Cabin along the Coal Mine trail. Photo from 2011.
I see that Coal Mine was trackset today. It’s been a few years since I’ve skied up there. I had to dig deep to find a couple photos. A few other trails were also trackset in the Ribbon Creek area.
Near the top of Coal Mine
Near as I can tell, my last trip up Coal Mine was in 2011. At the time, I wrote about it on the blog…
“Coal Mine is a trail on which you want to have excellent conditions to get the full enjoyment. It’s a 240M elevation gain over 2.6K. I have to say this is the best I’ve ever seen it. To make a long story short, it took 33 minutes up, and four screaming minutes down. The climb is relentless. The trail doesn’t flatten out until you’re almost at the top.”
I imagine conditions are at their best right now. Tomorrow(Tuesday) looks reasonably nice with temperatures around -10 to -14 with sunshine. Wednesday and Thursday should be excellent ski days with temperatures in the low single minus digits. Not that I’m advocating that you play hookey or anything. 🙂
The south trails at Sandy McNabb were trackset today.
The warmest place in the SkierBob empire for the next week is Golden, BC. The temperatures range from -2 to -8.
This Sunday is the Lake Louise Loppet. The Weather Network is predicting a high of -12°C on race day.
The Alberta Youth Championships are being hosted in West Bragg Creek this weekend. Racing will be on West Crystal Lines and Chickadee Meadow.
I skied it last year and it was trackset nicely the day I did it. Your description is exactly as I remembered it: a long slog uphill and a scream downhill. It’s worth doing at least once in your life just for the fun ride down (if you dare).
The great part about it is you can usually get some powder on it as it’s not well used. The scenery, meh, it’s a total downhill rush.