The snow in these photos looks magnificent, but truthfully, it’s wet, except on Lower Telemark where it was icy.
The Great Divide. I was skiing in the dogsled track.
I skied the late shift at Lake Louise and probably didn’t have as enjoyable a day as Peter Donitz who was there early when the temperature was -4°C. At 2:30 pm, the air temp was +2 at the Fairview trailhead.
If the snow was in the sun for any length of time, it was probably wet
I skied on my Skintecs to the high point on Fairview on variable conditions. The snow was 60-30-5-5. 60% wet, 30% dry and cold(shaded areas), 5% slushy and 5% icy.
I returned to the trailhead, crossed the road at Deer Lodge and skied down Peyto to the Great Divide. The GD tracks were soft but when I was returning they already were freezing and becoming hard and fast. Lower Telemark which is mostly in shade all day, was quite icy.
Fairview
After the incredible conditions I enjoyed at LL only five days ago, I must admit this felt like quite a letdown.
Driving back along the Bow Valley Parkway it’s evident how little snow we’ve had in the past two months. The ski tracks from the Lake Louise to Banff Loppet are plainly visible. These are tracks which have not had any tracksetting since Jan 23. They should have been covered with snow and buried a long time ago.
It was attempting to snow. There is snow in the forecast along with cooler temperatures, so it might get better.
Bob, it was only the skate lanes (on MLR and 1A) that were groomed yesterday am. On our way into Paradise Valley at around 10 am, we talked to the groomer and she told us that the tracks were too hard to reset – if they had attempted to do them, they would just have ended up chunky and rubbly. We talked to classic skiers starting out on MLR and they said it was very icy.