admit that I was having a little trouble with my skis. I couldn’t put my finger on it. Sometimes my left boot was just hurting my foot but most of the time, my feet would push off to the side of the ski. I can’t figure out if it was the non-groomed path, or perhaps it was the width of my skis being smaller than my actual boot (which would lead to the back of the boot pushing off of it). I also thought about how I cannot skate and wondered if my technique is…lacking. 🙂
Vero hooked me up with a sweet candy half way through the trek which gave me the boost I needed. I must admit that I didn’t feel like I was getting that much of a workout so I couldn’t figure out if we just weren’t going fast enough or if I’m a well-oiled machine considering I’ve been jogging for the past few weeks! I’m going to assume it’s more of Column A.
At one point we had a choice of trails to go on so we decided to keep going on #50 which also had a sign to our Parking Lot. Unfortunately for us, this trail ended back up at the road and we had to trudge up the road on the side and it was quite a nuisance. There were cars zooming next to us and we were skiing through some slush. At the end I ended up dropping right into the snowbank and had to remove my skis and walk the last 50 meters to the car. I looked at the map the next day and realized that if we across the road, the #50 continues. We will have to remember not to take that bit of the trail the next time!
All in all, we had a great time going out for a ski. It’s a nice trail and even though it wasn’t groomed, it wasn’t all that bad. We cannot complain considering we had to pay nothing to use it (unless you think of our taxes paying for it). There are a few other trails around the area so we’ll go check a few of them out.
iplaying: Toast (Performed by Me!)