After a crazy warm spell in February we lost all of our snow but a March storm brought us enough so XC ski places could open again. Wild Wings was my choice to try out the new snow. I warmed up on their Woodcock trail to discover my tape wax was working reasonably but would sometimes stick and sometimes slip. So it is with waxed skis around the freezing point.

I went on to ski the biggest loop called Chickadee and a branch loop called Loon. It was a little hairy at times with the rough snow not letting my skis go where I wanted them to go but I made do and was happy to be out on the snow.

Once back to the Wild Wings base, I swapped out my racing skis for my waxless ones that are considerably wider and heavier. I wanted to try them on the soft snow to see if their stability made it better. As it turned out, the trail I took, Lower Blue Jay, had machine groomed snow so would have been better with the lighter weight skis.

Then I came to Middle Blue Jay and was back on snowmobile groomed track like Chickadee. Now I had a chance to confirm if I liked the stability of my wider skis better than the racing skis. My conclusion was that the stability was nice by I preferred the speed offered by the racing skis. Waxless are not always slow! See the previous trip "Thaw at Season's End" when I discovered warm granular snow can be fast on waxless skis.