I just received this email:
Hello Bob,
Just found your site recently. Thanks for putting this together. There was plenty of snow and sunshine at West Bragg this afternoon. -15 never felt so warm. Fresh snow has fallen since the last grooming, so the tracks are more skier-set than machine groomed. That said, the snow is excellent. Attached is a picture of my daughter Emily on Moose Connector.
Happy Trails
Richard
Also received this email from Gary:
Came upon your site through a link from Lifesport, and it’s awesome. I was itching to get out on the trails before, but now I really am. Question for you, since I can’t seem to find any local forums on the topic: with the demise of Sport Swap, is there a good place in town to get used x-c ski gear, specifically for kids? I’ve tried Play it Again out in Westhills, and they don’t carry any x-c gear. Any help is much appreciated. Thanks
Can anyone help Gary find used XC ski gear for his kids? Please leave a comment below if you have any suggestions.
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PLPP – Heavenly!
I had a fantastic ski today. It was the first time this season that I was able to do my favourite ski trip: The Tyrwhitt loop in Peter Lougheed Prov Park. 18K of skiing bliss. 19k if you count all the connectors from the parking lot. It was a balmy -13C on the car thermometer. Snow temp was -14. No wind whatsoever.
Starting at Boulton Creek parking lot, there is an invigorating climb of 4.3k with 220m of elevation on Whiskey Jack. It was trackset and in nice shape. There’s one rock frozen in the snow in the middle of the trail about .5k from the top. If you are snowplowing your way down, you’ll put a scratch in your ski if you hit it. At the top of Whiskey Jack, there’s a spectacular view of Gap Mountain to the north(see my blog header).
At the junction, Pocaterra was trackset in both directions. Pocaterra is officially the trail that heads to the south(for .5k) until you reach the Lookout junction, which is where Tyrwhitt begins. Lookout was trackset, but we’ll save that one for another day. Spoke to some skiers from Colorado at the hut who had just come down the entire length of Pocaterra and they said it was in good shape, but no tracks from Packers to the hut, just as the trail report says.
Tyrwhitt was in better shape than last week. A few places where there’s some dirt and twigs, but not a problem. I started late and was the only one on the trail. I love the atmosphere and beauty of the surroundings up here. Click here to see photos I think it’s really cool to know that a few metres away in the forest, there are grizzly bears asleep in their dens.
At the Elk Pass/Hydroline junction, I could see Hydroline was in good condition with new tracks. After donning my mitts and fleece, I chose to go down Elk Pass which hasn’t been trackset since Dec 18, but was in great shape. Even in the cold, the trip down was a lot of fun. Elk Pass has the best snow.
Fox Creek and Boulton Creek have been packed but not trackset, but there’s enough snow to make it an enjoyable trip on these narrow trails which meander through the trees. I hope to do this loop another half-dozen times this winter.
