RED EARTH CREEK TO SHADOW LAKE LODGE- Friday
Trip date: Saturday Dec 11, 2021
Submitted by DEMOCRATIZE AB
Particpants:
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Discussion:
Excellent skier track skiing on an old buried snowmobile track up to RE 6 campground. Excellent snow base with roughly up to 15 cm of new winter like snow on top of the snowmobile track. I can't understand why Redearth Creek trail is not trackset. Parks Canada should get on it.
For about the first 3 Km a mountaineer fat skier skied the track. He likely realized fat skis are a waste of time and energy on well track trails and turned around. There are a couple of minor trees on the trail which are easy to ski over.
From RE6 campground to the Redearth Warden Cabin the trail is well skier tracked without a snowmobile packed base. Excellent skiing and excellent base. A big improvement since I broke trail up there a couple of weeks back or so. Most of the willows are buried now and the trail is respectably wide. At the warden cabin in the late afternoon the temperature was -8c.
I broke trail up to Shadow Lake Lodge. Just as it was getting slightly dark, I lost the main trail due to fallen trees and overhanging branches that hid recognizable land features. I ended up cutting a bushwack trail to about a 1/2 moon. I ended up on Redearth Creek for a ways before cutting a trail back up to the main trail. I turned on the headlight and boom- I was 15 meters from some trail rip rap thankfully. The creek is a little rough to scoot up as it is up and down a lot. What ever you do, don't follow my night bush wack trail as it added nearly 1 km going to the lodge, if not more. At least that is what my legs were telling me.
When I got to the meadow by Shadow Lake lodge the trail breaking got much easier as there is a fairly hard layer of snow with about 15 cm of nice cold silky snow on top. It was very enjoyable to ski and moderate-fast skiing speed with Swix Green wax for -7c to -13c fresh snow. If I would not have gone on a bush wacking trail breaking adventure, I would have skied to Shadow Lake under a beautiful diffused 1/2 moon that cast great light for skiing and sight seeing.
The temperature at the lodge was -8C when I left after getting my fill of yodeling and shoveling snow off the decks of the big lodges. It was great to hang out up there with no wind until about 8pm. I did a lot of side stepping on the big hills below the lodge to better the trail. A snowmobile can get up no problem at all after cutting out maybe a dozen trees, one which is up to maybe 15 inches across. The rest are small. All are easily skied over or skied around. It will take maybe 2.5 hours of chainsaw work to remove the trees from RE6 campground to Shadow Lake Lodge or it will take about 4 hours for a well seasoned axe man, or axe-r, or axe-ie or axe-ist, or whatever the gender neutral term is, to clear the trail to get a snowmobile through for a good ski track.