Saturday, January 9, 2010

XC Skiing Trip Two; French Regional Park

trail shadow
Today we went for another Cross Country Ski Adventure!!! This time we went to French Regional Park, about 15 minutes north of us.
daisy and kyle xcs
(Kyle hates how this picture turned out because he was squinting from the sun, I tried to replace his face with another picture - but it just looked hideous, I need a little more practice with Photoshop before I can pull that off, lol.)

Again it was super fun! Some friends of ours, Sarah and Jeremy, met us there. Turns out Jeremy has a hidden talent, he was very good at going down the hills and was our inspiration for the first half of the trails.
sarahjer xcs
We first went up to the lesson loop, which ended up being very disappointing. The loop we learned at the other park was a good mixture of flattness, up hills, and a down hill. This one was just flat all the way around.
lesson loop
Another thing about today that was different than last week was the the trails were not groomed very well. The people in the lodge had said that since it had been so cold they weren't able to get out and groom them as well this past week. Also I think since it is so cold the snow is more icy causing the trails to be harder to make. So it was a learning lesson, but now we know we CAN ski without trails, I personally just prefer them when possible. We started off with the Lagoon Trail which was a 'More Easy'/Green Circle trail. It was pretty easy and pretty scenery.
wooded trail

We ended up doing a good hunk of the trails as this park, the only thing we didn't do is the pretty steep area and the black diamond trail. But I did venture out to accomplish a blue square trail! It was such a beautiful day out, granted it was in the single digits, at least those single digits were positive.
still waters

And us girls had hand warmer to help keep our fingers warm. Here Sarah is getting a hand warmer from Jeremy to put in her glove. I kept one in my right glove because the only time my fingers would get cold is when I would take my right hand out of my mitten to take pictures (I still had the under layer glove on at all times).
handwarmer time

This was the hill we avoided. This was actually the up part, but we thought it'd be fun to capture a shot of Kyle 'coming down' it.
Challenge Hill
It was called Challenge Hill and the up part looked like a huge challenge, I don't even want to know what the down hill side looks like.

I did remember to wear my heart rate monitor this time, and luckily remembered to turn it on about 20 minutes into it. But in the end I ended up burning 877 calories in the two hours I had it on. Not to bad for a fun, Saturday activity!!! I just LOVE cross-country skiing, it's so beautiful out, it makes the cold weather not feel as bad, and we're not just wasting the day away indoors!!!


Warm Wishes!

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