I can’t really recommend Blue Hill Lookout as a premier hike but it’ll do in a pinch when you have 4-5 hours and want some fresh air with glimpses of mountains through sweet-smelling pine forest.
I can’t really recommend Blue Hill Lookout as a premier hike but it’ll do in a pinch when you have 4-5 hours and want some fresh air with glimpses of mountains through sweet-smelling pine forest.
As with many of my “Covid Hikes”, Wigwam Ridge is a long drive from my house. This was a good thing considering we were going on a weekend and a very nice day – probably the nicest day so far this horrible spring of 2020.
The summit ridge was longer than expected, the views were about as underwhelming as expected.
I’m not going to sugarcoat it. If it weren’t for Covid-19 and the many restrictions around hiking and closed parks and areas I would NOT have done any of the hikes in the Willow Creek PLUZ area.
I have to admit that this little hike is pretty underwhelming. I wouldn’t recommend driving all the way from anywhere just for this one.
As my habit has been over the past few weeks, I found myself driving west of YYC towards the Rockies front ranges after work on March 11. Snow squalls were busy making the roads slick and wet and the weather wasn’t inspiring.
Trip Date: Monday, September 23 2019 Round Trip Time (hr): 4.5 Total Elevation Gain (m): 750 Total Trip Distance (km): 19 Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 1 – you fall, you tripped over your own feet Difficulty Notes: No difficulties other than following the myriad of signage along the trail and slogging up and down the Sunshine road. Technical Rating: TL1; YDS (Hiking) Map: Google Maps After a long solo trip up Scarab Peak the day before, I wasn’t too keen […]
On March 23, Phil Richards and I hiked up a snowy Sheep Creek and scrambled Winchester Ridge. From the ridge we enjoyed spectacular views over the Dormer River towards Dormer Mountain and started to plan what kind of adventure would get us to its summit.
Astral Peak has been on my radar for many years now, ever since climbing Devils Head in 2012 and looking back over my shoulder as I walked onto its surprisingly spacious summit.
I was feeling let down by the dismal September weather and with one last day off before going back to work for the winter, I decided to risk the crappy forecast and drive down to the Crowsnest Pass to try my luck with a few last summits on Monday, October 1 2018. My original plan was to scramble Deadman’s Peak and then if I had energy remaining, do the bike ‘n hike of Willoughby Peak. As I drove closer to the pass, I noticed copious amounts of fresh snow since my visit only 5 days earlier when I scrambled Mount Coulthard and McLaren.
A day after ascending close to 1800 vertical meters and biking / hiking and scrambling almost 30km up and down Mount Coulthard and McLaren in the Crowsnest Pass area, I was back at it with Phil Richards. We were planning a very full day of biking, hiking and peakbagging in the South Rockies within the newly formed Castle Wildland Provincial Park, near the Castle Mountain Ski Resort and just outside the other newly formed park, Castle Provincial Park.
After bailing on my original plans for the weekend thanks to an unstable weather forecast, I was sitting at home in front of my computer with a long face when my wife, Hanneke walked downstairs and said, “why don’t we go for a hike instead”? Indeed. Why not go for a hike instead of moping around the house all day? The weather for Saturday was actually looking pretty decent and despite lingering smoke from BC wildfires, a hike sounded perfect. After some fast thinking (it was already around 09:00 at this point – I’d already done an 8km walk that morning too), we settled on Grizzly Ridge in the Highwood Pass area of Kananaskis as our hiking destination for the day.
I somehow convinced Hanneke to join me at least to North Molar Pass and we set out on a cloudy, misty morning from the Mosquito Creek parking lot, following another group of 3 hikers. The long jaunt up Mosquito Creek to the campground was made lovelier than usual with cool temperatures and a moody atmosphere. If I’m honest about it, I’m getting a bit bored with the 5.5km stretch to the campground, but chatting with Hann and it being her first time helped with the drudgery that is a flat, rooted, muddy trail along the creek.
After a ~900m descent from our Alcantara / Brussilof bivy, I was feeling pretty bagged for some reason. I think Phil was too. It sure felt good to down the cool pop we had waiting for ourselves in Phil’s SUV! Technically we had two days in front of us still at this point. We knew that Saturday was supposed to be almost 100% cloudy with no rain and Sunday was supposed to improve to sun again. We felt a wee bit burned out after our monster approach and scramble of both Brussilof and Alcantara the day before and we both wanted to turn off our brains and do something a bit easier than our originally planned 1.5 days on Mount Eon. We decided pretty quickly to do the hike into Marvel Pass and check out some of the scrambles around there.
