Sat. 16 February:
McLean Hill: Under the Arch
McLean
Hill: not much of a peak, but what a
grand vantage point for today’s Chinook Arch.
The strong westerly winds were blowing the clouds away from the
mountains, creating this arch of heavy cloud, and clear skies below it, framed
by the Front Ranges
As
I walked up McLean Creek Trail road, beyond the winter gate, I met a jogger
coming back down the road. She told me
that she had seen two moose further along the valley. I soon turned up onto the lower slopes of
McLean Hill, so sadly never saw them. In
fact I saw no animals, although there were signs of deer. The guidebook provides the adventurer with a
complex map of trails which seem to head off in every direction. So after a while I gave up trying to follow
instructions and struck up a steep forested slope which was mostly snow
free. This led to a forested ridge, and
so to the first of many good views of the mountain wall to the west and the
arch directly above me.
There
seemed to be more trail options than on the map, and I was put off by a
descending section of path. So I climbed
a steep cut-line for a short while, which led me to an outlier of the
summit. I quickly dropped down through
the snowy forest back onto the trail and up to the surprisingly bare
summit. McLean Hill turns out to be an
excellent viewpoint for everyone’s most favorite and well known section of
foothills and mountains: Moose Mountain
to the north, then swinging west and south
one could see Prairie Mountain, Powderface Ridge, Forgetmenot Ridge, and
behind them all the familiar Front Range peaks heavily snow covered and with
clouds boiling up behind them.
I
stopped for a while at the summit to enjoy this view, and to bask in a warm
wind – hardly to be expected in mid-February.
Sure enough, later that night, it snowed and the temperatures dropped by
about ten degrees! But not in time to
spoil this treat.
The
hillsides drop steeply down from the summit along a cut-line. This is off-road vehicle country and it was
no surprise to me to hear the constant sound of revving engines in the valley
below. As I was about halfway down the steep,
icy trail, I met a couple of quads heading up the hill. A little later, a third quad passed me, only
to return back down the hill five minutes later, very cautiously! Without MICROspikes, today’s winter hike
would have been impossible. One could
have guaranteed a broken leg. I am so confident
now of my spikes that I stride happily down a steep sheet of ice as if it were
a sidewalk in the city. One slip would
be terrible, but the spikes simply don’t slip.
My
return along the romantically named route 1B required some more climbing up a
forested ridge, before a gentle descent along snow-packed motorbike trails back
down to the road. By now the sun had
broken out from beneath the arch and it was a warm day. I stopped beside the snow-covered McLean Lake
Statistics:
Total
Distance: 7.4 km (hike)
Height
Gain: 1,300
ft.
Max.
Elev.: 5,679
ft.
Time
on Trail: 3 hrs. 9 mins.
Start
hike: 9.05 am
Ret.
to car: 12.14 pm
Start
Temp: + 3 deg.C
Finish
Temp: + 6 deg.C
Weather: Chinook cloud, sun towards end of
hike. Warm, W wind at summit.
No comments:
Post a Comment