A blue sky day up in the mountains with great views to Sunshine Resort and Assinniboine Mountain. This is the type of trip where you tolerate between 1-2 km. of not so nice ski touring to enjoy the other 25 km of very nice touring. The snow proved very nice higher up in the drainage but required heavy trail breaking once lower and well into the forest. It was a fairly long day with arrival at the Red Earth Creek Fire Road by the last around 6:30pm and out to the Red Earth Creek Parking Lot by all at around 7:45pm.

With the car shuttle completed we started up the Healy Pass trail just after 9:00. Being such a large group it was a good idea to stop at trail junctions to regroup. When the edge of the Healy Meadows was reached, we veered off and did a rising traverse staying south of the ridge on the west side of Lost Horse Pass. This is not the standard route which would normally go up the gully from the campground, but I like to do different approaches and no one was adverse to trying it.

Climbing above Healy creek towards Lost Horse creek fun.

The snow had a good base and we made an overlook about a 1/2 kilometer from the pass around noon where lunch was held. A mighty fine day to be high was the comment from a number of people.


Nature provides a lunch bench with a view for Janet, Terry and Alicja.

After lunch the group was off to "bag" the pass. The views of the meadows are truly impressive from this pass. The snow was great as we set off down the gentle slopes skimming along on the top of the snow. Lower down there were a few weak spots to be careful of.


Wonderful ski touring terrain above Lost Horse creek.

Mount Brett and Pilot mountain peaking over the shoulder.

Too soon the trees were encountered but it was a nice ski down the west drainage to where both creek arms merge. From here it is just a matter of following the drainage down. The creek was crossed occasionally to take a more direct line but mostly the skiing was through short meadows with wide spacing between trees. We surmised this valley could be fairly wet during the summer.

About 1-2 kilometers from the Red Earth Creek fire road the valley narrows into more like a canyon although decently wide. In past years I had skied this trip in March. Because we are doing this trip in early February the creek and the deadfall wasn't as well covered. This made for a rather challenging time with more zigging and zagging than I had done on previous tours. However, we all made it out to the fire road before darkness finally set in. The ski down the Red Earth Creek Fire Road was by headlamp but it was in good shape so no real problems in the dark.

Once the car shuttle was done, most of us headed off to the Drake for supper. We were back in town by around 11:00. A worthwhile tour probably better done in March during a high snowfall year to allow a more direct line through the canyon area.

The tour was successfully completed by the group which included Greg, Dennis, Cordula, Rick, Sim, Shirley, Alicja, Carl, Terry, Janet, John and Bob - Coordinator and Scribe. Thanks to all for coming out. On these rarely done valley tours lots of trail breakers are usually required and everyone helped out as usual.

Note from John: The webmaster is interested (usual address webguy at...) in the feedback of participants as to whether this trip is worth repeating and should be added to the trip's database ... there was a diversity of opinion at it's conclusion. The webmaster is ambivalent but thought the initial Healy / Lost Horse Creek meadows were outstanding ski touring (the last bit was NOT!)