Shadow Lake and Mount Ball can be accessed from Redearth Creek. Photo by Chuck
If you wish to see the spectacular sight of Shadow Lake and Mt Ball pictured above, read Chuck’s trip report from yesterday. The Trip Reports page will give you a good overview of the conditions on most ski trails.
Mt Shark trails were groomed and trackset last night with the exception of the following:
“The steep ups and downs of the first 2 km’s of the Yellow 10km loop (and the Red 5) generally has the thinnest base, and it was not groomed this week. The full Watridge Lake trail was groomed and trackset, with the exception of the spur down to the lake itself, where it is quite thin and windblown
Watridge Lake road at Mt Shark (file photo)
There’s quite a discrepancy in temperatures this morning. Mud Lake weather station which is just a few K from Mt Shark shows -11°C. Boulton Creek in PLPP is reporting -1 on the Weather Network. Windy.com predicts a high of -4 at Mt Shark and PLPP.
At Canmore Nordic Centre, the natural snow on Banff trail, Bow and Meadowview have been groomed and some tracksetting occurred. Check the CNC Trail Report for details. The CNC weather station shows a temperature of -5.
There is no update shown on the Banff trail report(yet), but Friday is the regularly scheduled grooming of Castle Lookout to Baker Creek and Castle Junction to Castle Lookout. I hope someone can give us a report later today on the condition of the trails.
At 7:20 a.m. the Banff/Lake Louise trail report shows no tracksetting in Lake Louise yesterday but that could be updated later today.
Update Jan 12 @ 9:10 a.m: Banff/Lake Louise trail report shows the following new tracksetting: Jan. 12 – Moraine Lk Rd, and Jan. 11 – Upper Telemark and Peyto
Mt. Shark – Yes, excellent conditions again on the Shark trails. Good classic and skate grooming – -8C at the start and -3C at 1:00pm. Blue wax was great vr45 offered no slipping. Moose tracks, rabbit tracks here and there. Some alpine tour skiers heading out as well as snow shoe types. So great to see the 15km trail in such good shape. Everyone had smiles.
Spray East and West in Banff is not in ‘Good” condition as noted on the Parks Canada trail report. The trail is icy and the tracks are in poor shape.
The Weather Network’s Boulton Creek “data” is hokum, I suspect. During the last couple of cold snaps I noticed their current temp for Boulton was definitely the MODEL, not actual, by comparing to their link for the last 24hrs:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/last-24-hours/alberta/boulton-creek-peter-lougheed-provincial-park
So then I compared that to Kananaskis Village last 24hrs:
https://www.theweathernetwork.com/ca/last-24-hours/alberta/kananaskis
….low and behold, same data. Considering how many ads rim those fake news Weather Network pages, it begs some questions.
Windy.com is fantastic. At a glance you can tell if the models are in agreement, and airgrams (NEMs) show if there’s potential for temperature inversions.
Indeed, I became suspicious yesterday, as the thermometer at Pocaterra Hut read -8C, which was quite a bit colder than I had expected from looking at Weather Network (great for skiing though!).
For some time a while ago, I had found their forecasts to be more accurate than Environment Canada, but I have not paid much attention to that lately. Hmmmmmm……
Doing comparisons last winter between the modeled temperatures from Windy and what I measured on site, I would rank the models by accuracy as follows: NEMS > ECMWF > NAM > GFS
This only applies for mountain forecasts in the winter. I found the accuracy order changed for Calgary etc., and in the summer.