Sawtooth Ski Trails Taking Shape
Trail grooming has begun for the 2011-2012 cross country ski season at both the Park Creek and Alturas Lake ski areas. Early season weather fluctuations first dumped a good amount of snow on the trails, then reduced it to a thin coverage after some 45 degree afternoon melts. This has led to typical early season trail conditions, with sage brush, stumps and boulders still sticking up through the trail in many.places and soft spots not only on the shoulders but all over when the temperature rises. Not all trails are groomed and there is also minimal trail signage at this point. However, that is not to say that a skier could not enjoy himself at this time, for there is always beauty to behold, even in the crudest of conditions….
“One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;
And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter
Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,
Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place
For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.”
- Wallace Stevens, Snow Man
