This past weekend, cross-country skiers at Virginia Meissner Sno-park southwest of Bend were skiing on about 2 inches of now.

Now, there is no snow and none in the forecast until next week, and the sno-park is closed to skiing.

It has been a tough start to the winter season for Meissner Sno-park, but the weather has not been the only problem.

On the few days when there has been enough snow to groom and ski, people illegally drove their trucks onto the groomed tracks, tearing up the skiing trails. The forest roads near Meissner are closed to motor vehicles in the winter.

“The biggest culprit is the weather, but having people continually drive in there when all those roads are closed for the winter has become an ongoing issue,” said Larry Katz, operations manager for Meissner Nordic, a nonprofit club that handles the grooming at the sno-park. “Every year we go to the Forest Service and ask them for help or to consider putting gates on some of the lower roads. But there’s a little sign that says ‘road closed’ and people just drive right past it and up onto the trail system.”

Open then closed

Meissner opened to skiing on Dec. 1, with just enough snow to be groomed with a roller pulled by a snowmobile on a few trails. The snow did not last long, and by Dec. 6, most of the trails had been driven on, according to Katz.

This past weekend more snow fell to allow for a couple days of skiing, but the trails were driven on once again. By Monday most of the snow had melted.

“Both those weekends there were vehicles out there driving during the day when people were skiing,” Katz said. “That’s the biggest problem. Somebody’s going to get hurt or there’s going to be a physical confrontation between skiers and drivers.”

Snow is not in the forecast until Sunday, and the El Niño weather pattern — which makes for a warmer winter — is already wreaking havoc on the winter sports season. The Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center is open for cross-country skiing, but the coverage is pretty thin. The base for downhill skiing and snowboarding at Bachelor was just 26 inches as of Wednesday.

Last winter it snowed early and often in the Central Oregon Cascades as nordic skiers enjoyed a long season of reliable snow at Meissner.

“It’s one of those warm and wet winters,” Katz said of this year. “We got spoiled last year. It set the bar way too high.”

Katz said the last winter he remembered with this little of snow at Meissner this late in December was 2017-18.

“I can just look at the snowcat hours,” he said. “That winter was 40 hours, which is just eight or nine days of grooming.”

Waiting for about a foot of snow

About a foot of snow is required to bring the snowcat out for grooming. And if the snow sticks around, snowcat operators will groom nordic ski trails at Meissner seven times a week, all paid for through donations to the nonprofit Meissner Nordic Club.

“We just need a cold snap, and we need, 8, 10, 12 inches of snow to get us going again,” Katz said.

To groom with the snowmobile and roller, sometimes only about 6 inches of snow is necessary, if it is heavy, wet snow. But that makes for much more inefficient grooming with only a few trails skiable.

“Over this past weekend we were probably skiing on no more than 2 inches of snow,” Katz said. “It just barely covered the rocks on the road.”

Even with just a few trails open and rocks sticking out of the snow everywhere, the parking lot at Meissner was about three-quarters full on Saturday, Katz noted. The demand is certainly there. If there is enough snow, skiers will come, as Meissner is only about half the distance from Bend as the Mt. Bachelor Nordic Center.

“It’s a long winter, so we’ll eventually get some snow,” Katz said. “We’ve prepared the trails well enough that we can handle a low-snow year, we just can’t handle no snow or little snow and trucks. Otherwise, we’ll all be going to Maston (near Redmond) to ride our mountain bikes.”