We arrived in Canmore late Friday morning, after driving through blowing snow all the way from Calgary. It kept snowing all day, with accumulations in the +/- 15 cm range, so we shovelled the driveway and sidewalk a few times and the back deck twice. By evening, the snow tapered off to just about nothing, so we got up this morning to just a very light skiff, which meant snow conditions were great for snowshoeing!!

We waited until after lunch, as the temperature was expected to rise through the day. Unfortunately, since we didn’t get out on our snowshoes over Christmas break, we had to sort out our trekking poles, put the snow baskets on, and deal with the fact that our oldest son was moving up from the snowshoes we bought when he weighed about half his current weight, which all meant it took us a long time to get out of the house out to the open field at the back.

A few others made it out into the fresh snow before us, and we followed their tracks for a bit before heading across the field towards the southwest. Breaking trail wasn’t bad; at worst, Mrs. GeoK sank to a depth of about 20 cm. But someone’s toes were cold and someone else kept wanting a break, so we soon crossed the fence into the Bow Valley provincial lands and headed northwest, sheltered by the trees.

We didn’t have a GPSr along, to track our distance, but our best guess is we only covered a couple of kilometers before giving up and heading back to the house. But the kids have been alerted that we want to spend a couple hours on the Highline Trail tomorrow, so if we remember to take along a GPS unit, we should have a better report this time Sunday!