A view of Tent Ridge - we headed up one of the slide paths on the left hand side. The Ridge is in the Peter Lougheed Provincial Park, about an hour or so South of Banff. Thanks to Tom for some of these shots.
Tom decided to try out his adapted skins. Erring on the side of caution, he packed in his standard pair as well. The try outs actually lasted longer than I thought and worked pretty well.
Anticipating some soft going, Red gets some assistance putting on her powder booties.
For the first forty minutes or so we followed a creek bed - a nice cruise criss-crossing the creek, occasionally ducking under or hopping over fallen trees.
Breaking out of the creek bed 'we' - Tom and Mel - needed to make a decision on the best line of approach. After weighing the options we headed up the left hand slide path.
We made good progress in these lower sections. But it wasn't too long till we were bushwhacking in the larger trees on the left of this shot. Also we started experiencing a real mixed bag snow pack wise - tough enough on the skis, but Red really struggling with broken crust and lots of loose snow to deal with.
Although disappointing to have to take off the skis prematurely it was almost pleasant to boot pack up this hard pack on the final sections - not that we didn't occasionally find ourselves over boot deep.
Well worth the effort. Time was a factor, so after a few photos it was time to head down.
As expected from the variable pack on the way up, the ski down was a mixed bag - but enjoyable non the less. Mel and Red set off on our third pitch.
Thought I'd better get one of me skiing in somewhere! At least I've got some small trees that are hopefully hiding a multitude of technical inadequacies. I'm just approaching Tom and Mel at the end of the third pitch.
