Sovereign Lake Nordic Centre is open for skiing and breaking attendance records

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

Getting in some "no poles" skiing in the stadium

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. 

 

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/   

Heading out toward "Passmore" ski trail