Crowfoot Glades via Pillow Drainage

Pillow Drainage

This drainage is often used to access Crowfoot Glades or the Alpine Fans. In early season or a lower snow year most of this drainage is filled with pillows, later on with more snow and traffic these pillows usually disappear.

Vertical: 150m access and run.

Distance: 2km access, 0.3km run.

Directions: From the Parks Canada gate at the start of 93N drive about 31.5km to reach the Crowfoot Glacier viewpoint. From here you can either park in this often plowed area or backtrack south for about 1-1.5km before parking roadside before a slight left bend in the road. If opting for the plowed parking then skin down to the shoreline and follow it for just over 1km to link up with the roadside parking directions. From the roadside parking ski down a short slope to a large open area. Head south, trending slightly west towards an opening in the trees where you will reach a lake. Cross the lake heading south trending slightly east towards an opening in the trees where you will follow a drainage for 0.1km before coming out to another open flat area. Head south (left) where you will often find previous skin tracks splitting off in two directions. Head west (right) to follow another short drainage where you will arrive in a pillow/lateral moraine area, with an obvious drainage feature to the east (left), this is the Pillow Drainage. Skin up along or in the drainage to reach the top where you can ski back down over pillows (at least until the drainage has been skied a thousand times and the pillows are all packed out).

Crowfoot Glades

Crowfoot Glades references the tree/glade skiing found between the two drainages coming out of the upper moraine areas. This area does have some good skiing and often holds good snow but most of the area needs to be skied off fall line to avoid ending up in the terrain trap drainage to the skier’s right. It is very easy and quick to lap this area using the Pillow Drainage run and for the most part it is a pretty safe zone to ski (outside of the fall line drainage terrain trap).

Vertical: 200m access and run.

Distance: 2.2km access, 0.4km run.

Directions: Follow the directions for the Pillow Drainage to reach the rolling moraine features above it. The Crowfoot Glades area starts up to the climber’s left of the drainage and you will probably want to gain the moraine slope just above the glades to extend your run a bit. The steeper fall line skiing will head skier’s right but unless you want to end up in a terrain trap you will want to resist fall line and trend skier’s left instead. If you are successful in trending skier’s left you will ski all the way back down to the flat area and link back up with the start of your uptrack to start another lap.