Snowshoeing the new bike trails | Snowshoe Trails | Kananaskis Outdoors Forum

Post edited 4:20 pm – February 14, 2011 by Bob Stebbins

On Sunday 13 February, after a clockwise walk over Diamond T Trail, we decided to try to snowshoe one of the bike trails in the area. We chose the southern end of the cyclists’ Ridgeback Trail, which angles off immediately north of the junction of Diamond T and Tom Snow Trails. It is well signed, and we also found it well packed from use by earlier snowshoers. It took us up the ridge west of Tom Snow, carried on in a northerly direction, and eventually descended to rejoin Snow just up the bank (at GR613421) of a side creek close to its confluence with Ranger Creek. We were on this section of Ridgeback between 45 and 60 minutes (this trail eventually terminates over two kilometres to the north).

The area between Moose Mountain Road and Ranger Ridge (west to east)/Packer’s Trail-Tom Snow Trail and Highway 66 (north to south) now offers a new bike trail system, partially mapped by the Dafferns earlier on this site. Over the past summer and fall new on-site maps have been posted at many junctions and trail heads, thereby tying this system into the older one of hiking trails.

The snow on many of these bike trails is being packed down through continuous use as snowshoe trails. They make pleasant, quiet, and sometimes more challenging, alternatives to the standard hiking cum snowshoe trails in this area. Now does anyone know of an up-to-date map of this new system, preferably one available over the Internet?