Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Nordic skiing: Explore Minnesota and DNR

A recent strib article reminded me of the Explore Minnesota snow sports and DNR ski trail sites.

The Explore MN site would be more interesting if I were looking at an area I didn't know. A search around my St Paul home simply provided an unremarkable list in a peculiar sort order. Not useful.

The DNR site provides online purchase of the multi-season nordic ski pass ($55 for 3 years, need ages 16 and up) and some very useful information including ...

  • snow depth measure: with very topical reports throughout the state. This looks really well done. In early Dec two trails in SE MN have coverage.
  • ski pass trails map: lots and lots of trails
  • Sortable table of trails: click header to sort by region, length or name. Why can't anyone else do this? Some of the entries link to Skinny Ski reports.

The DNR site feels like a labor of love. The biggest missing piece is ski trail maps. For example, the Harmony-Preston Valley Ski trail page suggests emailing the DNR information center for a map!

Nothing about skijoring I could find. Email them to ask for that addition!

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