THE STREETS OF CALGARY- SOUTH GLENMORE PARK
Trip date: Sunday Dec 26, 2021
Submitted by DEMOCRATIZE AB
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Discussion:
I followed my Southland Drive route to the west city limit again and down through the off leash area to South Glenmore Park in the afternoon. I skied what was suppose to be the trackset area but it is not trackset. It is well skier tracked but I cut my own trail to help create base snow in case it ever does get trackset again. I will have to contact the City Council member about this and other issues in the park. Then I went and played musical instruments on my skis at some sort of outdoor musical instrument stage near the sailing school. There was just enough snow to ski between the instruments. I had never noticed this outdoor steel musical area before. It was rather interesting. A must to ski to for all. I can imagine it will be a popular place on full moons with the howling wolves on mind altering musical enhancing substances.
After ski jamming on the various snow covered musical instruments I skied what I call the old trim track which starts just west of the musical centre. Now I think the trail is called the Jack Rabbit trail. This trail was established in about 1974 with funding from the better Prime Minister Trudeau through Participation. Prime Minister Trudeau senior was a great builder of trails, particularly in our National Parks, where as Prime Minister Trudeau junior is a great destroyer of trails by not funding trail maintenance in our great National Parks and letting the work his father supported wash and erode away into the streams.
Jack Rabbit trail was in fairly good to excellent shape. The beginning of the trail from the east end is somewhat over grown with a lot of willows overhanging the trail at about the 6' height level. Snow cover is thin under the big spruce trees where I skied over a few roots. The trail is generally excellent once one gets through the spruce forest and into the aspen forest at roughly the 1/2 way mark- where I used to camp back in the mid '70's. Along the trail I stopped to read a map sign, which is rare for me, and the sign said the trail was 4.7km in length which shocked me. I was expecting maybe 2k in length. The Jack Rabbit trail should only be skied by advance skiers, ideally with metal edges, to get the best enjoyment out of the skiing experience. It is a technically narrow trail with some steep hills with fast corners. I only recommend skiing from east to west on this trail so you climb up hills with thin snow cover rather than skiing down them. This has always been one of my favorite trails to ski when there is enough snow base because of the technicality and challenge.
On my way skiing out of South Glenmore Park I was surprised to see how many fresh cross country ski tracks were on some trails above the valley. I came across one young lady skiing on some real old wooden boards that should have been hung on a wall in a museum. I call those old school death sticks as I almost did not make it back home on a pair back in the 1980's. They are susceptible to having binding screws rip out of them in wipe outs. But I was glad to see the lady with a big smile on her face enjoying the great skiing in South Glenmore Park on this -25c day.
On my way back skiing through the off leash area parallel to the Tsuut'ina Reserve chain link fence, I was assaulted verbally and nearly physically by a nasty big dog. I asked the dog owner to control his dog that had hair raised up and was coming at me but he was not cooperative, which is technically illegal. He seemed to enjoy his dogs antics. This citidiot (city idiot) claimed he was in a dog park and did not have to control his dog. The lack of bylaw brain cells in some people and common courtesy really can harsh a good skiing buzz. Thankfully such people are somewhat rare. This did bring back a lot of memories from when I used to ski Weasel Head a lot, and also run into a lot of illegal off leash dogs who would verbally threaten me. It is one of the reasons why I now much prefer to ski in the mountains rather than the big chitty of Calgary.
Tune your skis and ski over to the musical centre and place some tunes in South Glenmore Park before the next chinook comes in next year sometime. Just watch out for unfriendly dogs that are not on skis. I did ski back behind a coyote 30 meters for about 150 meters at one point and saw 3 other coyotes in the park during my ski today. Such big beautiful animals and they did not bark at me at all. Three ran out on to the reserve and one was on the west end of Glemore Reservoir. These animals were so big they looked like they had been interbred with wolves and looked more like coywolves than coyotes.