The Ribbon Creek/Kananaskis Village area now has a brand new Pisten-Bully grooming machine. Jeff was using it for the first time today.
Jeff with the new Pisten-Bully
We were on our way to Peter Lougheed Prov Park to see what we could find to ski on today, but stopped at Ribbon Creek along the way. To our delight we encountered Jeff and his brand new grooming machine, hard at work.
Jeff hopes to have all the trails in the area maintained before the weekend. At this point, he had set track with the new machine only on Terrace trail which goes from Kananaskis Village to Ribbon Creek trailhead. This updated version of the Pisten-Bully has a newly designed tread which will operate more efficiently in low-snow conditions which are frequently prevalent in the Ribbon Creek area. We decided to carry on to PLPP and perhaps return here tomorrow when we should have a myriad of groomed and trackset trails to choose from.
Peter Lougheed Prov Park
We’ve been longing to climb Whiskey Jack this winter. We’re usually skiing it at least by Dec 1, so it’s overdue. We headed for Boulton Creek parking lot and proceeded to the Whiskey Jack trailhead where, to shrieks of delight, we could see that it had been groomed. It was in pretty nice shape, no tracks yet but really nice corduroy. Just a couple places along the trail where the snow was very thin and some dirt was showing through.
Here comes the PLPP Pisten-Bully
At the top, we saw fresh corduroy heading south towards Tyrwhitt. Pocaterra to the north had been groomed but was covered with 3-4 cm of fresh snow. No sooner had we decided to head south when along comes the PLPP Pisten-Bully setting tracks for us on Tyrwhitt. There were a few thin spots where he had to lift the tracksetter, but it was still very enjoyable. We ran out of time about half-way down the trail and had to retrace our steps. Back at the Whiskey Jack junction, we could see that the groomer had proceeded down Pocaterra making corduroy, no tracks, but we heard him returning in the distance but it was too cold to stand around and wait to see if he was setting tracks. It was a cool but very thrilling run back down, more so because we had the whole width of the trail(remember, no tracks here yet) to meander our way down. Even the difficult steep section was fun today.
A quick update on the animal tracks from yesterday. Adrienne pointed out in one of the photos that you can see evidence of the cat’s tail dragging in the snow. That would definitely have to be a cougar.
