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It’s time to play in the snow! Grab your friends and your family, a duffel bag full of clothes, your backpacks, some snowshoes, a crazy carpet, a shovel (for building snow forts at the trailhead!) and a heck of a lot of yummy food and thermoses of hot drinks; you are going snowshoeing in the Rockies!
Snowshoeing is as easy as walking! It’s simply left, right and repeat. There is no skill needed, no technique. But you do need to have some cardiovascular fitness because it can be challenging when you step off the beaten trail. And that, by the way, if the best part (the whole point) of snowshoeing! Get into the deep, powdery snow! Play, fall down and pounce. Snowshoeing generally follows some well know hiking trails, but snowshoeing is not as much about destination as it is about playing in snow.
There are some wonderful snowshoe routes in the Kananaskis Rockies as well as in Banff National Park and Yoho National Park. The main thing to know about choosing a wonderful snowshoe route is to be aware of and to avoid avalanche terrain and to ensure that you have the topographical maps (and know how to use them!) so you do not get lost or end up in avalanche terrain. And remember, cellphones rarely work in the the mountains so the motto, “BE PREPARED” is a good one to follow.
Our next snowshoe day is this weekend, January 20th and our next FAMILY FUN club Fit Frog snowshoe is on Saturday, Feb. 9th! Both outings will be full of powder pouncing and route finding and having fun in the snow. And if you are keen to take a weekend away, join us for a Family Fun getaway in YOHO National Park based in tiny Field, BC on February 15-17, 2013.
SNOWSHOE PRESENTATION
If you want to know more, or see a slide presentation to help you learn all you need to know to get started snowshoeing, get in touch and I can come and speak to your group!
Come on out and join us! Make winter your new favourite season!
Spring is here (just in time for some snow forecasted today)! While out on my morning fresh-air excursion, I saw my first purple-headed prairie crocus today on the escarpment just below River Park in the SW. These hardy native wildflowers will push through snow so be on the lookout for them on east facing slopes. Some perfect spots are Nose Hill Park, on the 14th Street side, Sandy Beach and River Park on the escarpment trails, Bowmont Park, and the green space hills of Edgemont. Keep your eyes peeled for more colour soon. Post-crocus is the yellow Buffalo Beans. And then, it’s wildflowers everywhere (even in the spring snow!)
Head out for some flower spotting with your family this Easter weekend. Burn off some easter egg excess and find some natural treasures!
The buffet breakie in Banff was the perfect start (my son’s words) to another active spring break day in the Rockies. When you consume that much food at breakfast you HAVE to be active! We snowshoed the Paint Pots trail (and beyond), on Hwy. 93 south. What a perfect area for snowshoeing! The trees are spaced nicely apart so we could wind our way off trail, up, down and around. The snow was sticky and perfect for snowballs. The sun came out and it was hot! It is easy to avoid avalanche terrain in this area since the Paint Pots trail is in the valley and while steep slopes are not too far away, we had no problem finding abundant terrain to snowshoe, far from any avalanche danger.
The Radium Hot Springs made for the perfect post-snowshoe outing. At 39 degrees celsius, it was too hot to swim around, but ideal for some relaxation. Post pool it was on to “Invermere on the lake”. Spring is not the ideal time to visit Invermere since it is in between their snow and lake seasons, but since we had never been to Invermere, we wanted to see what it was all about. As we did our walkabout after dinner, we could have shot a cannon down most streets and not hit a single person. It was just us and the Mule deer out for an evening stroll. Tomorrow we’ll explore more of Invermere and area. We are on the lookout for a nice hiking trail, some good coffee and some fresh baked goods on main street.
