Happy New Year from the race committee!
Current trail conditions are quite good with solid coverage throughout the entire marathon course and we’re feeling great about where things are at right now. Ice conditions on the water crossings are also good at this time although the lower pond crossings in the final 5K have not yet really been groomed. I’ve not checked the ice depth personally, but I’m told they are safe to go over – it probably is open to debate when you start talking about really heavy equipment crossing them though. We’ll know more about those soon and we’ll continue to watch the thaw and freeze pattern on tap for the rest of January. Typically thaw and freeze cycles will bring us snow on the backside of the thaws so concern about loosing significant snow pack is, right now, quite low. This is the time of year trail reports become more meaningful so we’ll keep you up to date as the weeks go by.
I will say there have been years where we’ve had NO snow on the ground the first week of January and then had excellent conditions by race week. By all accounts, stress levels about snow amounts is low right now (although we will always stress some).
Happy skiing!