On February 7, 2025, Dan and I skied up Crystal Ridge on the Icefields Parkway.
We had limited success in our goals to find some good snow and make some good turns. But we got to explore an interesting area and enjoy great views on a beautiful sunny day.
We were staying at The Lodge at Bow Lake, formerly known as Num Ti Jah Lodge. We wanted to ski somewhere close. Taking advice from someone at the Lodge, we decided to check out Crystal Ridge.
I found a version of the trail on my AllTrails app and thought we could use it to find the route if there wasn’t a good uptrack. I downloaded it before we left.
Below is the route we took, recorded on AllTrails.
We ended up going 6 kilometers and up 464 meters. However, as you can see from the map above, we did not make it to the top of the ridge.
Trip Report
We parked at the Crowfoot Glacier view point and crossed the road.
Our route started at the trail head for Helen Lake.
The parking lot is closed in winter. The uptrack starts at the highway and goes through the parking lot to the trail kiosk.
From the parking lots, the uptrack followed the summer trail for Helen Lake.
AllTrails showed that the trail to Crystal Ridge started here.
I knew AllTrails was showing the summer trail but I thought it would help us make sure the uptrack we were following was heading in the right direction. It’s good to have a map.
Soon the terrain got steeper and the trail began to switchback.
We went up many switchbacks and got a lot of practice doing kick turns.
When the uptrack branched, we went left, following the AllTrails app.
I believe the right fork went to Helen Lake. It’s also a ski touring destination and maybe we’ll head up there next time.
We followed the uptrack up the side of the ridge through trees and meadows.
Here We Lost the Trail
We ran into problems when we came upon a large group of people doing avalanche training. They had dug pits across the hillside and were standing in a large group listening to an instructor. We didn’t want to interrupt so we quietly went around the outside of the class.
Unfortunately, there were so many skin tracks heading out from the area, we didn’t know which one to follow. That’s when I turned to AllTrails. We followed a track across the slope, away from the group, in the direction of the trail on the AllTrails map.
The track ended abruptly and we had the option to go back and cut through the class again or continue up, setting our own track. There seemed to be an old trail buried underneath the snow so we chose to try to follow it…
This turned out to be a bad decision. Unfortunately, the path soon petered out in dense trees. We tried to go around, then bashed through, only to find a short but impassable cliff blocking our upward progress. Traversing under the cliff, we found a way up.
We continued to bash through trees or take steep lines up between them. Our progress was slow and it was frustrating.
Finally, the trees started to open up and the travel was easier.
We continued traversing higher.
There were some nice, open meadows near the bottom of the ridge.
We made our way to the small group of trees at the far end of the photo.
The snow was deep but it was not good for skiing. It was fluffy but unsupportive. We sunk down to the rocks below.
From the small group of trees, we saw that we still had a ways to go to get to the top of the ridge. We decided to turn around and head down. We knew the Lodge down in the valley below had cold beer and hot wings waiting for us by the fireplace.
The tiny lodge with the red roof on the edge of Bow Lake is a cozy, welcoming home base on the Icefields Parkway. Great food, friendly staff and an unbeatable location. I highly recommend it.
We skied down the overly-fluffy snow and soon found our uptrack. We were a little disappointed that the snow wasn’t better.
Turned out, we should have gone left at the snow-pit avalanche class instead of right. We would have avoided dense forest and cliffs and had a more direct line to the top of the ridge.
Now we know for next time.
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