By Keith
and Heather Nicol
By Keith and Heather
Nicol
You can always count on Sovereign Lake
Nordic Centre to be open early and they did so again this
year and set day
ticket sales record in the process.
According to Sovereign’s General Manager Troy Hudson they are doing so well in part due
to lack of snow in other ski areas. We love coming to Sovereign Lake to get in
our first cross country ski outings of the season and this year is was no
different. It has been a warm and
relatively dry November along the coast in BC and this has meant virtually no
snow at Mount Washington which is our regular ski spot on Vancouver
Island. But with Sovereign open on
November 8 we knew we had to come up to check things out. We arrived around noon on Saturday, November
24 and have never seen the parking lot so full! Fortunately we knew that some
people like to get in their ski and then head home and we lucked out finding a parking
spot right in front of the lodge.
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| Getting in some "no poles" skiing in the stadium |
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| Sovereign is attracting large crowds due to the good skiing conditions |
We like to take it easy on our first day
and we were especially appreciative of the fact that on this day Sovereign had
a nicely groomed stadium area with over a dozen lanes of set tracks. So we
spent the first 30-45 minutes skiing without poles to get our balance back and
the flat lanes in the stadium were perfect for this. After that we headed out
and enjoyed skiing Passmore and Woodland Bell. Woodland Bell had a few wet
spots but Passmore was in excellent shape. Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre now has
over 30 km of trails groomed for classic and skating and more are being added
with each snowfall. With light snowfalls forecast over the next week as well as
very pleasant temperatures and light winds you should check it out. Snowshoe trails are currently closed at
Sovereign since they need more snow in the trees. For more information and for
updated conditions see: https://www.sovereignlake.com/
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| Heading out toward "Passmore" ski trail |
