Testing in Fish Creek

After our not so successful hike in Jasper National Park, my Mexican buddy blamed the failure on lack of snow shoes(!), partially, and said that we should buy a pair and do another hike soon! I agreed although I believed that even with snow shoes we would not have been able to go so much further up! 

I looked around the website and a few stores and finally I found a nice pair in Winners! Yes! Winners stores have a small sports goods section  and the price was very attractive and less expensive in comparison with stores such as MEC and Camper Village. It's better than what my Mexican fella purchased from Costco! A cheaper, smaller and way less durable thing(!), which is made of aluminum tubes! it comes with a bag and a couple of poles, though! All for a total of $85(!) while I paid $75 + tax for mine, a reduced price from $99 but it's bigger, stronger, more durable and is made with better materials in Quebec!

We decided on a day and he suggested to go to the east side of Fish Creek Park. By the time we were there it was almost 17:10 and sun has already started going down and people was about to leave the park! We put our snow shoes on and started searching for snow! We first climbed down the stairs in front of the parking lot and after going through the trees, reached a frozen stream and followed that. My snow shoes responded well when we found enough snow but I still sank a bit here and there. The area was lit by moonlight so we didn't have any difficulty moving around. After nearly hour and a half I suggested to go back and took the lead but the guy was saying that I had taken the wrong path and added that he believed that we were going around a circle! I told him that I had been lost twice in the mountains and both times came out safely and asked me to follow! After a few minutes he realized that we were on our way back to the parking lot as some signs reminded him of the time he used to jog there! This proved that to him that, once again, that I'm an experienced hiker and I won't get lost in a city park!

(Photo: This is how a GV snowshoe looks like. They manufacture different model but I'm almost certain that this is what I got. Just a different colour)