Cypress Hills offering family winter fun through March

By Tim Kalinowski on January 13, 2018.

A group of skiers hit the slopes at the Hidden Valley Ski Resort. Cypress Hills is making sure families have all kinds of available winter fun out at the park this season.--NEWS FILE PHOTO

tkalinowski@medicinehatnews.com @MHNTimKal

Cypress Hills Park will be offering a series of family-friendly winter activities and programs every weekend January through March.

“This winter at Cypress Hills we are trying to provide some fun, family programming to get people outside and enjoying nature,” says the park’s interpretative education co-ordinator Chris Dodds. “As part of the that we have Game of Trappers, which is a snowshoeing program where we go through the history of snowshoeing and we get to do some fun activities. Then we get to do igloo building, and we have got some astronomy; as well as other fun stuff going on.”

Most of the programs are family-oriented, welcome all ages and generally can be utilized for a modest fee of about $5 per participant. Dodds says the programs can be a supplement to a day of skiing at Hidden Valley Ski Resort or accessed as stand-alones to bring the family out to enjoy winter activities together. Dodds is particularly excited about the igloo-building program.

“It’s pretty exciting,” he says. “Like LEGO building, but you are building a shelter.”

He is also excited about a program being offered Sundays called “CSI: Cypress Snow Investigators,” which is for older participants 12 years and up.

“We are going to be looking at snow crystals through magnifying glasses to determine the strength of the snow and all different kinds of stuff,” explains Dodds. “Other than that I don’t want to spoil the fun. All I can say is there is going to be a bit of an investigation to determine the answer to a mystery.”

And, says Dodds, why not cap off your day at the park off with “Dark Sky Stories and Stargazing?”

“Cypress Hills is a dark sky preserve,” he reminds readers. “And one of the things we are trying to do this winter is run a dark sky story program just after the Hidden Valley Ski Resort closes. So if you are out there skiing, and you want to stay for a bit longer, you can stick around and hear some star stories and use some of our telescopes. The great thing about winter in that respect is the days are short, and we can be out there looking as soon as it is dark.”

For more information visit the Cypress Hills website at http://www.albertaparks.ca/parks/south/cypress-hills-pp/activities-events/events/#32812.