Grass Pass, Fir Creek Point | Snowshoe Trails | Kananaskis Outdoors Forum

Here's a nice snowshoe trip. 

Despite the strong gusty winds today, I headed up the trail from Sentinel parking area gate on the Highwood road, up to Grass Pass, then along to Fir Creek Point, and back down to the road.  It's about an 8 km round trip and around 1500 ft height gain.

Most of the route was still easily manageable without snowshoes, except for a section of trail in the woods just before you come out onto the open hillside below Grass Pass, where the snow had drifted across the trail.  My MICROspikes were a great asset on the slippery hillsides, especially coming back down.  

Early on, I almost turned back as the winds were fierce – now I have discovered one advantage of being over 230 pounds – it takes a very large gust of wind to knock you off course!

This might not be a completely safe trail after a heavy snowfall, but today there was no danger of an avalanche, and of course the views are well worth the steady climb to the pass.

I continued up from the pass to the ridge below the Bull Creek Hills, where there were deep drifts along the eastern edge of the ridge.  If you started early enough, it would be easy enough to continue on up to the Bull Creek Hills summit.  I did the full circuit in snowshoes back in April, making use of the extra daylight hours.

It is an easy route finding exercise to continue down from the Fir Creek Point to the road far below.

A great snowshoe route, even if today the wind gusts were on the verge of making progress impossible at one point.