I skied the late shift at West Bragg Creek along with my dog Tessa. With all the trip reports from West Bragg today, I hardly need to say much, so I’ll mostly post photos. Thank you for all the reports.
Sundog trail
Conditions are pretty nice considering it’s Nov 8, but I’d still recommend rock skis and skiing with care and caution. You’ll encounter a few hazards lurking underneath the snow, but luckily most are visible which allows you to take precautionary measures.
Steve Riggs at the corner of Sundog and Elbow
Reading the trip reports from skiers who were out earlier has led me to believe that more grooming occurred later this afternoon. I received some good recon from Anna as I was starting out. She said Elbow had new roll-packing as did Iron Springs, but she didn’t recommend Iron Springs, saying it was pretty rough(and confirmed on the trip reports by Fallsalot).
Starting up Elbow trail
I also talked to a skier who said Mountain road, Moose, and Mountain View had new grooming. Steve Riggs might have some information for us later on those trails. I ran into Steve near the Sundog – Loggers junction and we could both see the new grooming on Loggers.
East Crystal Line had good skier-set tracks
East Crystal line has no grooming yet but there are good skier-set tracks. The Eastern side of Sundog has snowmobile packing only but was still easily skiable.
I would say that Elbow offered the best skiing of the day, but that’s also where I hit a rock and took a tumble. Where I could loosen rocks, I removed them from the trail. If you go out there, take a small hammer to loosen those which are frozen into the ground.
The air temperature at 3 pm was -6°C and the snow was -5. VR45(-2/-8) worked well.
If you don’t like driving home in wet clothes, the Trails Centre has a change room.
I took Mike’s suggestion and enjoyed a latte and some delicious treats at the Heart of Bragg Creek.
I see from the Live Grooming Report that Terrace trail near Kananaskis Village has had a refresh. This portion of trail takes a beating from all the foot traffic.
I’m very happy to hear that ElaineB got her keys back.
To answer Steve’s question and add to the West Bragg Creek reports…. Yes, Telephone Loop did get packed and groomed today. The Parks crew also removed a number of trees that had been down across the trail since the big wind storm a couple of weeks ago.
It’s a multi-user trail, so expect to find snowshoe, fat-bike and foot traffic as far as Snowshoe Hare on East Telephone. This is still just the first snowfall of the season, so expect to find a few rocks, twigs and grass poking through.
Adding to Bob’s report- after skiing up W Sundog, down E Crystal and back up E Sundog- I followed the fresh grooming on Loggers to upper W crystal to Moose Connector (best part of my tour on these 3 trails, with good coverage and very nice smooth skiing) There was no grooming on Mountain View as of late this afternoon. The grooming continued downhill on Mountain Road a short ways and then west onto the lower cutoff to Moose Connector, which I followed for a short while, but not as far as the Moose-Tele junction so I have no idea whether Moose Loop or Telephone were done. At that point dusk was falling and I skied good fast skier tracks back to the trailhead on Mountain Road.
Moose Loop was groomed while I was skiing on it this afternoon!
Bob, we skied at “Best Bragg” today, too. Starting at 10:30 with a temperature of -9, we left the warming hut along the Mountain Road trail, joined the Moose Loop and, skiing anti-clockwise, did the Mountain View West trail to reconnect with the Mountain Road track back “home”. Everything was skier-tracked and got better as we got further from the parking lot. VR 40 was sufficient, though I probably would have been happy with a little warmer wax. No wind and sunshine made for a very pleasant outing.