There’s lots of snow on the High Rockies Trail and conditions along the Smith Dorrian section are excellent. I took a quick snowshoe up to the suspension bridge yesterday to see how it looks near the end of a heavy snowfall season. There is enough snow on it to reduce the effective height of the handrail and it has been closed.
An attractive looking book with excellent writing and colour photos, some with the routes marked on, and good topo maps at the back of book with routes marked on in red. There is a section at the beginning on equipment, technique, etiquette and avalanche hazard and an appendix on snowshoeing on the Wapta and Columbia Icefields. Routes are described by highway starting in Waterton National Park and range up through the Rockies to the north edge of Banff National Park.
A snowshoe up McLean Hill from Hwy. 549. We had been up Ridge trail many times before, but always as a spring tune-up. This would be our first time on snow and we guessed that the motor bike trail would translate well into a snowshoe trail. It did. The hills are manageable (not a novice trail, though) and the pine forest retains the snow well. Amazingly, the snow was more like mid-winter snow, and very often we were breaking trail through 14 inches of it.
A description of North Baldy trails on snowshoe, specifically Old Mill Road and the Kananaskis Integrated Forestry Interpretive trail which enables you to make a loop. Describes snow conditions in mid March .
The lower (old logging road) sections of the Chester Lake trail have been designated as one-way trails. The more popular and slightly steeper west branch is marked for downhill travel only. The very slightly longer east branch is designated for uphill travel only. In other words, you are now expected to ski these two trails [...]
