All Downhill From Here

Calgary gets a fair bit of snow in the winter, but it melts regularly, and never really accumulates much, like in “real” Canadian winter cities, like Winnipeg, for instance. Snow does accumulate beautifully in the mountains, however, so we headed out there yesterday. We went to a place in the Kananaskis area called Sawmill Creek.

The day started with sausages and pancakes at home, and I also fired some beef stew into the slow cooker before Hubby’s parents came to pick us up around 10 am. The Rocky Mountains look close to Calgary in the postcards, but they’re really a couple of hours away. We got to Sawmill Creek (potty break included) at about noon.

It was PERFECT weather. Sunny, with no breeze, and the temperature hovering around freezing. Cold enough so the snow didn’t stick to our snowshoes, yet warm enough that we didn’t freeze our extremeties.

We strapped the kiddos into their snowshoes and they traipsed about the parking lot while the rest of us determined what went into whose pack, how many layers to wear, and adjusted the bindings on our snowshoes.

We followed a short loop that began with some uphills, and we all warmed up nicely. We took turns breaking trail. There had been cross-country skiers out there, but any snowshoe tracks had been snowed over on the trail we chose. We tried to stay off the ski tracks as much as possible, to respect the skiers, but sometimes the trees forced us onto the tracks.

The kids really never fell behind this time. When did they develop so much stamina? Who gave them permission to grow!

We found a nice sunny spot with a long fallen log and stopped for an al fresco lunch of koubasa, cheddar, french bread, and some red wine. We had a little lefse to finish it off. Quite the international meal, and it tasted amazing out in the fresh air.

I got to break trail on the way back, and enjoyed getting my heart rate up. I couldn’t lose the kids, though. They were right behind me the whole time. We were getting that silly kind of tired towards the end, though. Somehow we ended up singing “Old MacDonald had a mountain, E I E I Ohhhh, and on that mountain he had some snowshoers, E I E I Oh! With a yoohoo here, and a yoohoo there… Yes, it’s a fun kind of tired to be.

We had some cookies and hot drinks from the thermos when we got back to the van, and then piled in for the long drive back to the beef stew in the slow cooker. Yum!

I’m working on getting the pictures to fit right in here, so definitely check back in the next day or two and hopefully I’ll have them up.