REDEARTH CREEK- BEYOND BALL PASS CAMPGROUND
Trip date: Thursday Feb 24, 2022
Submitted by DEMOCRATIZE AB
Particpants:
MR. Legalize Real Democracy on 54-48-52mm metal edge boards
Discussion:
The Redearth Creek trail was generally very enjoyable skiing up a trackset trail with new snow, until at about the 3 km mark a snowmobiler came down the trail and took out the skilky trackset that I was skiing. That was a major bummer. Then the snowmobile trail basically sucked to ski on. My cold green wax worked well in the trackset but I got lousy grip on the flat packed snowmobile trail. This has happened to many times on the Redearth trail this season. Snowmobilers should never take out the trackset, even for 1/2 a day. There is no need to.
Thankfully sometime in the late afternoon the trail was re-trackset but the new trackset was not as good skiing as the older one. The new trackset is somewhat shallow in places. Because the trail was snowmobile packed well before being trackset, the snow was not the greatest to make a very nice trackset. What is there is OK. The snowmobile also brought up some pine needles to the surface that were buried under the new snow previously. Snow speed coming back at night was fast.
I widened the trail up to Shadow Lake Lodge somewhat. It is now trackset as well and very good. Fast snow.
There was a fat skier tracked trail from Shadow Lake Lodge to Shadow Lake with about 5 cm of new snow in it.
From the bridge at the Lake outlet to beyond Ball Pass Campground, I re-broke the ski trail. Ski penetration varied from ankle deep to near boot top in the trees. Less ski penetration in the meadows. Trail breaking was somewhat slow to moderate speed.
The skies cleared as the sun went down and provided a very nice star show or Elon Musk and Russian military satellite show- who knows for sure these days. At Shadow Lake Lodge well after dark the temperature was -15C.
There was significant smoke or smog along the continental divide in the Ball Pass area which was unfortunate. I was wondering if smoke had drifted from the unnecessary fire burns near Canamore which I saw on my drive up in the morning.