Chester Lake - Snowshoeing - February 7, 2010 - From the Archives

With 10-20 cm dumping in the city, and so much more white stuff falling in the mountains (Burstall Pass had over 25 cm base before this most recent storm even hit!), it's time to start dreaming about snowshoeing! While there's still not enough of a base in the mountains for winter recreation yet (and it's still expected to be a snowless Halloween in the city -- with temperatures back up to 9C by the weekend), something about that first real snow fall always seems to get the winter enthusiasts drooling.

So to get through this transition, I thought we'd look back on a snowshoeing favorite... Chester Lake...

Even at the trailhead... deep snow goodness!

Heavy, wet, sloppy late winter/spring snow. It was still hanging in the trees, rounded off and thick.

Pure sunlight and blue sky in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park. Perfect day!

 It wasn't quite hoar frost, but something else...spiky, well defined ice crystals clung to the trees...

Damn.

And it was all over our poor frozen snowshoer too.

More ice. More crystals.

At Chester Lake. I'm not even sure the walking stick hit bottom.

Mushroom tree!

Chester Lake -- September 12, 2009

Strangely enough, I'd only ever hiked the Chester Lake trail when it was fully engulfed in winter -- deep snow, lake frozen over, icicles dripping from trees. So when Dave suggested a fall hike, I jumped at the chance to see such a beautiful place without the usual white touches.

My first real education was midway through the hike. A meadow type plateau on the hike that I'd always assumed was windswept, causing drifts that piled into hills:



Those little hills are actually the ground itself!



Equally awe-inspiring in fall:







I can never get over the colours of fall:





The layers of time.



Finally got to see Chester Lake in its unfrozen glory. We were among the last on the trail this day, and got to see the lake in a calm state, only the odd splash from the fish:





So calm, it was easy to catch the reflection of the mountains surrounding it:





Looking forward to visiting this special place in spring....

Chester Lake -- November 29, 2008

Sometimes the overcast days are more interesting than the blue sky days. This holds especially true in winter, when the clouds meld with the snow and anything with colour or light stands out that much more.

Chester Lake, as I've mentioned before, is renowned for deep snow early in the season. In late November, when parts of the mountains were still waiting for the first real accumulation, Chester Lake trail looked as though it had seen a season's worth of snow:



Approaching the "valley":



The "valley" never ceases to amaze me:





Panorama supplied by my amazing husband:



All that snow, gently curved by the hills beneath and the wind above often looks like an ocean to me, with gently rolling waves. The clouds and sun were amazing this day:



Though the trail was nearly deserted the day we ventured out, on our way out we had a reminder we weren't alone in the forest. Some hard working critter had littered the trail with pines for later storing:



These are the winter hikes that make me forget summer....

Chester Lake -- November 9, 2008

Chester Lake is very popular among winter sports enthusiasts in no small part because its location deep in Kananaskis Country provides some of the best and deepest early snow, as well as snow far into spring. The area gets enough snow to rival some snow resorts!

It's also extremely popular for families in the summer, and while Nat and I have hiked the area, we'd never completed the Chester Lake hike. We were going to change that today.

Upon our early moving arrival, we saw were far from alone in the big parking lot. Someone else had already moved through:



(That is one long stride between moose prints!)

View from the parking lot, deep in the mountains...



At the time, this was more snow than on any other trail that winter. It wouldn't stay that way for long.



View from the trail.







Once we got about 1 km into the trail, there was plenty of snow to be found.





The trail is a steady, but not strenuous uphill for some time, then flattens out into a meadow. At this meadow, you get only a glimpse of what is to come:





The trail makes a slight turn and you can look all the way down to the mountain at the end. I love how for a short while, the trail aligns directly with the mountain's ridges.





The trail leads through another set of trees and then bursts into another meadow surrounded by magnificent rocky mountains. Despite the view of the mountains on the way up, nothing really prepares you for the magnitude of the view:



Looking west:



Sun climbing over the mountain:





Chester Lake (somewhere under all this snow):



Looking back from where we came:



The trail was strangely absent of critters, but we did run into this little fella:




He'd run away from us down the trail, which was somewhat counter-intuitive, since we'd just scare him again a minute later. Eventually the trail took a turn, and we said good to Chester Lake and headed back to the parking lot...