Fantastic day in Kananaskis

Lots of happy skiers were out enjoying the great conditions on the Kananaskis Village trails today, attempting to beat the warm weather which is predicted to start tomorrow. 

I bet it was KathyH in the parking lot who had just finished skiing as I was getting ready. You have already seen her trip report from the village trails. I have a picture of the deer tracks which she mentioned.

I started skiing at 1 pm from the village and was able to get good grip with VR50(0/-4). My car registered +3°C air temperature but the snow condition didn’t deteriorate at all today. 

I skied the perimeter loop which included Terrace, Lower Kovach, The Lookout, Upper Kovach, and the final bit on South Terrace as it returns to the village. Everything was trackset except for a few places on Terrace north where Jeff had to lift the tracksetter because of thin snow cover. 

For 99% of the trip I didn’t see any significant hazards, okay maybe one rock on Lower Kovach which is easy to avoid. As I was almost finished, I encountered some rocks and thin snow cover at the Kovach – South Terrace intersection. 

The S-turns all had enough snow, even the lower one on Kovach near the village was still okay. I’ll post a picture in the gallery. 

“We like hiking the Kananaskis trails because they’re groomed”

I could see fresh grooming going up the Skogan Pass trail from the Ribbon Creek parking lot, so I skied to the top of the Skogan Screamer.

Two hikers were walking down the trail and what a mess they were making of the fresh grooming. They had decided to hike up to Hummingbird Plume, but turned around at the Sunburst junction because it was late in the day. 

I knew Jeff would be returning with the snowcat and would fix the mess. Thankfully, they didn’t go up Sunburst because I don’t think Jeff would have been going over that trail again. If all those divots froze on the trail and were left ungroomed, it would have been suicide for a skier trying to descend. 

Lower Skogan still has some hazards including the odd rock. It’s easy to avoid them when ascending but be careful on the way down. The Screamer had odd bits of dirt mixed into the snow, but I didn’t see any rocks. The part which parallels the Nakiska trail only had a couple poking up. The ice flow on Lower skogan is still very small and easy to traverse. The warm weather may impact it. 

I could see roller packing on a lot of trails which I passed by. The trail report was just updated at 8 pm:

Nov 21 Skogan Pass groomed and trackset above Marmot Jct . Groomed only below very thin and soft in places.

Ribbon Creek, Link, Hidden, Coal Mine, Hay Meadow amd Troll Falls all roller packed. Expected warm condition over the next two days will leave variable conditions throughout.

Cell service coming to West Bragg Creek

Dave Reddy sent me a pic of the cellphone tower which is being installed in West Bragg Creek and added these remarks: 

“Yup, that’s a cell phone tower going in, west end of new parking lot. I’m going to have to go further to get offline!” 🙂