For years now I’ve wondered what the Police Meadows were like. There isn’t very much written about this place online and the few reports I could find that even mentioned it were quite vague. Now that I’ve been there, I seriously considered not doing a report on this area. I had to ask myself if better beta is going to ruin this place? Are hordes and hordes of backpackers now going to follow my GPS track in there, bringing all the trouble that humans bring when too many of us visit the same place? After thinking about it a while, I decided that the type of folks who bother to visit the Police Meadows after reading my description of it, will likely be the same sort of people that do their best to maintain and upkeep special places like this, rather than take advantage of them and do harm.
While standing on many of the peaks lining the Sunshine Meadows area in Banff National Park, one’s eyes are naturally drawn towards the line of summits from Howard Douglas in the north to Fatigue and Golden Mountain in the south towards Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park in British Columbia. Right in the middle of all of these fairly significant peaks on the Continental Divide lies an unnamed peak at just over 2900m high. For years now, I’ve looked at this summit and wondered two things.
After successfully completing my second ascent of the diminutive Citadel Peak (with it’s not-so-small views), Phil and I returned to our waiting overnight packs at Citadel Pass and prepared for the uphill trudge towards Fatigue Pass. I’d often wondered what this pass looked like and Phil also remembers wondering about it on his way to Mount Assiniboine years previous. We were about to find out. I had no idea if there’d be decent bivy sites at, or near the pass but as part of our July long weekend peak bagging adventure in the area, finding a bivy site was key.
On a beautiful sunny, wintry May 1, 2011 I was joined by Raf and Mel on a ski trip through Sunshine Meadows to Citadel Pass and up Citadel peak. I repeated Citadel Peak again on a much less wintry, but also much cloudier day on June 29, 2018 as part of a three peak extravaganza with Phil Richards that included Fatigue, Citadel and Golden Mountain.
As we traversed to the summit of Mount Currie, my eyes were immediately drawn to a distinctive ridge running west of Currie, lower down and guarding Cross Lake (which wasn’t visible from our vantage). This ridge was obviously connected to Mount Currie and it looked to be very reasonable to traverse it before descending past Cross Lake to the historic White Man Pass before following the trail back down to our original ascent line and of course to the bikes at Bryant Creek. Given the historic nature of the pass and the surrounding area, I was immediately excited to add this not-inconsiderable distance and height gain to our (already long) day trip.
Since we were camping in the area over the weekend of June 15, I decided I might as well drag my family up the diminutive Packenham Junior with it’s not-so-diminutive views. The rumors on this outlier of the much higher and more impressive Mount Packenham are true – it’s a steep grind with no trail and sweet views. We parked in the ditch along Hwy #40, just up from about 20 cars that were parked for the obviously MUCH more popular Grizzly Peak just to the north of our destination.
Saturday, June 2 2018 was looking like a mixed bag of Spring weather. Phil and I decided to play it easy and get out for an “exercise day” – hopefully one with some great views. Phil had put Ochre Spring Peak on our list a while ago already, but I’d never paid it much attention until the Matt’s (Hobbs and Clay) recently posted trip reports on it, demonstrating some pretty sweet views.. Phil agreed that this was likely the best time of year to do it and since it has a very short approach and easy slopes, having snow in the ascent gully would be perfect.
Wietse, Phil, Calvin and I took advantage of yet another great May weather forecast on Sunday, May 27th 2018 to summit a peak that’s been on my list for the past few Alberta spring scrambling seasons thanks to its position on the front ranges of the Rockies near the Crowsnest Pass. For some reason Phil and I ended up canceling several planned excursions here, but alls well that ends well – and we picked the perfect day in the end.
On Saturday, May 19, 2018, Wietse and I finally completed a nice front range hiking / scrambling loop that I’ve been eyeing up for several years. The loop starts with an pleasant hike / easy scramble up Porcupine Ridge before leading over moderate terrain to a few more summits west of Tiara Peak. From just north of Tiara’s summit the route ascends to Boundary Peak along an undulating Boundary Ridge before finishing off with a nice moderate scramble over Midday and Midnight Peaks.
Hanneke had a rare opportunity to join me for a hike on Sunday, May 6th 2018 so I figured I should take advantage of that. I was determined not to make her wade through the knee deep snow drifts that I kept ending up in over the past few weeks and decided that surely Stony Ridge in the Highwood area of Kananaskis would be dry by now? Yeah…The past few weeks have seen me drive past Black Diamond and Longview a few times, including a solo jaunt up Three Cairns, Hell’s Ridge and Mount Mann.
Summit Elevation (m): 2066Trip Date: Friday, May 4, 2018Elevation Gain (m): 1050Round Trip Time (hr): 8.5Total Trip Distance (km): 22.5Quick ‘n Dirty Rating: Class 1 – you fall, you’re stupidDifficulty Notes: No difficulties other than some routefinding and choosing the right conditions (early or late season).Technical Rating: OT3; YDS (Hiking)GPS Track: DownloadMap: what3words There isn’t a ton to say about this hike to be honest with you. Phil and I were planning a much “sexier” peak for Friday, May the 4th (be with you), but […]
