You’ll have to hit the road to find decent snowpack and it’ll be quite a trek Right now in the lower 48, Mt. Bachelor in Oregon looks like the place to be. Some decent conditions in the Colorado Rockies and BC in Canada, including Sovereign Lake.

Roaming the hinterlands (virtually)

There are two primary websites enabling us to survey conditions at many cross country ski centers at once. Nordic Pulse has most of its areas in the western half of the continent while Trailhub has most of the areas in the Northeast US.

• https://nordic-pulse.com
  Color of dots on the map correspond to date of grooming but do not take into account amount of trail- ie, 1k or 50k get a green dot if groomed within last three days. It also appears that Nordic Pulse shows a dot for some areas that aren’t current customers (eg, Jackson Ski Touring Foundation). When looking at a specific area clicking in the tab/bar flips the listing between: date of grooming; which trails are open; and trails by difficulty, which is a nice feature.
• https://trailhub.org
  Dots are colored by average state for the selected activities. Venues seem to be able to add as many different activity types as they want (eg, fat tire biking, hiking, snowshoeing) but can be a bit confusing b ecause they aren’t grouped categorically- Nordic skiing is distinct from Nordic skiing-skating. Colors can be misleading so check the last update of one or more trails at a tourcing center to verify last update. I’ve seen some from the previous season because the customer didn’t clear the old entries or leave a general note at season end. Trailbub customers include a lot of the small touring areas as well as most of the resorts, which is great if you home-base in the north country and want variety.
• The Quebec province parks agency (SEPAQ) has a website with English translation showing snow conditions, as well as a mobile app on the Apple App Store® and Google Play Store^TM. I’ve skied at Mont Tremblant resort and Val David, but way before this app was available, and it was hard to find good information about trail conditions.

Snow depth map below:

Conditions

Meanwhile, back in the northeast US, snow cover is thin and thinner.

Forecast

Temps stay springlike for the early part of the New Year’s week, and conditions will be dry through Wednesday for most of the region. Lake effect snow will extend across the Adirondacks and northern Vermont starting early Wednesday.

By the Wednesday-Thursday overnight, snow showers will extend across much of the northeast, although little accumulation is in the forecast. It might be enough to revive a trail with good cover but not enough to lay a base over top of bare ground.

Cooling trend later in the week will arrive in advance of a low pressure system that has a reasonable chance of delivering significant snow to the region during the coming weekend. At this time there’s too much variability to predict snowfall amounts, but the temperatures are headed in the right direction so this is one to watch.

At a minimum, those areas that with snowmaking can run the guns with abandon from midweek on.

Daytime temps	Tuesday 1/2/24	Wednesday 1/3	Thursday 1/4	Friday 1/5	Saturday 1/6	Sunday 1/7
Northern NY, VT, NH	Low- to mid-30s	30s	Upper 20s to low 30s	Mid- to upper-20s	Mid 20s to low 30s	Mid 20s to low 30s
NYC metro and coastal New England	Upper 30s to low 40s	40s	Upper 30s. to low 40s	Mid- to upper-30s	Upper 30s to low 40s	Mid 30s to low 40s