Picture of the Week

Sat. 22 October:  More Graffiti 

A few weeks ago, I captured some mountain graffiti created by melting snow high up in the Rockies (see "Picture of the Week" for 27 July).  Here is some different graffiti.  If you are hiking the Fullerton Loop, you will pass by this colorful,  but out-of-place, display underneath the Elbow River bridge west of Bragg Creek, in beautiful Kananaskis Country.

Snag No More, Sugar Momma

Sat. 22 October:  Snag No More, Sugar Momma

No, I haven’t gone crazy.  While hiking trails generally reflect the landscape, for example, Mist Ridge, Elbow Lake Trail, the mountain bikers have no such limitations.  So here I was exploring some new trails built for (and probably named by) those daredevils on wheels who these days can be found on almost every trail in K Country.  Snag No More is a gentle trail winding up to the top of Snagmore Hill, while Sugar Momma twists its way upwards towards Ranger Hill, both in the Elbow Valley.  The two can be connected, along with the Fullerton Loop hiking trail, to make an interesting circuit.

Here we were, deep into October, and yet another beautiful sunny weekend in the forecast.  How long could this last?  In the meantime I was keen to take advantage of the short time I had today and so was out on the trail early, as the sun was rising in an orange sky. These trails have just been carved out of the hillsides this Fall by a local group (the Greater Bragg Creek Trails Association), and they are accessed from the popular Allen Bill Pond picnic area in the Elbow Valley. 

Even a narrow trail takes a lot of hacking out of a forested hillside, and I could see the amount of trees which had to be cleared away, and ground cover removed.  Snag No More takes a gentle line along an escarpment above the Elbow River, before rising to the top of the forested hill.  There were a couple of good viewpoints down to the river below.  Now that most of the trees had lost their leaves, there were better glimpses across the valley.  At one point, I had a good view across to the opposite bank of the river where there was a hidden village which I had never seen before.  There was a “Pike River Bar and Grill”, a church, and a few houses.  Surrounding them were several ugly portable cabins.  This was, I suspect, a film set for one of the many Hollywood movies or TV series which are shot in Alberta. 

At the first bend in the trail, a coyote ran off ahead of me.  Several white tailed deer leapt off into the trees as I strolled through the woods.  I did not expect to see any bears here, and did not – although I was prepared just in case!  The top of Snagmore Hill is a short forested ridge, but it did give some spectacular glimpses of the mountains to the west, and of the city of Calgary on the eastern horizon.  The path continued down the other side of the ridge, connecting lower down with the wide, grassy Iron Springs trail.  It made an enjoyable circuit of about 6.4 kilometres.

Directly across from the Snag No More trailhead is the start of the Sugar Momma trail.  This narrow trail winds through the woods and then corkscrews up a sloping hillside towards the top of Ranger Hill.  I did not have enough time today to go all the way to the top but I took an unmarked branch which dropped gradually down into the valley to my left where I picked up the wide, hard-packed Fullerton Loop Trail.  Turning up the valley I soon came out at the high point on this trail, which follows the forested ridgeline for a while before coming out of the trees an giving grand views west to the Elbow Valley and the mountains beyond. 

The breeze had picked up and a line of thin cloud was pushing across the Front Ranges, blotting out the mountains as it moved eastwards.  It was warm and sunny overhead.  Although most of the deciduous trees had already lost their leaves there were a few splashes of colour in the wide valley below.  Allen Bill Pond sparkled in the sunshine.  Now I passed several people coming up the trail, including a small group of middle-aged women enjoying a stroll up the hill.  We exchanged cheery greetings.  It took me no time at all to stride back to the car, enjoying the cool breeze under a sunny sky.  I made a point of saying a bright "Hello!" to every person who passed by – and the trail was starting to get busy as the afternoon trippers arrived, many with their dogs.

