CNC; Cascade Fire Road; Bill Milne

Warmer weather on the way

Update Nov 25: Banff Trail and Banff Trail Loop have been trackset 

It had warmed up to a balmy -18 this afternoon at the Canmore Nordic Centre. Most of the trails near the biathlon range with man-made snow are in excellent shape, groomed for skating and single trackset. If you skied the entire maze, you could do 3 –  4K. The trails include Albertville, Lillehammer, Lynx, Nagano and Salt Lake. They’re mostly intermediate, and have some pretty fast hills.

The natural snow trails are skiable but not yet trackset. As I was skiing along Banff Trail, I saw this buck paying close attention to a doe. They crossed the trail right in front of me. Not sure if he had any luck.

For being as cold as it was, there were a lot of skiers out today. The ladies in the below photo were holidaying(U.S. Thanksgiving)and considered it a lucky day for them to be able to ski this early in the season.

It should be a lot easier to get motivated to go skiing with the warmer temperatures starting tomorrow. It appears from the forecast that it will stay cold enough, however, to keep the snow in good condition.

Cascade Fire Road

Another trail is ready to ski! You may have noticed from the Banff Trail Report that Cascade Fire Road was groomed and trackset yesterday. Well, it already has about 4 – 5 cm of new snow over the grooming.

Luckily for us, other skiers had broken trail earlier in the day. It would be a good workout, however, if you were skating. To get to the actual trail, it’s necessary to ski for about 700 metres from the parking lot along the paved Lake Minnewanka road which is shown in the below photo.

The meadow which you need to cross after you finish skiing the pavement, had good snow coverage with barely any grass poking out. This is a truly beautiful trail with gorgeous scenery the entire way.

The trail is trackset only to the Cascade River Bridge which is about 7K. The remainder, to the Stoney Creek bridge, about another 8K, has been packed.

Bill Milne

We’ve received a comment on the previous thread saying the Bill Milne trail has been trackset from Ribbon Creek to Wedge Pond. If you’re not familiar with it, maybe it’s because it was formerly known as the Evan-Thomas trail. This would be an excellent beginner’s trail. Let’s keep an eye on the Kananaskis trail reports, as I expect we’ll see a lot of new grooming being done in the next two days.

Trail Information

If you want more details about a trail which you read about on here, click on “Tags” which is right under the blog post title. It will give you all the postings I’ve made about that trail. You can also leave a comment with any questions you may have.

Wolf and bear

“This is without a doubt the most sensational wildlife behavior image in my career as a nature photographer,” says Peter Dettling of Canmore, Alta.”