Category: moosling

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Amazing Elizabeth Parker hut expedition

Expedition may be a little bit of an exaggeration, but everything tends to turn into a bit of an expedition when you’re doing it with small children – at least when it comes to logistics.

We last spent a winter night up at Elizabeth Parker hut when the Moosling was just seven months old – it was his first hut trip.

This time it was three families, each with one child, who set off from the trailhead. Only having one child each does certainly make it easier. The two wee ones travelled in Chariots, while the Moosling was supposed to be skiing.

He was definitely travelling on skis, but worked out early on that he could grab onto the back of a Chariot to hitch a ride. So when he wasn’t being towed uphill, he was often finding other ways to be assisted up.

We broke for lunch at the half-way picnic table. The offspring all roared and pretended to be lions, while the adults ate and rehydrated. Then all the kids were inserted into their ski cages (with some kicking and wailing and gnashing of teeth), and the towing continued.

The Lake O’Hara road can be a long haul when you’re towing Chariots, and have kids to keep happy. It went fairly smoothly though, all things considered. Occasionally travelling in one big group, then splintering and reforming. Sometimes singing.

The Moosling was released from his pulky prison when we reached the summer bus stop, so he could ski the final kilometre or so to the hut. But first he spent some time being an assistant ski coach.

The final section was a little steeper and twistier than I remembered it being, but still didn’t take very long to coax a 5 year old through (at one point he made the call it was easier to remove his skis than side step up a hill section though).

And then we were at the hut, saving ourselves spots along the bunk, and letting the kids run about while we had the luxury of enjoying whole place to ourselves.

It was great having a pack of us there – this was our first group hut trip, and it’s a fantastic idea. The divide and conquer approach means you can have people making a meal, people chatting and relaxing, and people entertaining the kids – instead of having to ineffectively manage everything between two.

The hut was fully booked, but a big group had already filled out the smaller hut, so we only had a small party to share our sleeping quarters with.

We had a pleasant evening of relaxing by the fire, chopping wood, collecting snow, eating chocolate, drinking port, reading books to kids, trying to convince kids not to pile up all the sleeping bags and jackets into one enormous heap and jump on them, and reading the logbook.

We even slept ok! As far as sleeping in huts goes, I’ve had far worse nights without kids.

And then it was morning, and time for breakfast (French toast – our meal!), hut maintenance, and snow adventures. Getting out to play in the snow with the kids was great, and we probably should have spent time doing it the night before too.

Children were thrown into snow…

It had been snowing overnight, and just kept snowing and snowing throughout the morning.

Holes were dug….

But then it was finally time to get moving. We finished packing up, and started the ski ‘down’. Because it’s not really down is it. It feels like it should be. Maybe it even is if you’re skiing on fast snow without overnight gear. But when you’re towing a pulk through a few inches of fresh snow (Alex), or trying to tow a 5 year old up all of the slight rises (me… and Patrick), it just doesn’t quite feel like it. That road is definitely in my top 10 list of trails that are uphill both ways.

But with all the fresh snow, everything was beautiful. Eventually the snow stopped falling, and the descent really is much quicker than going in the other direction, so it must be at least vaguely downhill.

We arrived back at the cars, got packed up, high-fived each other for such a successful trip, then went to drive out of the parking lot. There was a train. What? It had been there for about half an hour. What?! Phone calls to various bodies of authority ensued. We all ended up piled into the back of the minivan for 45 minutes, until finally, miraculously, the train started to move. We were free!

Ski in: 11.5km, 460m elevation gain, elapsed time 5hr, moving time 3hr15min
Ski out: 11.5km, elapsed time 3hr15min, moving time 2hr15min

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canada general moosling snow

My favourite lake

Ok, so we went skiing up to Chester Lake again. There was a lot of fresh snow though, and the weather was great, the company was great, and the Moosling had an absolute blast (spoilers).

We met up with Maria and Neil at the trailhead. We got the Moosling into his alpine skis, and hooked him up with a harness – from there, Alex and I took it in turns to tow him up to the lake. It’s far easier than towing a Chariot or pulk, that’s for sure. Although I’m wondering if we should try and get a towing system with a little more give…

We headed up to Elephant Rocks, and I realised the last time I’d made it up to here was when I was around 10 weeks pregnant, and Brendan was busy dislocating his shoulder and having us put it back in (thankfully, otherwise it would have been a long and painful journey back to Canmore to get it done).

At Elephant Rocks, there was a lot of exciting holes to be dug, and food to be eaten. We watched ski-mo guys cruising about getting in lots of elevation.

And then, it was time for the descent! And by that, I mean it was time to take skins off and pretend we were going downhill, where in reality we were trying to tow the Moosling across flat and sometimes uphill sections of trail while having no grip at all because we took our skins off.

On the plus side, the Moosling was having a ball hitting clumps of snow off the trees.

But eventually things did start heading downhill. And all the time on the hill has really helped improve Moosling skiing skills, as he easily cruised down, having a blast on the tight treed trail.