I had seen no bikes, and this was not a complete surprise.  Both Snag No More and Sugar Momma are not yet widely known, and I had started quite early today.  They make a more peaceful alternative to the busy, popular Fullerton Loop, and have their own unique views of the Elbow Valley.  And they must have given someone a lot of fun coming up with crazy names to call them!

Statistics
Snag No More, Sugar Momma
Sat. 22 October
Total Dist.	14.1 km (hike)
Height Gain	1,220 ft.
Max. Elev.	5,250 ft.
Time	3 hrs. 26 mins.

Other Stats.
Start hike:       8.32 am Snagmore top: 9.39 am Start SugrM: 10.21 am Top:              11.15 am Ret. to car:    11.58 am	Temp: Starts cold, rises from 0 to +11 C Hazy sun, then brighter sunshine and W breeze increasing.  Clouds to W.

Picture of the Week

Sun. 16 October:  Snails Pace

I know I'm a slow biker, but isn't this just a little TOO slow for travel - even when it's up the narrow Canyon Creek valley, and heading for the ice cave? 

(No, I didn't edit this - the photo is true to life).

High Ridges and Ice Caves

This weekend I travelled up the Elbow Valley twice in two days, for adventures on a high ridge and then to explore deep into an ice cave.

Sat. 15 October:  Jumpingpound Mountain

I had not been up the Elbow Valley since May, and now here I was travelling through this most popular of valleys twice in two days.  

On this first trip I had M’s friend R along with me, and we were heading to Jumpingpound Ridge.  You can make an ideal circuit by driving up the Elbow, then north onto the narrow gravel Powderface Trail.  At the high point in this road you can leave your bikes, before continuing down the road a few more kilometers to the trailhead.  After a climb onto the ridge, and a walk to the summit of Jumpingpound Mountain, you drop back down to the road and finish the circuit on your bikes, and then back to Calgary on the Trans-Canada Highway.  This is what we did today.

It was a cold morning, a few degrees below zero, and patchy cloud in the sky.  But the forecast was for endless sunshine over the next few days.  What a Fall this has been so far – so many beautiful hiking days.

The trail up to Jumpingpound Ridge was familiar to me.  This time two years ago I had been beaten back by sub-freezing temperatures and snow, but today it was an easy climb.  In fact, it felt as if our lively conversation literally propelled us to the ridge-top in record time!  About three-quarters of the way to the top we started to encounter snow patches, and then there were a few inches of crusty snow higher up, but this was no hindrance to our progress.

Once on the ridge it was an enjoyable stroll through patches of trees and across the open hill-top, with the grandest views west to the Front Ranges and east to Moose Mountain and across to the prairie and to Calgary.  Once again, I puzzled at why people would have taken to the trouble to knock down those large cairns which once marked this route.  There are apparently some people who go around deliberately knocking down cairns for some reason.  In my view, this is not in the spirit of hiking.  In Scotland, it is the custom to place a new stone on a cairn, almost as an offering to the mountain gods.

Anyway, the easily attained summit of Jumpingpound Mountain was soon reached and we stopped for a snack and to admire the views of the snowy peaks all around us.  I had not fully appreciated before that this summit is the highest point along the entire line from (and including) Cox Hill in the north, all the way to Powderface Ridge to the south.  The fire lookout building on the summit of Moose Mountain could be clearly seen, as well as the small ugly gas plant which sits in a western flank of the mountain.

We only met two people on the ridge, a woman walking northwards along the ridge, and a man arriving at the summit as we were leaving.  “It’s a fine day”, I said.  To which he replied, “Indeed!”.  And that was that!  On the lower section of the trail back down to the road there were more people starting up the trail, including a Japanese guy with his trail bike and a friend with a large camera.  We had noticed bike tire tracks through the snow along the summit, but it would have been a tricky ride, as there was also plenty of ice on the trail higher up.

Now for the fun part – or at least that should have been the case.  Unfortunately R’s back tire was punctured not far down the road, and despite applying two patches we could do nothing about the split around the valve.  So I raced down the road on my bike to the car, and returned to pick up R.  It was a minor setback, and as we drove north along the Sibbald Creek road to the Trans-Canada Highway, kicking up dust behind us, we declared our adventure to be a complete success.

