Smith-Dorrien Creek

We snowshoed this creek on Sunday November 29. Present company was Curtis and me.

The day started out a bit chilly but as the sun began to warm the mountains, the chill quickly left the air. We parked just south of the Mount Burstall parking area on a closed road (before the gate). There were only a single set of cross country ski tracks leading away and down the snow covered road. We strapped on our snowshoes and off we went.

The first few feet were difficult to get our rhythm in place since snowshoeing is a bit different than hiking and requires a bit more coordination and effort. We carried on the road for less than half a mile. Then jetted off to the left through the bushes. We started following moose tracks and came to a big clearing. In the summer, this was a slough or bog of some kind. The moose tracks ran along the rim of the clearing and we kept to them, thinking the moose would know this terrain better than us. We met up with the creek and snowshoed through the creek bed which had about a foot and a half of snow in it, we definitely weren’t hurting for snow.

After a while, we decided to walk up the embankment and go along the top in the sun for a bit. We struggled up the hill and managed to land in a small meadow that overlooked the creek. We walked along the ridge and back towards the road a bit but decided it was too easy so we made our way back to the creek. After sliding down the steep hill, we came nearly face to face with the moose we were following. He was about 40 feet away munching on something through the snow. We were cautious and slowly made our way towards him (there was a small opening just past him that we were going to go through). He looked right at us a few times but wasn’t bothered with us and slowly made his way down the creek in the same direction we were headed. By the time we made it to the little opening, we were about 20 feet or less from him; he didn’t care.

we climbed the bank and wandered in the field for another 45 minutes or so then headed to the car. For our second time out, it was perfect.