Bigfoot spotted in Banff

This creature was lurking near the ski trail as I neared the Banff Springs Hotel

Now that was fun!! I skied Goat creek and Spray river east yesterday. Excellent snow and fantastic tracks from the Goat creek trailhead to the Goat creek bridge. Just the absolute best. It had all been trackset on Monday after Sunday’s snowfall.

These skiers from Ontario picked the perfect day to do their first ever ski on Goat creek

Not a stitch of debris, and I was able to ski all the way down the steep hill to the Goat creek bridge, although the final descent is already scraped down to the previous icy base, and is very dished.

You can see in the photos how much loose snow was still laying around on the Kananaskis side of the trail at the beginning which is not trackset. It had a good skier-set track, and the foot traffic was doing a good job of avoiding the ski tracks.

Great snow and excellent tracks on Goat creek, approx 1.5K from trailhead

I could see that Sunday’s storm dumped about 25 cm at the Goat creek trailhead, but it became less and less as I neared Banff, with only about 5 cm on the Spray river loop which was already getting icy tracks. I decided for a change to take the east side to Banff, and was pleasantly surprised to see only two rocks, easily avoidable, on the final downhill to the golf course.

Goat creek, 3K from trailhead

I spoke with some skiers who had taken the Spray river west side and they reported icy tracks and debris on the first couple K as you leave Banff.

When I was 2K from the Banff Springs hotel around 4 pm it started to snow. Air temperature was -4°C at the start, and +1 in Banff. VR45(-2/-8) worked well until the midway point at which time I added VR50.

It’s truly amazing to see how much more snow there was at the Canmore end of the trail. Last night it snowed a couple more cm in Canmore, so I expect the tracks will have some fresh snow in them today.