November is too early to ski Engadine Burn in Kananaskis Country. We found that out the hard way on November 20, 2024.
We ended up going there and having a pretty tough day for a few reasons. First, we had been skiing at Sunshine Slackcountry a couple of days earlier. The snow up there was pretty glorious and I think I was lulled into thinking that ski season was in full swing. Maybe it was at Sunshine, certainly not at Engadine Burn.
Second, I had read somewhere that Engadine Burn was a good place to take beginners. I believed we would find mellow, open runs and we would have an easy time accessing those runs and exiting back to the road. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The third problem was that I didn’t know exactly where we were going. I knew where to park and I knew we wanted to follow the summer trail for Rummel Ridge and then turn off at some point. But where? I assumed there would be obvious beautiful slopes on the left that would simply appear as we skinned up the trail. Once again – wrong.
I performed more thorough research of the skiing there after we got back and I believe we left the summer trail too soon and went too far left. Here’s our route:
The dark blue line is our track. I feel like we should have continued on the black dotted line Rummel Ridge Trail until it turned down to the right and then maybe tried the slopes further up the valley.
Trip Report
Here the trail starts. This photo was taken from the road. The trail going into the forest is obvious.
After about 15 minutes, we arrived at a place where deadfall blocked our progress. We tried to go around but ran into more deadfall.
We ended up coming back to the main trail, taking off our skis and carrying them over the fallen logs.
There was a lot of deadfall, which I suppose should be expected in a burned area.
In that same area, looking up the slope at the deadfall. Fallen logs are visible, not well covered yet.
More snow would make this a lot easier.
Dan tried to find the path of least resistance for his uptrack.
There was no uptrack in place yet when we got there. We could, at times, see the summer trail. But I believe at times we lost track of where it was.
Too much snow to follow the trail. Not enough snow to set a good uptrack.
After almost an hour, we were still skinning over logs. Here once again, I came to place where I had to take off my skis and carry them over a fallen tree.
I said to Dan, “F@#k this, let’s turn around.” He preferred to continue.
I agreed to think of it as a recon / touring day and continue our exploration.
The trail did improve after that. It left the deadfall zone and entered forest.
Perhaps we had been off the main trail in the deadfall zone because I hadn’t seen any sort of flagging tape or trail marking there.
And just when I started to think this might be the only trail in all of K-Country with no flagging tape, I noticed a piece tied to a tree in this forest area. There were a few more after that as we headed up through the forest.
We left the summer trail and traversed across the slopes.
We encountered some bushwacking here and I’m not a fan of bushwacking on skis. I suppose I’m not a fan of any type of bushwacking but it seems more heinous on skis.
However, the views back across the valley were nice despite the misty weather.
The snow quality and coverage improved as we gained elevation.
This is where we decided to turn and head up the mountain, after we traversed across the slopes, away from the summer trail.
Setting the uptrack across a meadow here.
We hoped the slopes in the distance would offer some opportunities to make some turns.
As we got nearer to the slopes, we could see they were very steep. I’m guessing double black diamond level steepness. Dan could have skied them but this was well above my pay grade.
We decided to turn around here. It took us three hours to get this far and I wanted the same amount of time to descend. I feared we would end up carrying our skis through a lot of the deadfall and low snow areas.
Fears realized…
We chopped and hopped as best we could down the narrow trail, hemmed in by bushes and logs until we finally realized it would just be easier to take the skis off and carry them.
Conclusions
Dan got some good turns higher up as we came down through the trees. For me, at my lower skill level, the trees and bushes and everything else on the ground that was not yet covered with snow were just too close together. It was survival skiing for me.
I would like to go back later in the season, when there is enough snow to make the uptrack and ski out more do-able. I would like to find the beginner slopes I’ve heard are out there somewhere and really get to enjoy this area.
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Have you skied at Engadine Burn? What did you think? What month/year did you go?
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