Excellent conditions at Kananaskis village and Bill Milne

Excellent conditions on Terrace trail

The weather forecast has been very incorrect this week, with today being another example. Environment Canada was predicting a high of +7°C for Canmore and Kananaskis village, but it didn’t get any warmer than +1.

Bill Milne trail near the Evan Thomas bridge

The snow on the Kananasksi village trails is cold enough to use VR45(-2/-8) and they’ve all been freshly trackset.

The main purpose of my skiing today was to take Tessa to the Bill Milne trail for a pleasant ski and we weren’t disappointed.

Seeing Laurie’s photo of the Bill Milne trail motivated me to get out there.

Bill Milne trail near the golf course

The snow and tracks were in excellent shape and NO PINE NEEDLES! We started at the golf course and skied to the south end where the damaged bridge now marks the end of the trail.

The Bill Milne trail is single trackset with a skating lane. The skating lane had a skiff of fresh snow and frost which felt like ball bearings under foot; ie fast conditions. A moose was on the loose and walked in the tracks for about 500 metres.

The bridge to nowhere.

I also skied the 2K portion of the Bill Milne which starts at the village and ends at Ribbon creek. The final K is quite steep(60-metres elevation drop) with switch backs which means it can be fun on good conditions, but it’s getting chopped up from walkers.

To recap, most of the trails in the Kananaskis village/Ribbon creek/Skogan pass areas have been groomed in the past few days and should be in prime condition tomorrow. Check the Kananaskis Live Grooming Report for specifics.

Update 8:55 pm: Just in, groomer’s report from Jeff: All the doom and gloom of heavy winds and very warm temperatures never really came to pass this week. The trails around the Kananaskis Village and upper Skogan are really in very good shape, tonight’s grooming the air temp hovered around -5 and the snow was sparkling in my lights. Sparkling snow equals cold snow and good skiing.