Glorious day at Mt Shark with my dog

We may not have all our usual places to ski available to us right now, but we’ve still got some pretty good choices.

Watridge Lake road at Mt Shark

I met skiers from Bellingham, WA, and St Paul, AB who came here after reading my blog and told me they were very pleased with the conditions especially after having no skiable snow at home.

Arriving at Watridge Lake. Andy(right) is from Bellingham, WA and the other two skiers are from St Paul, AB

The Mt Shark trails were groomed and trackset last night. The air temperature at 1:30 pm was +2°C and the snow was -2. I took the snow temperature in a sunny spot, so the shaded areas were probably colder. VR50(0/-4) worked well.

If you want to ski on steep hills, try the 10K yellow at Mt Shark

It was a busy place with 24 vehicles and a large bus in the parking lot.

Under gorgeous blue skies, Tessa and I only went as far as Watridge Lake but the trail is trackset all the way to the Spray River bridge. I’m hoping Keith can give us a report on the condition of the steep hill.

Watridge Lake road at Mt Shark

Watridge Lake road gets well used by track skiers, backcountry skiers on their way to Bryant shelter or Mt Assiniboine, hikers, snowshoers, and dogs. You can see from the photos how well-loved the trail is. There wasn’t much corduroy showing from last night’s tracksetting.

The Smith-Dorrien road(aka Spray Lakes road) has variable conditions. Some sections are completely dry, there are a few slushy spots, and the parts I like the best are the the places where it’s hardpacked snow.

Mt Shark is not a venue I go to very often, but with the poor conditions on so many of my favourite trails, I’ve been here four times this winter, which is probably the most ever.

Cookie Race Update

We returned via Pocaterra and Pete from Foothills Nordic Ski Club was working at the hut, building a podium. You know what that means… the Cookie Race is still on. If it doesn’t snow, conditions will be very fast.

You may have read Pete’s comment already, but here it is again: “The Alberta parks staff were hard at work today on Pocaterra, moraine, fox creek and come along adding snow on thin spots and grooming in preparation for the cookie race. Without their hard work the cookie race would not be happening!”

The weather forecast is calling for significant amounts of snow starting on Saturday afternoon. It would be nice if it came earlier for the Cookie Race trails.

Foothills Nordic has posted a wax suggestion for the cookie Race.