From Tuesday afternoon through Friday morning we waited anxiously for news: would Akamina Parkway be open? Closed Monday due to avalanche danger, the Parkway is the route from Waterton townsite to the Little Prairie parking area – and the difference between our planned 3 km ski in to the Cameron Lake hut and an 18 km hike carrying skis. Eight intrepid Nordic touring skiers watched SpotWx.com, Avalanche.ca, and email updates from the helpful Parks staff as the date approached.
Friday morning, Parks staff emailed to inform us that they were plowing the road, and expected it to open by noon. Relief! In ones and twos, the fellowship of the free heel arrived at the parking area for the quick ski in, and settled into the hut. Last to arrive were the trip leaders, skiing in by the light of a bright, beautiful near-full moon. Conditions were mild – a bit too mild, as it turned out. But that’s getting ahead of the tale.
Saturday morning dawned cloudy and rowdy, with the wind for which southern Alberta is justly famous. Barely below freezing, after a week with temperatures above freezing during the days, it was not auguring well for snow conditions. Still, the crust wasn’t bad at the start, as we set out for the day’s objective of Summit Lake.
The slope was very steep, but the trail Z-tracked at a manageable angle up it. There are five segments to the Z-track, and the first two were pretty decent.
Segment number three was a different story. As we ascended, the crust went from just hard to nearly bulletproof. It was possible, with force, to punch a pole tip through it, but not a basket. About 120m short of the turn to the fourth pitch, we found ourselves on a 45-degree sidehill slope on crust so hard metal edges wouldn’t bite, and the lead skiers were starting to slide downhill off the trail.
The sweep skier had to use backcountry XC boot tips as front points to kick into the boilerplate and sidehill up to the front for rescue. OK, time to exercise that good judgment we exhort all backcountry travelers to show! An orderly retreat was organized. The descent on that stuff was no mean feat, either. But we all got down safely.
A quick snack and tea break, and then the idea arose to ski out Cameron Lake and back. Who was responsible for this invigorating notion wasn’t clear; it just sort of emerged. But off we went, after putting on face masks or Buffs to protect us from the wind coming up the lake at a velocity that nearly required skins to make progress into it on the flat lake surface. We “beat to windward,” as the sailors say, past the midpoint of the lake where the wind reversed. We stopped to enjoy the views and take photos just south of a prominent point, where the views were good (one of the early-arriving people had skied down there Friday and checked it out for us), a few hundred meters north of where the US border cut across the lake. (We stayed in Canada.)
Then we skied back to the midpoint. The wind at our backs from there was so strong it was sometimes possible to just put our arms out and let it push us along on our skis. At the edge of the lake, it even pushed some of us up the rise onto the shore.
Back to the hut, and your writer cannot comment on much between that and dinner, due to a nap attack. I’m told it was a sociable time.
Sunday morning dawned sunny and calm, but again quite mild at a few degrees below zero. The weather forecast, courtesy of the Garmin InReach, was for cloudy skies with a high wind warning. We hoped it was wrong, that what we were seeing would last. Sigh.
It was sunny and beautiful though, and off we went toward Forum Lake, and Wall Lake too if time allowed. The skies clouded over and the wind came up as foretold by the electronic oracle from the Iridium constellation, but it was a fine day nonetheless. The climb up the headwall was steep, and we had to find our own way (as Chic Scott made clear in his book’s directions), but it was quite feasible despite the crust, and we reached the shallow-angle ground approaching the lake readily. That section was a picturesque, dense spruce thicket, pleasantly sheltered from the wind. We reached the high ground overlook above the lake, and took in the scenery.
That scenery included the very steep, rocky section to our left, where we saw two AT skiers and a splitboarder we’d met on the ski in come over the ridge and attempt the descent to the lake. Very early in their attempted descent, they were clearly stymied. Too much rock and not enough snow. We all pointed for them to traverse left as we retreated into the shelter of the spruce thicket for tea and snacks, and were relieved to see them climb back up over the ridge. Score two for good judgment on the weekend!
The descent of the steep headwall we’d come up was interesting. The crust was soft enough to break through, but then we couldn’t turn our skis. Your writer attempted his usual stem christies and had to abandon that pretty quickly. Some slapstick comedy may have been involved. The winning ticket was descending traverses through the trees, linked by kick turns. One creative individual found a faster but still safe approach, using two skis as a toboggan, straight down the fall line. I don’t think that one’s in the book but it seemed to work.
It was already late enough that we didn’t care for a run back down the inbound trail by headlamp, so we skipped Wall Lake and headed for the hut. Misfortune struck on the fairly mild ski out when one skier, who’d been really showing how it was done all day, took what would have been a minor fall had she not twisted her knee going down. Fortunately, it was not far from the end, and after some on-scene evaluation a take-it-easy bootpack got her back to the hut. A bit of wilderness medicine was practiced, serving to remind us all that we need to be prepared for mishap on any trip into the mountains.
The dinner hour was pleasant, sociable, and erudite. A book club of sorts ensued, the explanation of which is beyond the scope of this report. If there is a better place on this planet than an ACC hut on a deep winter evening, your writer has yet to hear of it.
Monday morning was warm, above zero, and again southern-Alberta windy. Our courageous injured skier made her way out under her own steam, and in the true spirit of the ACC a fellow skier made the run twice to carry her pack out. The drive home turned ugly past Red Deer, but that’s a tale for another day. Suffice it to say that Waterton Lakes is an area deserving of more attention from ACC Edmonton despite its distance. Nordic backcountry skis are a good way to do it, and the Cameron Lakes hut (though rather snug) is a nice base from which to explore it.
