Joffre Lakes in Winter: Trail Report

I live fairly close to Joffre Lakes, and get to spend a lot of time here, summer and winter. My dog starts to cry in the truck when we get close on the road. We both love this place.

Usually visiting Joffre Lakes in winter involves a bit of luck, as the parking lot is not plowed with the highway; it gets plowed intermittently. Either there are a few cars blocking the entrance, or you need to dig yourself a parking spot with your avi shovel. This year however, due to the lack of snow, it's actually been much easier to visit this place.

If have seen only a couple of skin tracks on the trail in the past few weeks, as the ski down would be absolutely awful. Usually you can ski up or down the river, but it's still flowing and there's not even close to enough snow so you'll need to pick your way down through all kinds of obstacles instead.

If you've got a set of snowshoes, it's incredible up there right now though. The trail is accessible with boots, but you'll wish you had the metal picks of snowshoes on the way down. A lot of foot traffic has made things very icy.

This is the upper lake.. we had 3 weeks straight of temperature inversions, so I got to enjoy a couple of lunches in a tshirt.

If you've been up in summer, this was probably a raging waterfall.. now it's just a little stream.