Great Divide
With new snow at Lake Louise, the tracksetting was refreshed on the Great Divide, Moraine Lake road, and Upper Tramline today. DonC has provded a trip report from his day on Moraine Lake road and Fairview.
New tracksetting on the Great Divide
Christine, Rick and I had a late afternoon start on the Great Divide where the new tracks were firm and well-set-up from the morning tracksetting but there was already a skiff of new snow to slow us down, and it was continuing to snow.
The skating lane was still quite soft and skiers were sinking a couple cm into the snow.
Great Divide
The sky was overcast, temperature was zero, and I probably could have used wax but I went with the Fischer Twin Skins today. Fresh snow falling with the temperature around zero makes me leery to use wax.
If you’re a new skier, the Great Divide is the perfect beginner’s trail. It has no significant hills for the first 6.5K, it’s wide, and very scenic on a sunny day.
Work on the summer gate at Moraine Lake road has finally started but vehicles were still parking on the road near the trailhead. The preferred way to access MLR is from the lake parking lot and skiing down Tramline for 1.6K.
I’ve included photos of Moraine Lake road and Tramline in the gallery below.
The Banff/Lake Louise trail report still shows the last tracksetting on the Great Divide as Nov 11, but I hope my photos prove otherwise.
Grooming Reports
Alberta Parks is listing its grooming operations on its website. You can get to it from my main menu: Trail Reports / Kananaskis / Peter Lougheed (in this case) and then scrolling down. We’re still not sure if the Live Grooming Reports are going to function this winter.
Should be a good chunk of new snow in Louise tonight for a little refresh before the weekend, perhaps allowing some grooming expansion, maybe….
Just wondering where I can get a map to find out where all the groomed trails are.
David, no such single map exists. Every area has their own map which you could pick up at the various Visitor Centres at one time. I’m not sure if they are still giving them out. Kananaskis Visitor Centres are closed for the time being.
I’m not sure if you’re looking for a paper map or if a PDF map is OK. And it isn’t clear if you’re looking for trail maps of each XC ski area, or one map that shows the location of all the XC ski areas. But for what it’s worth, you can get a PDF trail map for the each of the XC ski areas in SkierBob’s domain by clicking on the “Maps” menu near the top of the page.