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WHITECOURT, AB
An Alberta adventure
Several friends snowmobile Whitecourt’s amazing trails
by DWAYNE BRANDLY


LEAVING TRACKS: Whitecourt’s blanket of fresh powder and beautiful trail system were all snowmobiler Dwayne Brandly needed to have a blast. —photos courtesy Dwayne Brandly
The sign says “The Snowmobile Capital of Alberta” and the Whitecourt snowmobiling area lives up to its billing. On three different trips to the area this winter we only managed to put a small dent into exploring the Golden Triangle.

Carving Carson Creek
The trip from Leduc to Whitecourt was a short two hours as we anticipated the day. We went north from the Eagle River staging area, along Carson Creek, and quickly found several wide open play areas that we just had to carve up.

The snow was quite deep and with no stumps or logs to hinder us we managed to lay the sleds right over and take some jumps—we even fell off a couple of times. The entire day was spent exploring wide open pipelines, unused roads and cut-lines, all the while going from side to side to see who could lay their machine over the farthest without getting stuck or falling off. We stopped for lunch on a hillside overlooking a creek that was out of the wind but still in the bright sunshine so we were kept nice and warm.

Naturally, after lunch we just had to carve up all that virgin snow in the dry creek bed. The banks and drifts made for some great jumping—and landing in all that deep fluffy stuff was no problem either.

After playing hard all day and checking our GPSs we realized we hadn’t put on many miles, but we sure had a lot of fun. After a quick stop at “Timmy’s” on the way through Whitecourt we headed home with talk of when can we make it back.

The “white” in Whitecourt
Our next trip came a couple of weeks later. We decided to take a different trail this time. We started at the Eagle River staging area and followed a well-groomed trail northwest toward the town of Fox Creek. This is only 90 kilometres away but we never made it.

We found several hills in logged off areas that were just waiting to be played on. We were very careful to stay away from the re-forested sections so as not to damage the young trees, but we found area after area that had not yet been planted. The snow was deep and the hills were just waiting to be tracked up—and we more than obliged.

After playing hard all morning, we were ready for lunch. The weather was very warm so we made a fire and roasted our snowmobiler’s lunch, heated up the buns and ate our fill.

We continued to play the rest of the day and finally headed back toward the truck. On the way back I looked on the far side of a creek and saw what I first thought was a wolf walking down the trail. We stopped and took out our cameras. The animal walked about 125 yards ahead and sat down right smack in the middle of the trail and watched us. It was a large lynx. We watched the animal for a good five minutes. I was talking to my buddies when I spotted another lynx crossing the trail at the creek behind us. About a minute later it came onto the trail and started walking up the bank toward us. It was time to leave!

After loading up the sleds, we made another stop at Timmy’s for a hot coffee and headed home.

Shredding Silver Summit
On our latest trip, we decided to try the Silver Summit area, which is located to the southwest of Whitecourt.

This is a brand new area for us, so every off-shoot cutline was a new adventure. We spotted numerous deer, both on the trail and walking on the far side of several logged areas. This area has a great, well-groomed main trail and many old logging roads, which were blanketed in deep, fluffy snow. The cut-blocks we got into were well-treed with new growth forest, but we did manage to find several play areas. We went back to the main trail several times and worked our way southwest until we found other cutlines or unused roads.

After another hot snowmobiler’s lunch and more exploring, we found our last area. It was wide-open, very large and hadn’t been re-planted. The snow was three- to five-feet deep and this made for some awesome sledding. We jumped over drifts and off some of the old burn piles, where the tree-slash had been bulldozed together and burned. Landing was no problem since the snow was so deep and soft all you could see was the machine flying through the air, then a big cloud of snow and finally the machine emerged out the other side—most times with the rider still on-board. What a great day we had. Another stop at ‘Timmy’s’ and we were homeward bound.

Snowmobiler’s heaven
The Whitecourt area is part of the Golden Triangle that runs from Whitecourt to Fox Creek, to Swan Hills and back to Whitecourt. It is approximately 161 miles around the triangle and one would be very hard pressed to make it in one day.

An overnight stop at either Fox Creek or Swan Hills is a must. You will want to plan your trip and reserve a room for the night, as the oil-field and logging activity in the two towns can make rooms scarce. We still have a lot more exploring to do in this area.

The Whitecourt Trailblazers snowmobile club and the Swan Hills Snow Goers snowmobile club do a lot of work to keep the trails clear and very well-groomed so getting to various play areas is not a problem.

It sure seems like the sign is right—this is the Snowmobile Capitol of Alberta. We haven’t really seen much of the area yet, so we are already planning our next trip.