XC Skiing - Mohawk River State Park

You'd think that with a 15" snowfall just two days ago that almost any local park would have great skiing. Enter yesterday's rain, and things are quite a mess. Holly and I went to the former Schenectady Museum Preserve this afternoon and were not pleased with what we found. The view from the car should have been a clue.



The rain had soaked through the snow, melting a lot of it, and creating a slushy mess underneath. Walkers had already covered most of the trails here, leaving slushy footprints in many spots. I arrived early and skied some of the trails in the open fields in the western part of the property, and many of these were actually impassable due to flooding.



We headed for some higher ground, but avoided any steep terrain, because the heavy wet snow and the walkers' trench would have made downhill control next to impossible, or at least less than fun. It would be hard to call much of what we did today "skiing", but it was an hour outside at least. For the time being, we're no better off than before the storm in terms of finding good snow this close to home.