The snow was soft, the sky was blue, the mountains were snow-capped. We had a pretty great run down.

By the time we got back down to the carpark, Finn was pretty keen to ski back up so he could do the run again.

We decided to head back home though. And he fell asleep in the car – big day!

Distance: 9.5km
Elevation gain: 350m
Moving time: 2hr15min

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canada general moosling snow

Baker Creek ski trails

We thought we’d get out and ski some trails we hadn’t skied before, and so headed out along the Bow Valley Parkway to Baker Creek. Alex had actually skied them during the Lake Louise Banff loppet, but they were new to me!

It’s only three or four kilometres of trail, but good for a short and easy explore somewhere new. I was curious too, as I was due to be doing the loppet myself the following week.

As is standard, skiing with a small person involves equal parts skiing, and flopping about in the snow.

And then it was off to Banff for blue icecream and a visit to the ice train. The Moosling thought it was the coolest thing ever.

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bikes canada general moosling snow

Family fat biking

We got out on Saturday morning to wander about on the north end of the High Rockies trail, which basically means exploring a few convenient little loops of snowshoe trails, sled dog trails, and the heavily travelled east end of the Goat Creek trail.

The High Rockies trail travels along the western side of the sled dog loop. We did well on the portion that had been travelled by snowshoes, but once we hit the less packed surfaces, we started to have issues with the skinny tyre on the trail-a-bike. It just doesn’t have the float that the fat bikes do. We either need to attach a ski, or find a way to rig a fatter tyre.

We turned back without having got terribly far. Still a fun wander, and it’s great beginner fat biking territory out there. And the scenery is pretty nice too.

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Elk Lakes Cabin

It’s been such a long time since we’ve been out for a winter hut adventure. Nearly five years! So we (I) decided that to avoid having another winter drift away, it would be a good idea to start getting organised, and so the Elk Lakes Cabin idea was born.

I’d cycled past there last year, as I headed south to Fernie, but hadn’t actually checked out the hut. But I knew it was there somewhere, four or five kilometres beyond the groomed Peter Lougheed Provincial Park ski trails that take you to Elk Pass.

The three of us had a disorganised morning, sleeping in, then slowly getting everything packed and loaded into the car. Somehow this all took much longer than expected, and by the time we arrived at the Elk Pass trailhead it was after 1pm.

“Plenty of time” we said to ourselves… then “well, we have headlamps”.

As we set off we realised it was much colder than we’d been expecting. It’s sometimes hard to keep warm while skiing at small child pace too. After a couple of kilometres the small child was inserted into a sleeping bag and loaded into the pulk we had borrowed, and we set off at a more determined pace.

We’d headed along the Hydroline trail to Elk Pass, thinking we had a better chance of being warm up there – maybe we’d even find sunlight! And we managed to get a few minutes of sunlight before it disappeared behind the mountains for the day, but then the temperature just kept dropping.

Beyond Elk Pass it’s just backcountry skiing. There was a bit of a skier set track for the first kilometre or two, but it was much harder work to tow a heavily laden pulk through. Or so Alex tells me.

Theoretically this section is downhill. In reality, it didn’t feel very downhill, except for the final section just before you drop down onto the meadow before the hut. And by the time we reached that point, it was properly dark, headlamps-on skiing. Which was thoroughly exhilarating given the strength of our headlamps.

As we reached the meadow, we descended into a lovely cold pool of air. Alex’s thermometer was reading -25oC or so. My hair and jacket had gathered a thorough coating of white frost, and we kept moving, hoping that the hut was magically warm.

The hut was not magically warm. The combination lock on the door was frozen shut, and took some convincing to unlock, and then we were on a mission to build some fire and raise everything to a more reasonable temperature. Dinner was cooked, port was drank, and we sat down to play a family game of Settlers of Catan before bed. Finn had convinced us to bring it along – I’d taught him how to play the week before, and he’d developed an immediate obsession.

An early night to bed, we had more hut-guests arrive around midnight. They eventually settled down, and when we awoke the next morning (at 8.45am, a perfectly reasonable time) we discovered that 3 of the 4 of them were Australian, and very friendly hut-mates.

Our mission for that day involved nothing more than skiing back out again, but what with another game of Catan to play, and a slow breakfast, and then slowly packing, it was after 11am by the time we were on our way. Thankfully it was a bit warmer now, and the sun was shining!

We convinced Finn to ski across the meadow, then threw him into the pulk for the rough climb up to Elk Pass. We spent most of the climb singing loudly.

On reaching Elk Pass we snacked, booted Finn out of the pulk, removed skins, and started the ski down. Which was a lot of fun! Some sections were slightly ridiculous with no grip, but still possible.

As we pulled into the carpark, having just flown down the last hill, Finn’s conclusion was, after yelling “YAHOOOOO!” most of the way down the hill: “Mama, that was the best adventure ever, that was such a fun adventure!”

Distance: 10km (from Elk Pass trailhead to Elk Lakes Cabin)
Elevation gain: 240m (each way)
Time: 4.5 hours to the hut, 4 hours back to the car