The weather has been fairly horrible in the Rockies this summer. We intended to get to the Rockies since about mid July, but kept putting it off until we pretty much ran out of time. At the last minute, we decided to go, so we harvested the produce from our hail-battered garden, packed up and took off.
We normally plan to get to a camping site on Sunday afternoon when the weekend crowd is departing, then we can get out on Friday morning prior to the weekend onslaught. That did not work out this time as we departed on a Monday.
We booked a hotel in south Calgary using hotel points for Monday night. Our GPS took us off of Highway 1 and onto 901, which is an excellent route into south Calgary with virtually no traffic. The very southern end of Calgary is like driving into a completely new city, as there are new subdivisions, a new hospital, new stores and the new Marriott hotel where we stayed. The hotel was excellent and the staff were unbelievably friendly and helpful. The rooms all have a small kitchen which is the reason we always choose this brand of hotel, as we cook our dinner rather than eating out.
August 9, 2016
Highway 40 into Kananaskis (click on pics to enlarge)
On Tuesday morning we headed south of Calgary to Longview and then onto the 541, we loved the landscape south of Calgary, where prairie meets the Rocky Mountains. In Kananaskis Country, the 541 meets Highway 40 at Highwood Junction, which then continues north into the mountains. This drive is spectacular and not busy at all.
Kananaskis Country is where the Albertans go, and a few wayward adventurers from Saskatchewan and BC. The Albertans generally drive big trucks and pull nice travel trailers. We did not encounter the international visitors that throng to the Rocky Mountain National Parks. K-Country is comprised of several Alberta parks and protected wildlife zones. In the south end, near ranch country, cattle graze alongside the highway.
We drove to Peter Lougheed Provincial Park where we stopped off at the Visitor Centre, which is an incredible facility, to get a map of the campgrounds. All of Kananaskis is under a bear warning at this time as the grizzly bears have come down to gorge on the bumper crop of Silver Buffaloberries. We were told by the campground manager that there are more bears than usual, ones the conservation officers are not familiar with. The information on the website strongly recommended hikers carry bear spray, so for the first time, we bought bear spray at MEC in Calgary.
We headed to Interlakes Campground which appears to be a coveted campground as half of the sites are lakeside, which were all occupied. We drove through a few times so we could scope out the most private site that we could find. Lakeside views do not rank high with us as we are privacy freaks. We selected a site that was as far off the road as possible and quite screened from the neighbouring sites.
Interlakes is a very rustic campground, which is our style, there is nothing there but pit toilets and bear proof garbage receptacles, this one didn’t even have drinking water, which is quite odd. We figured out we had to go to the sani-dump station up the highway to get drinking water as there are water taps there to supply trailers. We met the very kind campground managers who spend the entire summer at the campground taking care of things and selling wood for campfires, but we don’t do the campfire thing. The managers told us that the Interlakes is the oldest campground, we suspect that is why the sites are rather large compared to the other campgrounds. There are other rustic campgrounds as well as large campgrounds with electricity and showers etc. Alberta Parks campgrounds are really great, we were impressed with the facilities, information and maintenance.
Since the weather is always marginal for us, we spent quite a lot of time rigging up tarps to cover the tent and the picnic table, this proved to be time well spent. After getting our tent set up we took off to get a short hike in before the end of the day.
Ptarmigan Cirque
We headed back down highway 40 to the south to Highwood Pass. According to our hiking book, this is the highest point in Canada that is accessible via a public road. The parking lot at the trailhead was fairly busy but it was late in the day and the clouds were moving in; therefore, the masses were marching down the trail as we were going up. This was the perfect short hike to begin our hiking trip. The distance was only a 4.5 km round trip and 702 feet in elevation gain. The trail goes up through forest and then emerges into an alpine meadow that is incredibly green, this is all backed by peaks that soar. There were quite a few flags out in the meadow and a few signs indicating that people from the University of Saskatchewan were out there trapping rodents for research...they requested that hikers not mess with the traps.
The destination is a wonderful cirque and a terminal moraine, which is a large pile of glacial debris pushed up by the snout of a glacier. We passed a small herd of Big Horned sheep near the terminal moraine, they are quite tame and do not bolt off in the presence of humans.
Cirque and terminal moraine
View of Cirque while standing on the terminal moraine
It got quite cool and windy while some rain clouds moved in, so we had to get our rain jackets on, as we got a small amount of rain. We drove back to our camp and made tea, then drank our usual measure of red wine and heated our dinner. We are too lazy to cook when camping so we dehydrate all of our food and then bag it in dinner sized portions. All we have to do is add water and then heat it on our backpacking stove, we are pathetically minimalist when hiking and camping.
However, as we are sick of freezing when we camp in the mountains, we finally bought new mummy sleeping bags to replace our 1970 vintage down bags. New gear is a miracle, we love our new bags and didn’t freeze in the tent during the cold nights. We also bundle up in puffy jackets and fleece pants and jackets and then freak out at the people roaming around in shorts and t-shirts.
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