Trek to the Blue Icicles

 

Sunday I went on a long cross country ski up into the Salonie Creek Canyon with my brother and nephew.  It is one of my favorite 'destination' cross country ski treks, and I don't think I have ever done it this early in the season.  Normally, this is a February/March trip (click here, here (best one), and here for blog posts about trips over the last 2 years).

It is not every winter that we get enough snow and cold for skiing up the river beds.  Looking back it seems 10 or 15 years ago we did the trip a lot, but then there was about a 10 year gap where we never had good enough conditions to ski to the canyon.  But for the last 3 winters it has been good again.

The goal of the ski is to go far up into the canyon until you come to a sharp bend where there are often HUGE blue icicles hanging down from the cliffs.  Past this bend are waterfalls and the going gets impossible.  The canyon is deep and the light low. It is sort of a 'Gollum' world of darkness.  You look up at the mountains above the canyon and everything is bright pink in the sunlight.

This year we made it up to the icicles but they are not very big yet.  I think it is still early in the winter and they need to do some growing.  Hopefully I'll be checking on them again sometime soon.

Patrick