On February 12, 2025, Dan and I skied up the valley toward Chester Lake in Kananaskis. We were hoping to find some good snow slopes and make some turns. Dan had skied there before and had a specific spot in mind.
It was another cold, cold day at minus 24 but the sun appeared from time to time, making it feel a bit warmer.
This is a popular area for skiing and touring and the uptrack is very well established. There are separate trails from the parking lot for skiers and for snowshoers.
The Beta:
This is a map of our route I recorded on Gaia GPS. The bright pink line is our route. The yellow line is the Smith Dorrien / Spray Lakes Trail. We parked in the Chester Lake parking lot. There are outhouse bathrooms there.
The trail for skiers starts on the left side, near the trail head kiosk.
As you can see on the map, we didn’t go all the way to Chester Lake. We turned left and crossed a smaller lake, aiming for slopes just beyond it.
It is also possible to ski the lower slopes of Little Chester which we could have accessed had we turned right instead of left across the meadows below Chester Lake.
Trip Report
Trail to Chester Lake
The wide trail rises gently at the beginning.
Here it is a peaceful trek through a beautiful snow-covered forest.
The wide trail made gentle turns on the way up.
It was so different from our experience the day before at Tryst Lake where we had to kick-turn up many switchbacks.
Here, we were lulled into a steady, uphill rhythm.
After climbing for a while, we passed through a meadow, marked with rabbit tracks.
Further up we passed through another clearing, and the trail flattened out.
I made a mental note of where the trail changed from steady uphill to more of a rolling, cross country terrain so that I would know where to take off my skins and start the ski back to the parking lot at the end of the day.
Here looking up the valley towards Fortress Mountain, which we climbed last summer.
Chester Lake is somewhere in the trees ahead. We turned left shortly after this spot.
The Turn Off:
Here’s that left turn. It was not difficult to find.
The trail was more narrow here as we entered the forest.
Eventually, the forest opened up and we could see across this small lake to the slopes we wanted to ski.
Dan skied across the lake on a well-established track. We started to consider the best line for skiing on the slopes ahead.
If you zoom in, you can see an uptrack that zigzags across the open slope and some ski tracks coming down.
We decided to take that uptrack as far as we could and then move through the top part of the trees to the left. We wanted to ski the left side of the mountain.
The photo below is looking back across the lake at Mount Chester, the high point in the middle of the photo, and Little Chester, the lower mountain on the right.
Figuring out Where to Ski
We got on the existing uptrack, gaining height on the open slope.
Note the small, sluff avalanche that has released from the uptrack ahead of Dan in the photo.
This made us wary of skiing this slope and extra vigilant about the terrain ahead.
We stopped to dig into the slope and check out the snow pack. We wanted a clearer picture of how the snow was sitting under the surface.
This photo of the hole that Dan dug in the snow shows a hard crust buried under fresh snow. Beneath the crust, the snow was loose and fell away easily.
We imagined that if we skied here, the crust might break off and slide down on the loose snow underneath.
Even if it didn’t slide, the skiing would be lousy breaking through that crust and then having to fight to get the skis back up on top of it.
No thanks! We bailed off this slope, returning the way we had come, down the uptrack.
We went over to the slope on the left and dug into the snow again, to see if the snow pack was any different there. It was a slightly different aspect and we wondered if there would be less of a crust.
After digging in and checking the snow pack, we weren’t satisfied that it would be good to ski there. We turned around and headed back across the lake.
No turns on this day but I wasn’t too disappointed. It was a beautiful ski tour and I had wanted to get up to Chester Lake in the winter time. I was glad I got check out this lovely valley when it was covered with snow.
On our way out, we noticed ski tracks on the lower slopes of Little Chester.
We imagined the snow would have been a lot nicer there having been in the shade instead of melting in the sun.
We’ll try these slopes next time we head up there.
Overall, it was a good day and a beautiful area to explore, enjoy and maybe find some turns. We will definitely go back.
Leave a Reply