West Elk Pass - We Chose Wisely
Trip date: Sunday Jan 21, 2024
Submitted by The 13th Troll
Particpants:
The Mountain Trolls
Discussion:
Where was everyone? It seems so much more special when you have it all to yourselves.
A dusting of light snow from the night before, Elk Pass parking mostly empty, saw maybe 6 other skiers all day, plenty of snow, good track-setting on lower & upper Fox Creeks, temperatures hovered around -1 C with just the odd snowflake falling all afternoon... felt like we won the lottery. As always we started with Lower Fox Creek (a most aesthetically pleasing trail) which had been recently track-set then skied Upper Fox Creek to Blueberry Junction - broke trail thru knee-deep powder into West Elk Pass from Blueberry Junction to the BC border. If there was a previous trail across West Elk Pass it had been completely obscured by recent snowfall. Again we used the Asnes X-Skins for the entire tour so can't really comment on waxing - but the Snowball test indicated SWIX Blue should have worked fine.