Ranger Hill

Sat. 24 March:  Ranger Hill

If you want some good tips on great hikes, then turn to this website:

http://kananaskisblog.com/

This “Kananaskis Trails” website always has some interesting options for hiker or snow-shoer or cross-country skier, depending on the time of year.  Check it out.

So today I tried out their latest suggestion, a ten kilometre circuit of the hills south of the West Bragg Creek ski trails, to the summit of Ranger Hill.  I was not disappointed.

It had snowed the previous day and so the road into the parking area was unploughed and slippery.  Apart from one van, I was first here, despite this being a cloudless Saturday morning.  The weather might have fooled some city folk today.  At home it was dull and overcast.  Halfway to Bragg Creek, the clouds parted to reveal the most beautiful cloudless day with new snow on the mountains and foothills.

I started off on the ski trails but soon branched off on a trail of my own – a new route devised for mountain bikers. Hence the odd name given to some trails.  My circuit took me up Boundary Ridge trail, then onto Strange Brew, and finally onto Ranger Summit trail for the rest of the trip.

The first thing I did was to drop my camera in the snow, which made some of my pictures a bit blurry and then I couldn’t get the date stamp to disappear!  But it was all uphill from there - literally.  Almost immediately I had a grand view of a snow-caked Moose Mountain rising high above the forests, under a blue sky.  Most of the trail was in the trees, but the route was interesting, and never too steep.  It had been designed for non-hard-core bikers and so it wound all across the hillsides in an almost random way.  The good thing about these new trails is that they allow access into country which before was completely impregnable due to deadfall.  It must have taken a huge effort to carve out the route and clear the debris under foot.

Eventually the trail climbed up to the summit of Ranger Hill, forested right to its almost flat summit ridge.  Here was my next grand view of the day, west to the snowy summits of Banded Peak, Mt. Cornwall and Mt. Glasgow.  Now the trail marched through the snow-covered trees along the ridge before turning sharply right to traverse the even snowier northern side of the ridge. 

I was breaking trail all the way, and keeping an eye out for the plentiful orange trail signs on the trees to make sure I was not straying – which is easy in snow-covered country.  Finally I came to the most open viewpoint of the day, with a handy tree branch to sit on for a snack.  Here I had views west and north, to Moose Mountain and the Bragg Creek valley. Soon much of this will be logged, which is causing much opposition as logging always seems to do.

A very pleasant descent of the ridge took me all the way back to the start, above a creek, and beside snow-filled meadows.  Here I met a young family of four making good progress up the trail on their snow shoes.

In no time at all I was back at the car park where there were now quite a few cars parked, but people must have been out on the trail as it was fairly quiet.  What better day to be out in the snow, under cloudless skies.  It was still a few degrees below zero and early on I needed two pairs of gloves.  But it was warming up quickly, with snow starting to fall in crystal showers from the trees.

Back in the city, the sun was still trying to fight the cloud – and nobody was any wiser about the magical morning that they too might have discovered a few miles west of here.   

Statistics
Ranger Summit Trail
Sat. 24 March
Total Dist.	10.0 km (‘shoe)
Height Gain	1,200ft.
Max. Elev.	5,650 ft.
Time	3 hrs. 15 mins.

Other Stats.
Start hike:      8.33 am Summit:       10.26 am Viewpoint:    10.58 am Ret. to car:   11.48 am	Temp: minus 6 to minus 2 deg.C Cloudless, windless