| I was out in the Black Prince area today instructing a group of recreational club trip leaders for the Mountain Skills Academy.
We did an extended classroom session in the morning waiting for the temperature to rise in Canmore, the morning was a brutally cold -34 deg C.
We went to Black Prince in the afternoon, and temps had risen to -22 deg C at noon.
The current ski trail beside the creek from the parking lot (skiing north) was through quite thick trees. We followed it and crossed the creek on a downed tree a couple hundred meters north of the parking lot.
Poorly functioning skins and cold extremities turned us back before we got to the ski terrain. We crossed the creek at the same spot, but then skied through the more open trees directly to the highway and then back south to the parking lot.
Unless a better crossing point exists or freezes up, you might consider following our track north along the highway from the Black Prince turnoff and then through the more open forest to access the north creek crossing.
There was only 40cm of faceted snow, but it supports a skier quite well with some barely adequate mid-pack strength. |