January 3, 2026
~ submitted by Matthew Lettington
“Wet” pretty much sums it up.
How wet was it? Wet enough that two people took one look at the trailhead and decided they’d had enough adventure for the day. When we arrived, rain was absolutely hammering down, pooling across the parking lot in what could only be described as a proper deluge.
The six of us who stayed the course ducked into Raven Lodge to wait things out and run through a short skills session. The goal for the day was never just to snowshoe to Mount Elma, but to spend some time building and refining snowshoeing skills along the way. It turns out there aren’t that many formal techniques to cover—but, luckily for us, the instruction lasted just long enough for the rain to ease off.
The rest of the day stayed damp. Very damp. We moved through heavy, wet snow, sticking mostly to the well-travelled route through the trees. A week earlier we’d walked straight across Battleship Lake, but today felt like a different world altogether. There was a reasonable line up Elma, and we took a few deliberate detours to practice some of the skills we’d talked about back at the lodge.
Up on the summit ridge, the clouds lifted just enough to give us some visibility, along with a steady breeze. We pushed out to the end of the ridge for coffee and a short lesson on descending steep snow in snowshoes—never a bad skill to revisit. On the way back, the weather briefly teased us with big, soft snowflakes, which almost made the whole day feel magical… until the air warmed and everything turned back into rain. Not even rain, really—more like an aggressively wet mist.
Still, despite the soaking, it was a good day out. The kind of day that reminds you why you go anyway, even when the forecast isn’t promising. That said, I wouldn’t have minded a bit of sunshine—and I definitely should have remembered my boots. Trail runners, it turns out, offer exactly zero protection in a Strathcona winter.
