| Name: | Cross-Country Skiing |
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| Description: |
There are a number of free and frugal cross-country trails in and around Ottawa. Obviously there is an initial cost in buying or renting cross-country skis, but once you have the equipment you can enjoy many winter hours in the great outdoors at little or no cost. Cross-County ski trails in and around Ottawa: The City of Ottawa runs the Mooney's Bay Ski Centre, which is located at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility at Mooney's Bay Park, 2960 Riverside Drive (telephone: 613-247-4883). This facility offers 5km of classic ski trails and charges $2.65/person per day (children under 12 ski for free). OK, so $2.65 x 4 is actually $10.60 and therefore $0.60 over my frugal limit - please forgive me!There are urban cross-country ski trails at the Richelieu-Vanier Community Centre, 300 avenue des Pères-Blancs. Access to these trails is free and there is free parking on site. (For more info call 613-580-2424 ext. 28464). Note that these trails are multi-use trails. Several more cross-country ski trails are located around the City and can be found using the NCC Greenbelt map (pdf); (page 1 shows trails in the City's west end and page 2 shows trails in the City's east end). Larose Forest offers good cross-country ski trails for beginners and is located less than an hour outside of Ottawa. The trails are located in dense woods, which makes for a nice outing but does mean that the trail conditions can be a bit sketchy if there hasn't been a recent heavy snowfall. Parking is available near the trailhead. Donations are encouraged through donation boxes on site. (Thanks to Lisa for this info!) Several area cross-country ski trails are described on the Ontario Trails Council website. To find the location of a trail, click on the trail name, then click on "GPS", found under the Location heading on the right-hand side of the page. Of course, some of the most notable cross-country ski trails in the area are in Gatineau Park (which charges a daily rate that is not frugal by my standards - see the Gatineau Park website for more info). |
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| Website: | An excellent website by Michael McGoldrick about cross-country skiing in the National Capital Region can be found at http://mcgoldrick.ca/xc-skiing/ xcottawa.ca now offers trail reports to let you know what the trail conditions are like. |
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| Activity number: | 30011
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