The drive from Calgary to the trailhead gave us a brilliant and colourful sunrise which lit up a Chinook arch overhead as well as the peaks of the Rockies to the west. The snow was still a bit skimpy in the Kananaskis Lakes area, but the Smith Dorrien valley had a recent snowfall adding to an already decent snowpack.

The Smith Dorrien trails consist of about 40 km of old logging roads that have been maintained for biking in the summer and skiing in the winter. Since they are not groomed, they offer more of a backcountry experience than the trackset trails of Kananaskis Lakes. While the trails are below treeline, they do offer excellent views of the Spray Peaks to the west (Black Prince, Smith-Dorrien, Murray, Birdwood, and Commonwealth) and Mts. Chester and Kent to the east. The trails are on a hillside with generally easy undulations, but they also have some decent downhill sections that can be challenging with hardpacked or icy snow conditions.

Our plan was to ski the Yellow perimeter loop in an anticlockwise direction. We were on the trail by 10:00 in sunshine and perfect temperatures (-10C). There was about 8 inches of powder snow on a good packed base which made trail breaking easy, and the steeper downhill sections rather tame. By noon we had made it to the furthest point, and had lunch at the picnic table near the top of Orange loop. During lunch our sunny weather clouded over and a cool breeze came up. Soon we were on our way back the via the lower elevation sections. We added part of Green loop to our itinerary, and arrived at the cars by 3:00. A short early season outing, but good fun.

Participants: Dorothy-Ann Reimer, Karel Silovsky, Arnold Westberg, Nancy Earle, and Bob St.John (coordinator and scribe).