Peter Dudley posted a blog entry at his site about his hike this weekend and in so doing he asked “We parked at McCloskey (P12) and took trail #40 up to #38, then over to #16 (which also seems to be called #62 – can someone explain that?).”
Michael MacConaill can.
He tells me “The Wolf Trail was Ski trail 16 until a couple of years ago, when it was reclassified as a Snowshoe trail, and was renumbered into the Snowshoe trail series as 62.”
Actually the trail numbers have changed around from time to time on other trails as well. Michael is working on a map that will trace some of those changes over time.
There is no way trail 16 was ever a ski trail.
I remember being the only one ever to ski it several years before it became a snowshoe trail.
I must have been out of my mind, but unless I skied it, no one did.
Point final…
Sorry: but #16 used to be quite popular – particularly as an interesting back-country trail. Also it used to be the shortest way to McKinstry and the fire-tower. It was also part of a popular loop around Herrington (Mousseau) lake via ridge, the old #10, #54, #50, with a crossing of Meech Lake.
Any time I took it I would usually meet someone. Its usage for skiing diminished only recently as snowshoers started to use it more
I used to love skiing that trail…JP must have been the out of control tracks with the constant Sitz-Marks I came across…match and game.
No, no, no… yer both talking about the Tawadina part of the 16. No way the Wolf Trail part was ever a ski trail… I used to be the only one crazy enough to do it on skis, with lots of wax…
It was a vicious climb…
The “Wolf Trail” was not used that often, being the quintessence of back-country skiing and was something of a challenge – often done on back-country gear. It has quite a history as a ski trail going back to the Ottawa Ski Club days – it was on the trail maps of the OSC as “Wolf” and was as far west as the OSC network went. There was also a “Stolfa” trail which paralleled Wolf in the ravine at the base of the ridge – this is now largely overgrown. Evidence of the OSC days can be found by the bottoms of tin-cans, painted red, nailed to trees. At the time access to the bottom of Wolf was by the marsh – the current trail, that bypasses the marsh, was put in place later by the NCC.
Trail 16, known as Blanchet, was put in place by the NCC in the early 70′s.
People started using Wolf less after Blanchet was put in place. The fact that it was being used less made it a good candidate for a snowshoe trail.
The best way to take Wolf was downhill – much better than climbing.
JP, I assure you you were not the only one ski it… for me, it does not even consider a warm up in comparison to ski trails in other parts of the world.
I am not good enough to ski the hard side of wolf downhill but 16 was one of my favorite trails. Eventually i stopped skiing it except for early just after a big snow storm because the snow shoers would make deep narrow tracks that made it difficult to control my speed in.
Interesting how by disregarding the rules and continously using 16 for snow shoeing they eventually got their way and the trail is now designated for snowshoeing.
Nice lesson to be learned there NCC!!! Maybe if the climbers just keep climbing where they want and the bikers just keep biking on whatever trail they want they will win out too.