Skogan Pass - Canadian Rockies

Well, this weekend I headed out to do a major traverse route that was 22km long with a 1460m altitude gain up and down a long beautiful ridge (the Centennial Ridge) but snow in the last few days changed that plan. Last weekend this area was clear so I was optimistic but as I drove out this weekend things were looking OK from the highway one range over, but when we got to drop off a car at the end of the route, we had nothing but all white snow cover starting from just a few hundred meters above the trail head and right to the summit of our ridge. So, this left us having to choose an alternate route, one with much less altitude, called Skogan Pass.

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It's still a long 22km route but with only 700m of altitude gain, I figured it would be a much wiser route, which turned out to be true. Overall, had some great scenery still, up to about 25cm (10in) of snow so while the going was tougher with the snow, it was quite managable compared to what we would have faced another 700m higher!