Bow Summit

The first tour of the season was a cold, sunny day up on Bow Summit.

We always figured that the most benefit to moving to Canmore would be realized in the winter. As I've been telling people for the past couple of years, I originally moved to Alberta because of the rock climbing, but these days I identify more as a skier than anything else. These two things finally intersected for the first time when we made a casual day trip out to Bow Summit.

I say "casual" here because from Calgary, Bow Summit is a long day. With roughly 2 1/4 hours of driving each way, getting home at the end of the day can be pretty painful. But from our new location in Canmore, it took around 1 1/4 hours to get to the Peyto Lake parking lot, and that included a stop at Laggan's. Very reasonable.

Making our way towards the small summit just south of Bow Summit

It was a cold, bluebird day, made a bit warmer whenever the sun managed to find us. There were a handful of cars in the parking lot, and while most people seemed to be heading for Bow Summit proper, one group was heading off in the same direction as us. We followed their uptracks all the way to their launch-off point.

Observation Peak in the background

Conditions were so good, we did 3 runs, each progressively closer to the parking lot. Bow Summit is usually wind affected on the north side, but since we skied some of the slopes further to the south, aside from a small crust about 10cm down, things were great.

A crow having some fun with the winds (he was stationary relative to us)

It was a great start to the touring season and I hope to shatter my previous record for ski days in a season.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/106969819