Kicking Horse trail at 1.5K
Good early-season conditions exist on the Kicking Horse trail in Yoho. Excellent tracksetting with a few twigs here and there. There were a couple places where I stepped out of the tracks for ten metres to avoid twigs where they were thick. For the most part, I skied over them.
Kicking Horse trail in Yoho
It was -9 at the Natural Bridge parking lot and overcast with no wind. I used old Swix green(-7/-13) and it worked well.
Like a lot of other trails, it starts out with a big hill. Unlike most trails, however, the hill is down, not up.
The trail crosses the Otterhead river at 6.5K
The trail is double trackset on the hill and ends at 1.8K when it narrows to single track. Thereafter, the elevation gain and loss is negligible.
There is a picnic table and viewpoint at 3.8K.
The tracksetting goes for 7K, but there are two fallen trees on the final 600 metres where you have to remove your skis.
The final 200 metres is a steep downhill and has a lot of brush. I turned around before chancing it.
One of the places where there were a lot of twigs on the trail.
Hillary and Chris showed up as I was getting ready. They had already skied the Tally-Ho trail which was trackset this morning. The Tally-Ho goes from the Natural Bridge to the Field Visitor Centre.
The Kicking Horse Ski Club is responsible for grooming the trails in Yoho and Emerald Lake. If you enjoy skiing there, consider buying a $50 membership in the club, or making a donation.
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Tally-Ho trail at the Natural Bridge trailhead.
Most of the trails at West Bragg Creek have been trackset in the past few days and conditions are excellent. Telephone was trackset today.
The Sandy McNabb trail report shows the trails as being groomed, but thanks to Steve Riggs, we know they are mostly trackset. Watch those downhills on Pineridge. Scary. As Steve mentioned, Loggers is a pleasant trail without any significant hills, so it would be a good fit for novice skiers.
Spray River West in Banff National Park has been packed.
For my readers in Medicine Hat, more grooming has occurred on the Cypress Hills trails. Check the Live Grooming Report for details.
We skiied telephone loop in west Bragg creek today. It was quite nice, a bit soft, recently track set, but a fair bit of the trail was chewed up by a fat biker and their heavy and deep foot prints. What a selfish way to ruin a beautifully track set trail. Makes for quite dangerous down hill stretches too.