Spent Jan 9 & 10 teaching Kaitlin Paris some winter camping skills at Hidden Lake Campground in Lake Louise backcountry. Going from Talus Lodge to winter camping in less than 24 hours was interesting…
We took the gondola up and skied down to Temple Lodge before skinning up. I forgot how quick it is to reach this campground, it took us just over an hour at an easy pace. This trip is an excellent choice for those looking to try out winter camping, at the very worse you could use the halfway hut as an emergency shelter if something went horribly wrong (remember outside of true emergencies you are not permitted to use it overnight). We setup camp and took a quick lap on the lower south aspect of Ptarmigan Peak from 2400m where we found nice snow for a few turns before heading back for dinner.
Overnight was fairly warm, probably in the -5C range (I didn’t take measurements), with very light wind, cloudy and traces of snowfall.
In the morning the blue sky popped out and we heard several avalanche bombs going off at the resort, a nice way to start the day. Around 10am we heard Anna Elkins on the radio, she was about 30 minutes down the skin track and after she arrived we packed up camp and skied back to the resort.