Bonus kilometres – on wax!

Bill Milne trail

It’s been a pleasure reading all the trip reports today with such good conditions for this time of year. 

Pat, Melissa, and Shelley on the Bill Milne trail

Word had it that I had retired. I turned 65 on Tuesday and didn’t ski for four days and rumours were spreading like wildfire. Despite old age and decreptitude, I have a few more kilometres of skiing in me, and thankfully because today’s skiing was fantastic. 

Hikers were staying out of the tracks on the Evan-Thomas trail

Many times this winter I’ve been heading for PLPP but couldn’t get past the Evan-Thomas parking lot and today it happened again. I keep thinking that PLPP will still be there when all the snow has disappeared from the other trails in K-Country, but the snow hasn’t disappeared and today was one of many excellent ski trips on Evan-Thomas, Wedge Connector, and Bill Milne.

Sheila and Chris on Wedge Connector

I enjoyed meeting lots of skiers on the trail today. Sheila and Chris, long-time blog readers from Cochrane, who I met on Wedge, were happy to finally run into me. Chris took a nice selfie of all three of us. 

When I ran into Pat, she thanked me for the VR50 wax which I gave her back in January on Elk Pass because she said it was working perfectly today on the Bill Milne trail. 

Bill Milne trail

At 12:30 pm, the air temperature was -1°C and the snow was -3. Just as Pat did, I applied VR50(0/-4) and never had to touch it again. It gripped well without any icing. The 1 cm of new overnight snow which was in the tracks was beneficial to us because there was some glazing underneath which it mitigated. There was heavy cloud cover making for perfect weather conditions with no sun to soften things up. 

Wedge Connector

I started on Evan-Thomas where the hikers and snowshoers have been staying in the middle (with one exception near the end of the day). Evan-Thomas reminds me of Old Ribbon Creek with a gradual climb to a high point at 1.7K. When you see the horse sign, the tracksetting goes for another 100 metres downhill. You then follow a snowshoe trail for 150 metres to the McDougall bridge where you need to remove your skis for the final 50 metres down to the Wedge Connector. 

Bev and Marilyn at a road crossing on the Bill Milne trail

The Wedge Connector was excellent as was Bill Milne. After completing the 7K loop I continued north on Bill Milne where I had the pleasure of meeting Bev and Marilyn at one of the road crossings. I eventually turned around and headed back to my car, but as I’ve done before, I went straight back up Evan-Thomas so I could enjoy the delightful downhill run back to the trailhead. 

Wedge Connector

As I was returning to the trailhead, two hikers were walking in the inbound tracks and making a mess of them despite the sign at the trailhead which gives specific directions not to walk in the ski tracks. 

Earlier, on Wedge, I encountered two ladies walking an enthusiastic dog named Marvin who was on the leash and they were all staying out of the tracks.