Don't sleep on Byrncliff

Typically the first day on snow in western new york is on rock skis, skiing on thin-at-best snow. We drove out to Byrncliff today, which is a golf course about an hour west of Rochester. Byrncliff seems to always be forgotten among Rochester nordic folks (I even received an e-mail late Friday night that people were going to drive to Tug Hill in the middle of a blizzard, instead of the easy 1 hr drive to Byrncliff). However, they have a piston pully groomer, which knocked down the foot of lake effect snow they've gotten over the past two days. Conditions were awesome, 27F, sun and no wind, absolutely awesome day! The trails were in pretty good shape and they had almost all of their trail system groomed. Jason, Chad, Frenchy and I were out there at 845am (first cars in the parking lot). We skate skied for about an hour and forty minutes, then chad and frenchy had to leave, but jason and I got in another hour and twenty minutes classic skiing. I'm not much of a classic skier (though trying to improve), but anytime you can unequivocally guarantee that swix extra blue will be the kick wax of the day without even bringing a backup wax from the car, is definitely a good day to get some classic work in. By the time we left, the parking lot was full, and we saw a wide range of skiers out there enjoying the day.

Tomorrow we're headed back there for more of the same. Then, Jason and I have to pack up a whole bunch of stuff and get ready to join a whole mess of other US biathletes out in Minnesota for what should be a super-competitive series of races.