Pipestone River to Point Camp Meadows
Trip date: Monday Feb 19, 2024
Submitted by CMS
Particpants:
just me
Discussion:
Having noticed how solid off-trail travel was along the Kicking Horse River on Sunday I knew it was an ideal time to ski up the Pipestone River. No skier tracks beyond 100 m of the trackset trail, but with only 2-5 cms of snow, it was hardly onerous trail breaking. But there was a virtual wildlife highway, with pretty well all species accounted for. As usual, had to zig and zag some to avoid open water. Had to also watch for snow-covered shelf ice bergshrunds near the banks - only put my leg through once to the knee, but it was a dry channel so did not get wet. Lots of shelf ice over dry channels, so the river was considerably higher at an early time in the winter, perhaps caused by an ice dam somewhere. Turned around just where the meadows open up the view, about 7 kms from the trackset loop.