Mount Shark

I finished skiing in PLPP very early yesterday, so I stopped at Mt Shark on my way back to Canmore and skied Watridge Lake road to the end of the tracksetting at the Spray river.

Watridge Lake road at Mt Shark is double trackset for the first 3.6K, and single trackset thereafter

Excellent conditions prevail with my only inconvenience being some post-holes on the steep and twisting downhill to the river. A few people walked the trail while it was still soft with the consequent chunks of frozen snow remaining on top of the corduroy. I must have smoothed a few of them over as I made my way down.

Watridge Lake road is trackset all the way to the Spray river at 5.8K.

Skier tracks on Watridge Lake

If you take the final kilometre down to the Spray river, it’s about a 100-metre elevation gain on the way back up. Chances are you’ll lose most of your wax on the way down, so re-waxing at the bottom is a good idea and I’m glad I took the time to do it. It’s worth the trip down for the fun of the fast downhill and once at the bottom, the scenery is wonderful.

Watridge Lake road at Mt Shark

The air temperature was -7°C when I started at 3 pm with the snow at -8. The VR40(-4/-12) which I used earlier in the day still worked fine.

I took the short detour down to Watridge Lake and noticed that people had skied a long distance out onto the lake.

Lots of skating opportunities at Mt Shark

Mount Shark is a place where you can ski with your dog, but unfortunately I didn’t have mine with me. In addition to Watridge Lake road, there are many kilometres of colour-coded trails which are groomed for both skating and classic. Watridge Lake road is an easy trail for the first 4.8K, and there is a 10-lane training grid at the trailhead.

There’s a bit of snow in the forecast, but not enough to make much improvement on all the trails which were damaged by the rain. The best places to ski are PLPP, Lake Louise, Mt Shark, and Yoho. Hopefully, Lake O’Hara fire road will be groomed before the weekend.