It was quite cold in the morning in Calgary, but Banff and Kananaskis showed a lot warmer (and so they were). The three cars met at the trailhead at 10 and were soon skinned up and ready to go. All of us were on our AT skis for the first time in the season. The trail up through the trees had quite a few rocks and roots showing, but once we got up to the meadow things looked much better.
Wow! Look at the snow up there!
We ended up starting with two shorter runs in the very modest terrain around the easy uptrack. And the snow was lovely! A good foot of fairly fresh snow on top of a decent base. Everyone was absolutely delighted. As you can see from the photos it was quite overcast but generally reasonably pleasant as long as we were in the trees. At the our skin-off level it was frequently quite windy and unpleasant.
For our third run we moved a little west and skied right down to just above the meadow where we had lunch in a nicely sheltered spot. We made two more longer runs in the aft, generally skiing a little further west each time and skinning up at the lunch spot.
Ed
Celine and Barb
Nancy
Arnold
Bill
Manfred and Barb
A little blizzard across the top
The crux of the day was the tricky descent from the meadow to the cars. That was a challenge, but we just took time and care. We were back at the cars around 3:15.
Many thanks to participants: Bill,Arnold,Nancy,Manfred,Celine,Ed,Barbara, and Hookie for joining me, Carl (C/S)
PS A few participants asked me to taunt the Ramblers who sarcastically wished us good skiing in the rocks as they met us at Shouldice en route to their XC trip to Skogan Pass. They missed some awesome skiing! (Although it looks like they probably had a lot more sunshine.)
PPS As far as I can tell, the serious avalanche incident on Saturday was in a quite different part of Arethusa Cirque. We went north from the meadow, that appears to be well west of the meadow.
https://globalnews.ca/news/3869178/37-year-old-skier-seriously-injured-in-kananaskis-backcountry-avalanche/