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RED EARTH CREEK TO SHADOW LAKE LODGE- Friday
Report Submitted by DEMOCRATIZE AB
(trip) Date: Saturday Dec 11, 2021
Submitted: Saturday Dec 11, 2021
Participants:
A champion for the legalization of your right to introduce and vote on government bills or Make Alberta A Real Democracy.
Discussion:
Excellent skier track skiing on an old buried snowmobile track up to RE 6 campground. Excellent snow base with roughly up to 15 cm of new winter like snow on top of the snowmobile track. I can't understand why Redearth Creek trail is not trackset. Parks Canada should get on it.
For about the first 3 Km a mountaineer fat skier skied the track. He likely realized fat skis are a waste of time and energy on well track trails and turned around. There are a couple of minor trees on the trail which are easy to ski over.
From RE6 campground to the Redearth Warden Cabin the trail is well skier tracked without a snowmobile packed base. Excellent skiing and excellent base. A big improvement since I broke trail up there a couple of weeks back or so. Most of the willows are buried now and the trail is respectably wide. At the warden cabin in the late afternoon the temperature was -8c.
I broke trail up to Shadow Lake Lodge. Just as it was getting slightly dark, I lost the main trail due to fallen trees and overhanging branches that hid recognizable land features. I ended up cutting a bushwack trail to about a 1/2 moon. I ended up on Redearth Creek for a ways before cutting a trail back up to the main trail. I turned on the headlight and boom- I was 15 meters from some trail rip rap thankfully. The creek is a little rough to scoot up as it is up and down a lot. What ever you do, don't follow my night bush wack trail as it added nearly 1 km going to the lodge, if not more. At least that is what my legs were telling me.
When I got to the meadow by Shadow Lake lodge the trail breaking got much easier as there is a fairly hard layer of snow with about 15 cm of nice cold silky snow on top. It was very enjoyable to ski and moderate-fast skiing speed with Swix Green wax for -7c to -13c fresh snow. If I would not have gone on a bush wacking trail breaking adventure, I would have skied to Shadow Lake under a beautiful diffused 1/2 moon that cast great light for skiing and sight seeing.
The temperature at the lodge was -8C when I left after getting my fill of yodeling and shoveling snow off the decks of the big lodges. It was great to hang out up there with no wind until about 8pm. I did a lot of side stepping on the big hills below the lodge to better the trail. A snowmobile can get up no problem at all after cutting out maybe a dozen trees, one which is up to maybe 15 inches across. The rest are small. All are easily skied over or skied around. It will take maybe 2.5 hours of chainsaw work to remove the trees from RE6 campground to Shadow Lake Lodge or it will take about 4 hours for a well seasoned axe man, or axe-r, or axe-ie or axe-ist, or whatever the gender neutral term is, to clear the trail to get a snowmobile through for a good ski track.
3 comment(s) posted
Comments:
2021-12-11 - comment by Peter T
Regarding Redearth Creek, here is a disturbing article from this week's Rocky Mountain Outlook on Parks Canada allowing e-bikes on Redearth Creek year round:
https://www.rmotoday.com/banff/expansion-of-e-bike-trails-in-banff-national-park-draws-controversy-4841239
Here is the key extract:-
"E-bikes are also now allowed on the Redearth Creek Trail year-round from the parking area off the Trans-Canada Highway to and back from the Redearth warden cabin. However, e-biking is only allowed on the trail beyond the Y-junction to and from Shadow Lake Lodge, operated by the Alpine Club of Canada, from Dec. 15-March 15 annually."
Here is a link to the Parks Canada website that confirms the story:
https://www.pc.gc.ca/en/pn-np/ab/banff/bulletins/8942F86E-3565-4B9A-A424-7C86D7C97701
Who knows what this means for XC trail grooming.
Last year was Parks grooming Redearth or was it the Alpine Club?
E-bikes will also be allowed on the Healy/Brewster Creek trail from the base of the Sunchine access road to Sundance Lodge.
2021-12-11 - comment by DEMOCRATIZE AB
Howdy Peter,
The Banff Park Superintendent along with the sell-out Greenpeace Minister of Environment, who is responsible for our increasingly development in our National Parks, are not concerned about maintaining the environmental integrity of our National Parks. E-bikers will be sneaking into all sorts of areas like mountain bikers currently do since there is basically nearly no wardens to monitor things. There are a fraction of the wardens in the Parks as there once was under former Prime Minister PE Trudeau (the better Trudeau). Back in those days I could not backpack hardly anywhere without having my permit checked by some warden tracking me.
E-bikes should be considered motorized vehicles as that is exactly what they are. Peddles or no peddles. Some are being beefed up to go much faster with just the adjustment of a computer chip. Some of these bikes can do up to 58 kph. The Parks Canada website says they must be limited in power and speed, but that will not be enforced. Wardens are not trained nor do they have the equipment to test E-bikes for power and speed.
I can just imagine the day when somebody puts a front ski on one of those bikes along with a paddle wheel on the back similar to snowmobile paddle tracks. They already have those in the gas motor form. Just imagine what would happen to skier tracks like the one I just made to Shadow Lake Lodge with E-bikes chewing there way up. Obviously the Alpine Club of Canada "lobbied" or "other" the Park Superintended to get E-bikes permitted to Shadow Lake Lodge for their corporate profit objectives.
E-bikes will cause a lot more wildlife conflicts as compared to peddle bikes as they are further permitted. With E-bikes there will be a lot more people in the bush that would otherwise be too lazy to peddle a bike or hike to a location. This will lead to more bloody human maulings by predators which will lead to more animal deaths, like Grizzly bears. More accidents will occur with E-bikes which means the government will have to spend more money on rescues. E-bikes will also lead to more erosion of trails, like Brewster, which the government appears to refuse to maintain. This will lead to rougher trails requiring more snow cover in the winter to be ski-able.
Our Governments can not be trusted with our Parks. If Canadians lived in a real democracy, where you have the legalized right to introduce and vote on government bills (perhaps using a cell phone), I would bet big time that Canadians would protect our National Parks where the politicians refuse to do so. Only real democracy will greatly reduce corruption while better protecting our environment, social systems, health care and more.
Write to the sellout Greenpeace Minister of Environment or better yet put out a media release to embarrass the sell out in front of the environmental community. He will likely claim we need "environmental balance" but there is none as the environment is being raped faster than ever for greed purposes.
2021-12-12 - comment by SkierRoger
Hi DEMOCRATIZE AB
I appreciate your efforts to keep things less abrasive. However, you may notice I've elected to remove a few comments that didn't quite meet the bar.
Best,
SkierRoger
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