Statistics
Jumping Pound Mountain
Sat. 15 October
Total Dist.	9.8 km (hike) +  6.2 km (bike) = 16.0 km
Height Gain	2,001 ft.
Max. Elev.	7,349 ft.
Time	4 hrs. 32 mins.

Other Stats.
Start hike:       9.58 am Arr. summit: 12.15 pm Dp. summit:  12.35 pm Road:              1.27 pm Ret. to car:      2.30 pm	Temp: Cold, below freezing rising to above (-3 to +8 C) Mix of cloud and sun.  Light breeze.

Sun. 16 October:  Canyon Creek Ice Cave

The next day, I was once more driving west up the Elbow Valley.  The light was so perfect in the early morning sun that there was an unusual three dimensional perspective of the green foothills and snowy Front Range peaks from the high point along Highway 22X.

This time I only travelled part way along the valley, turning off onto the Canyon Creek road beneath Moose Mountain.  My heart dropped as I arrived at the car park to find several vehicles and cyclists had arrived ahead of me, despite my early start, but miraculously they quickly disappeared back up the road.  This gas well service road runs up a canyon into the folds of Moose Mountain.  At this southern end of the mountain, the summit is guarded by high cliffs of unstable rock, and in amongst those cliffs above the steep scree slopes is a gigantic hole in the mountainside, leading to a large cave.

This so-called ice cave was for many decades a popular outing for Calgarians, and despite the road up the canyon now being closed to vehicles, it is still a magnet for day trippers.  The guidebook mentions that there are on average four mountain rescues performed every year on this trail.  Before visiting the area, I assumed this was due to unprepared tourists getting into trouble on the steep approach.  My view now is that this is a potentially dangerous trail even for experienced hikers, as it is steep and slippery, and especially tricky coming back down.  I could see how this alarming statistic could have been occurring.

As I biked up the canyon road on a good gravel surface, I caught the occasional nasty smell of rotten eggs, from the H2S gas which seeps out of cracks in the mountainsides.  Further up the valley was a sign warning people not to camp out overnight up there!  The dry creekbed parallels the road.  In Spring this is a crazy torrent, but then in the Fall the waters drop below ground and the creek dries up.  The road ends at a gas well, and from here a trail leads up through the trees towards the scree slopes and cliffs above. 

The first cave you see is a small hole high in the cliffs and not accessible for walkers.  The large ice cave is further along the cliffline, approached across steep slippery scree littered with fallen rocks.  There was no clear route, so I picked my way carefully across the slopes, angling up to the base of the cliffs, until around the corner I could see the colossal cave entrance towering above me.

It remained a steep access right up to and into the cave itself.  The floor of the cave then flattened out, although it was littered with rock debris.  Even with a flashlight, I could not see the back of the cave.  The ceiling was ten or fifteen feet high, and the width a little more than that.  The cave disappeared into the gloom, beyond the reach of daylight.  I clambered carefully into the darkness, with the use of my handy beam of light.  I went perhaps 100 yards or so into the mountainside until I stopped at a place where the ground rose up towards the arched ceiling.  Here I turned around. 

There was no evidence of ice formations in the cave, with the exception of two or three small stalactites of ice, just starting to form on a rock near the entrance, from a dripping roof above.  There was one wet patch on the cave floor and that was all.  But this was an impressive hole in the mountainside, and the views down to Canyon Creek several hundred feet below, were spectacular.

Having stopped just outside the cave on a convenient ledge for a snack, I decided to descend directly down the scree slope to the valley floor.  I had my MICROspikes with me, and I was very happy to have them.  For this was a very tricky descent, on loose shale, where one slip might easily have resulted in a broken leg.  With the help of my two hiking poles and the MICROspikes, I made it safely – and slowly – down to safer ground below.  The sound of voices echoed off the cliffs, and I could see a party of hikers climbing up to the cave entrance.  I had been lucky to have had this amazing place to myself on a sunny Sunday.

