I'm an avid cross country skier (we host the Iowa Games race in my figurative backyard on a great set of trails), but the thaw is wreaking having on the set tracks. If I want to get outside this weekend, snowshoes it is.
Friday OT #2 - Wrap It Up
- Thread starter Angie
- Start date
I'm an avid cross country skier (we host the Iowa Games race in my figurative backyard on a great set of trails), but the thaw is wreaking having on the set tracks. If I want to get outside this weekend, snowshoes it is.
I'll be honest - I've always been aware of cross country skiing, and have been downhill skiing, but this may be the first time I've actually SEEN someone doing it in person, too. I don't know if it's not a big central Iowa thing, or if I've just always been enough of a town/city-dweller that I've not seen it? Even the year or two we lived on a farm, I don't think I ever saw it.
I love the idea of doing it regularly. It's SUCH good exercise. But I bet it is a pretty specific set of circumstances where you can do it.
I so wanted to make a comment about that thread being birth control. Figured that thread wasnt the place, but this one could be.
Yeah, no little rugrats for me. 2 dogs and a girlfriend are more than I can handle most days
Maybe it's a relic of growing up in the same state as the Birkebeiner, but we had elementary and middle school field trips where cross country skiing was part of the activities for the day.
It took me a full 15 seconds to realize that you weren't just talking about three women here, and I was thinking, "Wow, that's really disrespectful."
That would be really, really cool. We didn't have anything like that here in central Iowa. We did a church group trip downhill skiing in another state, and did some sledding trips, but that was it. Now that I think about it, other than the "trust building" types of activities, I can't think of many field trips that we took that involved any sports at all. I might be forgetting, though.
Yeah apparently my dogs decided to just crap on my deck all winter instead of going down the stairs.
I don't blame them. They are 11 and 7 lbs respectively and the snow was over their damn heads.
Tell that to my wife who wants to try again for a girl. I'm 3 for 3 with boys. She's going to end up in a house that smells like dude for the rest of her life.
For me, getting a new snow thrower was a GREAT idea this year. Got it just before our first snowfall of over a foot and have used the hell out of it since.
Last edited:
I'm way up in NE IA (Cresco/Decorah area) and we'll have had less than 2 months of good conditions for it this year. Last year it was basically a 5 week season.
I don't think Central Iowa gets enough snow consistently for it to be a big deal there.
I did a little digging and it looks like Big Creek State Park maintains some trails near the Ames/Des Moines area.
Skunk River does rentals, which would be a good way to figure out if it's worth the money to invest in a set.
I was wondering if that wasn't the case - I'd gather from just logic that you need snow that's deep enough, but not TOO deep, and that there's a best-case scenario on if it should be icy vs powdery, etc. You're right - while we feel like we get hammered with snow here, we really don't in comparison, and it melts a lot faster. We had a pretty good-sized buildup of snow on Monday of this week, and now I can see more grass than snow in my own backyard. I'd assume ice fishing is similar.
Well, that makes sense! We've hit Big Creek for a few reasons this past year, so I might try out Skunk River! I think my youngest would love it, in particular.
Al's country, Mn, and Wi are all big CC areas, I'm guessing I would need new shoes for mine since I haven't used them in over a decade. Central Iowa snow pack isn't very dependable. I enjoyed it when i did it on the regular. A good friend of mine has skied the Birkebeiner every year for over 25 yrs (marathon distance on skies held in Cable/Hayward Wi)
To actually do it any park will work if you do classic style, The new skate style works better if you have a good track made (machines lay them out) Classic is nicer on a good laid track but any area will work learning to stop going down hill is trickier than downhill IMO.
You want to go at an area that grooms trails. I do most of my skiing here: https://www.facebook.com/skicresco
They seem to have the best grooming in northeast Iowa, and a nice mix of terrain - IE good mix of flat trails for beginners and some more advanced stuff with steep grades and/or long climbs.
Decorah grooms the Trout Run bike trail and some city spots, and across the border in Minnesota, they groom the Root River bike trail. I've skied at all of these locations since New Year's (which was when we first got enough snow to groom).
I snowshoe when there's either too little snow to effectively groom (and too much to hike or bike), or if there's been a bunch of wet heavy snow that they can't groom.
I just went to Decorah for the first time a couple of summers ago to photograph a wedding up in a new venue of an old... stagecoach garage, maybe? And fell in love with it up there, it's such a unique place. I'm going to mark this down - it would be neat to see if I could get us an AirBnB cabin up there and we could try it out. As @NWICY pointed out that you can try it locally, we could try it out down here first.
