Cuthead Peak was a very good outing for many reasons. The campout with a cheery fire and good company, getting out on another obscure peak with Phil and fun, challenging scrambling on the summit block. There are very few reasons why any hardcore Rockies scrambler / backpacker shouldn’t have this one on their list.
As we drove slowly back to the hwy Sara and I agreed that this was one of our more relaxing multi-day outings of 2022, actually it was by far the most relaxing one. With the first day only coming in at 9 hours 1650 meters of ascent and the second at less than 8 hours and only just over 1000 meters ascent we didn’t feel too stressed. I’m sure that for me the ultralightweight backpacking system had a lot to do with it – I decided to test it on a 2 night trip immediately after this one. A highly recommended late summer or fall trip for fit parties wanting to experience some of the Castle Wildernesses more remote peaks and valleys.
I have done more than a few wilderness canoe (and hiking) trips over the past 20 years and my experience has given me some insight that could benefit other aspiring explorers or even a later version of myself.
I spent 2.5 days over the 2018 September long weekend on a canoe trip with two brothers-in-law (Mike and Calvin) and our sons on the Red Deer River, canoeing from Content Bridge near the Tail Creek Campground to Tolman Bridge, near the Tolman Campground. This is a fairly nontechnical, low consequence river canoe trip that is perfect for families or novice canoeists. Later in the year water levels drop to a point that you should expect to be out of your boat several times per day in order to avoid grounding on the river bottom!
Day 6 was the last day of the group trip and the first day of my solo effort. It was a day full of mixed emotions and excitement – most of it good and some of it a bit different than I expected. As with every good adventure worth having, my first solo canoe trip in WCPP started and ended much differently than I antcipated. I’ll pick up with a journal entry from the end of the group trip while waiting to exit the park for the outfitter pickup at the Onnie Lake entry point.
As usual for WCPP over the past few trips, all of our pre-planning kind of went out the window as the end of July 2018 approached, thanks once again to wildfires. In 2016 my plans were thwarted by both a sprained foot and a huge wildfire, this year it was just a whole bunch of forest fires that cut us back to “plan B” planning. Of course, as usual, WCPP “plan B” trips still consist of pristine wilderness, amazing landscapes, endless amounts of fresh Walleye, Pike and Lake Trout, moments of peaceful tranquility and excruciating pain and suffering, so it’s pretty hard to complain too much about them. The main impacts of changing plans last minute was that we ended up with two days that were a bit small and short compared to what we normally do.
There are various approaches to Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park and I’ve now done a number of them, excepting the easiest (from the air) and some of the more obscure ones. This is a brief description of each of the four routes I’ve done, and two that I haven’t, with a final comparison matrix at the end. These are also detailed at the Mount Assiniboine Lodge website. One short section of the climber’s access route that I haven’t done (yet) is the Gmoser Ledges from the Lake Magog Campground to the Hind Hut. You can find more details of that route here. My GPS route for that section is a guess at best.
Ever since I first backpacked into the Mount Assiniboine area in early September 2008 from Mount Shark, I’ve wanted to go back in larch season – sometime in the last two weeks of September. I did go back to the area on September 22, 2012 but avoided most of the larches by going in via Settler’s Road and Assiniboine Lake before climbing Mount Assiniboine and Lunette Peak from the Hind Hut and returning via the same route. In 2015 I thought I’d be going back and for some reason or another it didn’t pan out. In 2016 I was absolutely determined to make the hike and scramble trip work out.
The sun was hot and the sky was “summer blue” as we drove the dusty, bumpy, rocky road that starts out as an easy 80 km/h drive and gradually slows to a 20 km/h crawl or even less on rougher sections past the first 18km off highway 518. We were in excellent moods as I parked the truck on the sandy parking area off the road at the Onnie Lake entry point. We were a bit surprised to see three vehicles parked there already, but on inspection we noticed they were all from Wisconsin and one of them was pulling a large canoe trailer so they were obviously all part of one large group. With feelings of anticipation and trepidation about how my injured foot would handle things, we prepared for the first portage of the trip – 350m right from the parking lot.
Early in January 2014, a group of us started throwing around the idea of another canoe trip into Woodland Caribou Provincial Park (WCPP) near Red Lake in North-Central Ontario against the Manitoba border. We’ve done many trips into the southern part of the park, accessing it from Garner Lake, Wallace Lake and even from the southwest, through the Eagle-Snowshoe Nature Reserve. This trip would be no different, considering a time constraint of around 5.5 days. Due to holiday / family schedules, I think the only way we will ever experience the northern part of WCPP will be via a one way North-South fly-in canoe trip or a much longer excursion in a loop from the south.
One of my goals for the 2011 canoe trip was to make it feel like we were on a route we hadn’t done before, despite having done a very similar route in 2009. One way to make this happen was by doing it in reverse from our previous outing. I also added some variations – obviously these could be ignored depending on weather and other factors.
Trip Dates: Monday, July 13, 2009 to Saturday, July 18, 2009Total Trip Distance (km): 102Difficulty Notes: Woodland Caribou is well off the grid. You should assume that you are completely on your own and must have the requisite survival skills and experience to live as such. Bringing a satellite phone or other emergency beacon is a good idea. Lakes Traveled: Leano, Bunny, East Lunch, Landing Crane, Burnt Rock, Jake, Mexican Hat, Nutria, Amber, Aegean, South Aegean, Talon, Boomerang, Kilburn, LeanoGPS Track: GaiaVideo: YouTubePhotos: View […]
My annual fall scrambling / hiking trip took place from September 3rd to the 6th in 2008. Along for the ride was my brother Rod, cousin Jon and his wife Yolande (also known as George for some reason) and Hanneke, my wife. We were all pretty excited to be trying another new area (for us) of the Rockies – the Mount Assiniboine area of British Columbia.
The cold winter month of February 2006 found Harold and I planning another canoe trip. After much deliberation we decided on the Eagle-Snowshoe Conservation Reserve as our 2006 canoe trip destination.
The day started out predictably with Dad’s attraction to bizarre adventures. Just as we were pulling onto the road destined for Wallace Lake we noticed a strange noise from the left rear of the truck.
This is a journal of our exhilarating trip into the backcountry of Atikaki Wilderness Park in north central Manitoba in June of 2000.
