On a clear and sunny day March 10, 2022, Mom and I drove up Highway 93 to do some snowshoeing. The day was perfect for snowshoeing - there was a lot of snow, the sky was clear, and it was cool without being too cold. We arrived at Peyto Lake late in the morning to start our day. In the summer months Peyto Lake is a popular destination for tourists due to its bright turquoise colour, but in early March the lake is frozen over and there are many fewer visitors. Snowshoes are required to reach the observation point; and luckily we had them! We snowshoed up to the observation point, then did a bit of a loop down past the parking lot towards the lake. We didn’t reach the lake itself; we turned around after what was likely a couple of kilometres. The trail wasn’t terribly clear, and there were other places we still wanted to visit before we lost the sun. When we made it back to the parking lot shortly after 2 PM, there were a couple of Parks Canada employees practising avalanche recovery techniques with a dog. It was an interesting thing to see!
After leaving Peyto Lake we drove a short ways back along the Icefields Parkway to Bow Lake. Here we donned our snowshoes and went for a short walk out over onto the lake itself. The lake was quite frozen, but uneven, so we still had to be careful where we walked. We didn’t end up spending too much time on the lake; while the views of the mountains were beautiful there wasn’t much else to see, and so after we made it a bit of a ways into the lake we turned around and returned to the car.
A short ways further down the Icefields Parkway we pulled off at a viewpoint to get a few of the sun just over the Crowfoot mountain.
Our final stop of the day was at the Mosquito Creek Day Use area. When I was in Scouts we would come here in the winter and build snowcaves to sleep in, and it was interesting to be back and see the camping area as an adult. Given the name I’m glad I’ve only ever visited in the winter!
