Trip report: Alberta

I was in central Alberta Dec21-Jan6. The snow report is short and
simple- NO SNOW! There were some strips of old snow along edges of some
lakes and I did see a few ski tracks there.

But the ice on the lakes was SUPERB for both skating and kicksledding.
Ice was over 30 cm thick and very clear. My longest day was 45 km on
Pigeon Lake. My sister has 2 kicksleds (earlier Xmas presents from me) so
my sister, nieces, brother and mother sometimes came with me on the ice.
The local small lake, Alix Lake, has a shoreline of about 5 km and I did
many laps of it. The best lake was Buffalo Lake with over a 60 km shoreline.


The strange thing was that, although while both Pigeon Lake and
Cooking Lake are less than an hour drive from Edmonton (nearly 1 million
people) I saw very few skaters. I think there is at least one store in
Edmonton that sells nordic skates, but nobody I met had ever seen them
before. I saw one serious racer on long-track clap skates (He did the
200km Sylvan Lake race last year!)

Photos at:

http://www.dermott.ca/alb2005/fotos.html

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David Dermott , Wolfville Ridge, Nova Scotia, Canada
email:
WWW pages: http://www.dermott.ca/index.html