Back in the valley, it took me no time to return to the bike, and then to enjoy a speedy trip down the road to the car.  Along the way I passed several people walking or riding up the road.  At the car park, bedlam reigned.  It now being a warmer, sunny afternoon, the car park was flooded with families and cyclists, with more arriving every minute.  There would be no silence in that spectacular valley that afternoon.  I was glad escape to my car, turn up the heater, and to drive out of a valley now buzzing with the weekend crowd. 

There was every chance that today might end up contributing to the scary mountain rescue statistics – but at least I had avoided being one of them!

Statistics
Canyon Creek Ice Cave
Sun. 16 October
Total Dist.	1.6 km (hike) + 10.2 km (bike) = 11.8 km
Height Gain	900 ft.
Max. Elev.	5,600 ft.
Time	3 hrs. 4 mins.

Other Stats.
Start bike:       9.09 am Start hike:     10.02 am Arr. cave:      10.36 am Dp. cave:       11.03 am Arr. bike:       11.52 am Ret. to car:    12.13 pm	Temp: Cold, rises from -2 to +4 C In the shade at start, but a cloudless day, no wind.

Picture of the Week

Sat.  8 October:  Divided

Down in the Kananaskis Valley it had rained all day, but just a few hundred feet higher, it had snowed heavily.  And the next day it still looked a bit wild up on the summit of Mt. Sarrail (10,411 ft.), on the Continental Divide across the Upper Kananaskis Lake.  We were lucky just to be drying out and not digging out.

After the Rain

Sat. 8 October:  After the Rain

It rained in Calgary this week.  The clouds came down, blotted out the mountains, and soaked the city for two days.  The forecast, however, showed a beautiful sunny day for Saturday, and so I ignored the weather and headed out to Kananaskis Country on Friday morning.  It was raining even harder out in the mountains, and the mist hid all but the lowest slopes.  Picking the best campsite at the Interlakes campground – the one all on its own on a point of land beside the lake – I settled into the Boler and hoped that the change in weather might come earlier than forecast so I could do some hiking today.

It was a little alarming when, mid-afternoon, the rain started to turn to heavy sleet.  But then it turned back to rain.  Taking a short drive to the Upper Lake, all I could see was water and cloud.  But I knew what was going on up there above the visible world.  Later that evening, as light was fading, the clouds started to lift, revealing snowy mountainsides still mostly hidden in the cloud.  Overnight the skies cleared, and the morning revealed lines of mountains plastered with snow, a new covering which was likely to be the first permanent snow cover of the coming winter.  It was a cold morning, around freezing.  But it was also the perfect day for a stroll around the Upper Kananaskis Lake, under blue skies.

Today I hiked right from my own campsite doorstep in an anti-clockwise loop around the Upper Lake, taking in Hidden Lake and other scenic corners of the Upper Lake. There were only a handful of other campers despite this being the start of the Thanksgiving Holiday, and the traditional final camping weekend of the season.  More campers would arrive today, but the place would still only be less than half full by tonight (that night I counted 19 occupied sites out of a total of 48 at Interlakes).

The seasons have all been late this year.  So today the Fall colors were about as good as they get in the mountains, while in other years the leaves might all have blown away by now.  There were some colorful views across the lake to islands covered in yellow trees.  There were several feet of new snow on the mountains, and cloud and mist was swirling around the summits.  Across on the southern side of the lake, mist was rising off the water, and kept doing so all day – a sign that the water in the shady areas was cooling off and would freeze any day now.

My camera was kept busy snapping away at the spectacular scenery which surrounds this lake. Right at the start, I came across a man running down the trail towards me, and I wondered for a second whether he was looking for assistance, but he jogged by without a word. Later I could see his footprints on the damp, muddy trail all the way around the lake.  He was on a very early run.  The 16 kilometre circuit might be a popular running route as I later saw three other people also running around the lakeside trails.

