Another opportunity to snow shoe!

Last weekend, as the weather was set fair and most Calgarians were heading for the slopes, we decided to explore another area for snow shoeing. En route we passed the turn off for Kananaskis Village and Bill muttered something about going in for a look ..... well I never. We continued on to the visitor centre for Peter Lougheed Provincial Park; the car park was packed as was the centre. We checked on conditions, looked at possible snow shoe routes and returned to the vehicle. Normally we would turn right but this time we decided to turn left and head for Canyon day use car park and Upper Kananaskis Lake. There were a couple of routes we could choose from but we opted for the lower lakeside trail. Through the trees we caught glimpses of the mountains in their winter cloaks and as the clouds lifted, well ...... awesome (using a Canadianism). The trail went up and down and several folk passed us as they returned to the car park, all wearing different types of snow shoes and Bill could tell me which make not just by looking at the snow shoe but also by the imprint they left behind, impressive or what!

The Lake was was covered in ice and snow and at the journeys end the mountains looked inviting but not really with snow shoes, more like ice climbing. A chill wind whipped up across the Lake and so we sought shelter for lunch. We found a picnic table in amongst some trees and which was not covered in snow. Zof started to put out our sandwiches, fruit and drink rather too quickly a couple of grey jays appeared. As ever Zof took pity; poor little birds, it's cold, aren't they cute ... yeah, yeah, so she threw them a couple of crumbs - big mistake next thing we know there are at least eight of them all around us in the trees and then they started to swoop down to take our tasty sandwiches out of our hands. We put the fruit away pretty quickly. These 'cute' little birds thought Bill was playing with them as he swirled his hiking stick in the air to stop them from swooping on us and into our rucksacks. Our return route took closer to the Lake itself, although we were walking on snow there was thick ice beneath it. In places the ice stood almost vertical and we could see how the water had frozen making patterns in the ice. Zof picked up a piece, it was clear and blue but not minty as in the Fox's glacier mint advert of long ago.

The car park was emptying gradually as we returned, the sun had attracted many people to snow shoe around the Lake and many more joined us on the journey towards Highway 1 and onto it. Another grand day and those views .......

A glorious day snow shoeing

We spent a day snow shoeing in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park with our final destination being Chester Lake. The snow shoe trail was clearly way marked all the way and snow shoers outnumbered cross country skiers. The day was relatively warm at minus 3C in the car park and there was an abundance of snow. We quickly donned our snow shoes, hats and gloves, not forgetting lunch, water and a flask of hot chocolate. Without Bill seeing Zofia had also packed a few treats for the journey.

The route took us through forestry, a winding route with a couple of step ascents. Our snow shoes have heel raising bars at the back for steep ascents and these support the heel when going up. Bill made a wise choice when we purchased our snow shoes, after much research he decided on Mountain Trail produced by a Canadian company. The snow was deep in places; in this photograph Zofia's left hand pole has gone in quite deeply but we don't think it quite reached ground level.

Once out of the forestry we saw the hills in the distance and would have missed Chester Lake completely as the trail skirted to the left, there was a sign which said no fishing, so we knew we had reached our final destination. Chester Lake was frozen and covered in white snow around it we had views of Windy Peak

and Mount Galatea. A glorious day for snow shoeing, some sun, a few flakes of snow and wonderful views.