Bow River meadows flat day ski Off-Trail skiing on 17-Feb-2025

Participants: Clifton, Ivan, Bill

Three of us met at Pulphit 4 roadside parking trailhead at 10 am. Sunny with -16C.

Day started with difficult 80 meter drop down from highway over 650 meter distance in tight trees and low snow depth. Then entered nice valley bottom meadow and skied over to Bow River. River well frozen but we had no interest in going to Pulphit slopes. So we skied down river on ice for 2.4 km.

Lunched in a second meadow, beside river, in warm sun. Then started return making a wide loop skiing mostly thru more meadows. Clifton skillyfully navigated us thru the best of open spots. But sugar snow resulted in slow travelling at 1.6 kmh. After 3 km of meadows entered thicker, sometimes annoying, trees.

A somewhat challenging return up slope brought us back to vehicles at 3:20 pm. Temperature was -4C; which matched the -4C valley temperature predicted by Mountain forecast group. Incidently Bow Summit weather station also reached -4C.

Total 7.7 km, 126 meters vertical, 4 hours 57 minutes.

Typical Bow River meadows view