What a difference a day makes! Fresh snow on top of a packed and hard trail base made this trip fun on the way up. Apparently going down got a little more icy especially near the parking lot as two of our participants who chose the trail down found. The rest of us had a particularly enjoyable powder ski through vast meadows and a reasonable creek drainage to the parking lot. There had been snow overnight all the way from Calgary to at least Castle Junction. Driving was a little bit challenging going out, with ice for a section (Callaway Park to beyond Cochrane Junction)on the highway right hand (driving) lane. It was easier to drive in the left hand (passing)lane for this section.

There were quite a few other skiers at the parking lot. Waxing was a little tricky with the fresh snow on the way up and a few of our participants stopped to rewax. We made the lake around 12:30 pm (9:00am start from Shouldice) and had a lunch in the sun with a number of other groups close by. After lunch there was a ski to the end of the lake and up to near the waterfall at the back of the lake. We regrouped again at the lunch spot where four of us decided to ski the drainage and two would ski back by the trail. There was a skiers track which went to the "boom" end of the lake which was followed. At the end of the lake, a snowshoers track was followed until we got fed up with their route through the trees. We set in our own track through the meadows finding a very old skiers track in different sections. There was an occasional hole found when on our own track. Eventually, after about a kilometer we came to where the meadows merged into a drainage. Here Wally took the lead having a great time finding the best route down the creek using the fairly substantial snow bridges. He looked like a kid in a candy shop so much was he enjoying this.

Eventually another meadow arrived in our sights. When I did this trip before, the left hand drainage was followed which became a canyon and so it was necessary to climb out of it to the left and eventually up to the summer trail. This time we chose to go to the right and were able to find a fairly open route for most of the way down. Only over the last 500 meters of this section did it close in enough that it was important to choose our route carefully. Eventually, the snowshoer track was encountered just where it begins to level out. We were able to glide down it to the parking lot and arrived about 45 minutes after the others.

It was a nice sunny day with fresh snow and warm temperatures which made this an enjoyable trip for Wally, Rita, Dave, Kaare, Janet and Bob C/S. Thanks for joining me. Wally advises that the snowshoer track that we eventually joined was probably the old route into Boom Lake many years ago.