15 Overjoyed Skiers at Oka – Sun Feb 11
What a great weekend of skiing. It’s been so long that we have had such marvelous ski conditions that we had almost forgotten how good it can be! We had 16 skiers at CSJ on Sat and then we had 15 skiers make the trip to Oka on Sun. Let’s talk about Oka.
I arrived at 9:30 am, a half-hour ahead of our official start time. The parking lot and chalet were not too full– they would both be much busier later on when we would be leaving. I encountered two keen BTers who were already on their skis and getting a head start. The rest of the gang drifted in and got their skis ready.
We got going shortly after 10 am and most of us headed in the direction of trail 3, which is a 15-km loop if you do the full thing. It was cloudy and -7 C, and the blue V30 wax was working well. The snow and the tracks on the freshly groomed trails were in perfect condition.
As we progressed at different speeds, we spread out and broke into sub-groups. I was feeling a bit ambitious on this day and I decided to see if I could keep up with our faster skiers — Mickey, Ghyslaine and Scott. We glided along to the eastern end of trail 3, where there is a 5-km loop that makes up the intermediate (blue) and difficult (black) parts of the trail. I chased them around the loop, up and down the many hills, and caught up with them at the end of the loop, just in time to hear them say, “let’s do that again”. So off we went again. 
This time I had a tougher time keeping them in sight. But they waited for me at the end of the loop. Then we went back again, but this time only for the first 1.4-km part of the loop, turning off at the point where it goes from being rated as intermediate to difficult. We finally headed back towards the chalet, with no let-up in the average speed. We covered 21.4 km in 2h 14m.
We met up with others in the chalet and some of us sat down to eat our packed lunch. Much of the conversation was about how brilliant the skiing had been. I set out for home at 1:30 pm, just as the freezing rain began to fall. It took a good bit of extra windshield washing fluid to maintain a good view of the road, but the rain did not otherwise cause any traffic problems or delays.
It had been well worth the trip to Oka to enjoy skiing that had us over the moon!