At Point campsite I heard the sound of an axe, indicating that there were some campers there – I still plan to spend a day or two there one day, in one of the perfect campsites whose only downside is their popularity with bears.  Soon I was at the Lower Falls, where the water was noisily dropping down the series of low waterfalls to the lake.  There was a light covering of snow and ice on the path.  We had been lucky. There might have been a foot of snow if the temperatures had been one or two degrees lower.  The mountainsides were all snow-covered.

As on my previous trip around the lake I detoured up to Hidden Lake.  There was no longer any sign but I knew the junction and there was red blazing on a tree.  It’s a bit of an obstacle course to get to Hidden Lake, which presents a sorry scene at this time of year, when most of the water had drained away, leaving a large hole in the ground.  The setting is intimidating, with the mountain walls all around.  Beside the lake lie layers of ankle-twisting tree trunks, greasy when wet, as they were today.  Four broken, burned tree stumps stood in a row as if warning of dire events of the past and maybe to come.  Leaving that gloomy setting behind, I was glad to return to the beauty of the Upper Lake and its exquisite setting beneath the Continental Divide.

The section of trail along the south shore was in the shade, even in late morning, and this is where the mist was rising from the lake in the cold air.  Passing across two major avalanche paths, I was glad I had turned back last year on a winter snow shoe trip along this trail.  I met the first hikers on this trail, two guys busily chatting away to each other.  There was a handful of others enjoying the sudden perfect weather.  A large number of ducks was floating around just offshore.  At the eastern end of the lake, families were out enjoying a stroll and a picnic in the cool air.  A couple of small outboard boats were in the water, and two canoes were being readied for a trip.

Once across the dam, I left the trail and headed out to the point which sticks out furthest into the lake.  There was an overgrown trail in the trees which I followed for a few hundred metres before coming out at an old chimney.  This is all that remains of a log home which once sat on this most spectacular of viewpoints.  The water was sparkling in the sun, and just out of reach the mist continued to rise from the lake along the south shoreline.  The two canoeists paddled quietly by on their way out into the wide lake.

The final section of trail followed the shoreline as it twisted and turned, passing two islands and offering the best views to Mt. Putnik and Mt. Lyautey at the far western end of the lake. All too soon I was back at the Interlakes trailhead, with just a short walk back down to the campsite to complete my circuit.

Since it was still only mid-afternoon, I drove the ten or so kilometres back up the road to the Peter Lougheed Park Visitor Centre.  This large, attractive wooden building has an information desk, bookstore, museum, theatre and a comfy lounge beneath tall glass windows.  I stopped to watch an interesting film on bears and how to handle encounters, bought a couple of guide books, and then returned to my campsite.

The sun gradually dropped below the mountains and the temperature fell rapidly.  Luckily the Boler has a heater, so I was warm enough.  Darkness came soon after 7 pm.  During the night I could hear gusts of wind blowing across the lake, and I was glad of my luxurious accommodation – although it was by far the least luxurious of the vehicles at Interlakes campsite!   The next morning I was up early and heading home up a colorful Kananaskis Valley.

In Canada, after the rain, you can often expect the snow, and so it was this weekend.  Luckily, after the snow came the sun!  And of all the corners of the Rocky Mountains I could have chosen, the Upper Kananaskis Lake was the most beautiful and spectacular place to experience the first snowfall of what is predicted to be a long winter season.    

Statistics
Upper Kananaskis Lake
Sat. 8 October
Total Dist.	20.8 km (hike)
Height Gain	400 ft.
Max. Elev.	5,800 ft.
Time	5 hrs. 46 mins.

Other Stats.
Start hike:       8.26 am Lower K Falls: 9.53 am Hidden Lake: 10.25 am Rawson L Jn:11.55 am Chimney:      12.51 pm Ret. to camp:  2.12 pm	Temp: Cool, around freezing, rising to a few degrees above zero. Mostly sunny.  Mist rising from lake and mountains.