-Chip and Peter at the end of Moraine Lake road-
It’s possible that Chip, Peter, and I picked the only trail with cold snow today. We had good grip all the way to the end of Moraine Lake road with VR45(-2/-8).
Skiing with my friends. Thank you to Chuck for the photo.
Despite what Chuck said on his trip report, I was on waxable skis today. The only reason I didn’t catch up to him was his half-hour head start 🙂
Driving out, the air temperature was as high as +9°C but dropped as we approached Lake Louise and the car registered +2°C when we started out at 11 a.m. Snow temperature was -2.
As you can see in Chuck’s photo, we were all in shirtsleeves. MLR is an excellent trail for three friends because we can each have our own track(do this only when it’s not busy). There were only three vehicles in the parking lot.
Moraine Lake road at 7.3K
I’d like to hope that other skiers found cold snow somewhere, but I’m a bit dubious as to whether that was possible. I hope we get a report from PLPP, as that would be about the only place that may have stayed a bit cooler.
The tracksetting ends at this sign at 8.9K, but most skiers go a couple hundred metres further to the viewpoint.
The trail report indicates that MLR was trackset on Sunday, but it looked to me like it was done yesterday, especially because the tracks were softer than what I would have expected on three-day-old tracksetting. The skating lane was very soft and two hikers were leaving large divots.
We met Chuck and Jeannette near the end so I’ll be anxious to see Chuck’s photos today, however I imagine everyone would prefer seeing his wildlife photos.
Skiers at the junction of Tramline and Moraine Lake road
On the return, the snow going down the big hill was slow enough that we were able to stay in the tracks the entire way. Peter won the race to the bottom.
I dropped Peter and Chip off at the top of Tramline and barely beat them to the bottom at the train station. They had a quick trip down but were slowed by wet snow as they approached the bottom of the trail.
We ended the day with elk stew at the Trailhead Cafe. It was a great day of skiing and socializing with my friends.
