Canmore Ski Hill

It began in the summer of 2012, while we were staying at Mosquito Creek hostel on our bike trek from Jasper.

The library of the hostel contained an old ski guidebook from Gillean Daffern, from the early 90's. In it was a description of the Canmore Nordic Centre trails, along with a rough map of the stadium area. Curiously, on that map, just uphill of the CNC trails, was a section marked "ski hill".

A ski hill? In Canmore? I'd never heard of it before, and found it fascinating.

google didn't provide any more information, which was kind of shocking. Canmore takes a lot of pride in its heritage, and skiing is woven deeply into the fabric of this community. But no mention of this ski hill could be found anywhere.

google maps shots of the area showed some very obvious looking disused ski runs:

google maps satellite view of what appears to be a ski hill above the Canmore Nordic Centre

Armed with my CNC season pass (CNC day #6!) and some backcountry gear, I decided to skin up into the area shown above, in the hopes that I could find some clues as to what the ski hill had been called and maybe even find some turns.

I initially skinned up through the CNC, and once I ran out of ski trails, started following the summer mountain biking trails. These extend quite far up the northern slope of EEOR and get into some very interesting terrain.

What was originally a few sets of old ski tracks turned into postholes, and as the slope got steeper, I had to struggle to get grip on the crusty, faceted snow.

The limit of my perseverance on this day

Eventually, every step was a huge struggle, and I knew the ski down would be hellish, so I stopped. It was snowing pretty hard by this time, and with a temperature hovering around 0C, I was soaked.

Skiing down was terrible. The snowpack was faceted all the way down to the ground, with a 10cm rain crust on top which was very brittle.

This was easily the worst, most unpleasant ski tour I had ever done. However, I did not make it to the end, wherever those post holes may lead, so I will be back.

http://www.endomondo.com/workouts/168933643/3101909