To Go Where Noone Has Gone Before

March 15, 2011
Ski North Wabasca Lake/Willow River, solo
8.5 km
2 hr. 56 min.
15 min. Stopped
I intended to go ski for a couple of hours but it turned out to be a little longer.
Just as I started out I was joined by two dogs. One dog had one light colored eye and one dark colored eye so I called him Crazy Eyes. They accompanied me for the entire time. When I started out on the lake I broke trail for about the first 600 metres and then there were snowmobile and vehicle tracks to follow about 1.9 km. I noticed that there are far fewer snowmobile tracks on the lake now. I am guessing that deeper snow and drifting snow is somewhat of a barrier to all vehicles now. Also noticed that the snow has not been plowed off of the vehicle trails. There are several new Ice-fishing shacks just off the point of the Wabasca Town-site. I made good time to where I had explored the Willow River north channel on a previous walk. Then I left the tracks and broke more trail in a southeasterly direction to a second channel of the Willow River about 1.4 km. 950m on the Willow River. This seems to be a more well defined channel and I intend to revisit this area in a canoe sometime during the summer. My intent was to ski up the channel and then ski north back to the lake on the north channel but I missed the north channel. I skied up the low bank of the river and from there I could see back to Wabasca so I decided to Bee Line it straight back. Here is where I got into some deep snow. I had to break a lot of trail, 1.4 km. I think that I was on a Sedge Bog. I am sure that I am the only human to have crossed that marsh this winter and perhaps in the last several years. I enjoyed watching the dogs sensing rodents under the snow and pouncing and digging at them. Having a dog around gives me a greater sense of what is going on around me as the dogs smell, hear and see things that I do not. They were good company. I almost floundered in the snow a few times but then the 'going' improved. Once I got back to the open lake I was able to continue to fallow existing tracks again for about 600m. One thing about existing tracks though is that they never go exactly to where I want to go so that makes for a lot of course corrections and for crooked Track Files. Once I got back to the the Town-site I took off my skis and walked back to my starting point about 1.2 km.