Rawson Lake and Sarrail Ridge

August 13, 2016

The sacrifices we make, we skipped our morning tea so we could pack up our gear and make it to the trailhead at a reasonable time to begin our hike.  The hike begins at a popular day use area with a gorgeous view of Upper Kananaskis Lake.  There was a large group of older hikers milling around the parking lot, apparently, they were waiting for a hiking guide to lead them to Rawson Lake.  Unfortunately, the herd got on the trail before we did, but they don’t walk like cattle in a single file, although I wish they would, as this made it necessary for us to bolt around them and ask for passage when they walked two abreast.

Much to our delight, there were only a few groups of hikers at the lake when we arrived after hiking for 50 minutes from the parking lot, the elevation gain to the lake is 984 feet.  The lake is just beautiful as it is backed by the sheer wall of Mount Sarrail.  But we opted to storm the ridge rather than bask near the lakeshore.

Upper Kananaskis Lake at Trailhead

Rawson Lake

The hike to the ridge is wickedly steep for us as it gained 1164 feet from the lake and it is straight up on loose terrain which required serious use of our hiking poles.  About three quarters of the way up, a group of fit, fatless, well-muscled young men came flying up the trail, John and I just looked at them with admiration and the realization that we are truly fossilized.

The route to the ridge is up the grassy area right of the gully

Onward we trudged until we gained the ridge, it felt like it took forever, and although it only took an hour, it was an hour of pain.  Pushing up to the ridge, I had the thought that we are nuts and told John that we should be sitting on our butts on a beach with a crappy drink in our hands.  It is easiest to just stay at home and carry on with the daily routine, but the work to get to the ridge was so worth it, as the view from the ridge was nothing short of astounding.  We sat down on the ground, never taking our eyes off the view of the mountains and the lakes and then ate our lunch and basked in the warm sunshine, our first day of full sun.

Upper Kananaskis Lake in foreground, Lower Kananaskis Lake beyond

Rawson Lake from the ridge

Haig Glacier

Rawson Lake

Rawson Lake taken after coming down from the ridge

We watched the shore of the lake fill up with hikers and were surprised to meet a herd of people coming up the ridge as we descended.  The descent was brutal, a hiker told us we were fast, another one offered to buy our hiking poles.  We don’t know how people descend the steep trail without poles, we would be doomed without them.  It took us about half an hour to reach the lake and my legs felt like they were about to buckle.

The walk along the lake is rather level, which rested our legs enough so we headed down to the parking lot.  There was a steady stream of people walking up, as this is a very popular hike.  We flew down as fast as we could and really wanted to see the end of the trail.

We got to the car and the parking lots were jammed full and of course the late afternoon cloud had moved in.  Right away we took off for Calgary, checked into the Marriott near the airport, headed out for groceries for dinner and then relaxed.

Kananaskis is a superb hiking destination, the mountains in the heart of Peter Lougheed and south into Elbow-Sheep are terrific.  There is a lot of variety and as long as one gets out early in the morning to start hiking, you can beat the crowds.  There are also many hikes that are outstanding that also provide solitude.  We plan to hike here again.

Mist Ridge

August 12, 2016

In June we attended the 90th birthday party of June Mitchell, she also used the occasion to launch her memoir, ‘Glad I Dropped In.’  Prior to reading from her book, June talked about how lucky we are to live on such a beautiful planet, her words have been ringing in my ears ever since.  The truth of her words was foremost in our minds while standing on Mist Ridge, the stupendous 360 degree views from that ridge left us awestruck.

Mist Ridge is south on highway 40 in the Elbow-Sheep Wildland Provincial Park, what a fantastic name for a park.  The trail to the ridge started out near Mist Creek and went through a lot of overgrown deciduous berry bushes, prime bear territory, although the berries were already gone.  We made a lot of noise while walking through here as it was obvious the trail was rarely used and we didn’t want a bear encounter.

After a long walk through forest we reached a subalpine zone that felt like half prairie and half alpine. Beautiful grassy slopes with a mix of wildflowers familiar to prairie dwellers as well as alpine flowers and grasses.

Subalpine area en route to Mist Ridge

At a grassy gap, our guide book advised us to leave the trail and boot it up the grassy slope to the ridgecrest, this was the steepest section of the hike.  Once we gained the ridge we were spewing superlatives regarding the view.  There is nothing better than a high ridgewalk, but we were in need of lunch.

We sat on the rocks and watched all of the rain storms swirl around, unlike the prairies, the rain showers come from various directions simultaneously.  We noted why Mist Creek way below us earned its name, as a mist walked down the valley toward us.  Another shower from the south moved east to Calgary and yet another shower from the north moved east as well.  How lucky for us, we only received the mist coming down the valley along Mist Creek.  Then some sunshine broke through to light up the grand mountains that surrounded us.

Stunning mountain views from the ridge

Mist Creek down below

Prior to the cloud moving in, we could see Calgary from this vantage point

Calgary in the distance

Walk along the ridge

Mist Ridge going north

Mist Ridge going south

During lunch, a familiar character, a brown weasel with the characteristic black tipped tail, checked us out and was gone like a flash.  After lunch, we started down the ridge, it was a wonderful walk, leaving us feeling like we were on top of the world.  When we felt we had walked enough, we turned around and walked back to the south end of the ridge and started our long descent.

This was a fairly long walk, it felt remote and we found solitude, which was bliss after the busier Chester Lake hike.  The elevation gain was 2348 to the ridge and the round trip was in excess of the 14.8 km to the ridge, as we were not sure how far we hiked on the ridge.

The hike left us a bit knackered, but we planned to sneak in one more hike on Saturday after breaking down our camp.  Since we are close to Calgary, we figured we could break our camp, go on a decent hike and still make it to Calgary in the late afternoon.

It was Friday night and the campground was full by the time we got back from our hike.  Interestingly, more than a few people will come out and drop a tent to claim the site, pay the fees and then they are off.  We had no neighbours beside us or across from us although tents were set up.

We were so favourably impressed with Interlakes Campground, it was really quiet at night.  Although, when we retired to the tent at dark, we totally crashed and slept like never before, every night and for many more hours than is usual for us.

Chester Lake

August 11, 2016

Today we decided to go on an easy hike to give our legs a bit of a break.  The hike to Chester Lake is the easiest hike we have ever done, it is a cakewalk.  According to our hiking book, it is the most popular hike in Kananaskis.  Humans are like electrical current, always looking for the route of least resistance.  Perhaps it is unfortunate for us, or we are completely cracked, but both of us are natural born Stoics, as in the Stoic philosophy.  We don’t think life is all about comfort and luxury; conversely, life needs to have a good measure of discomfort, in order for us to truly appreciate what we have and what we do.  To that end, we are proponents of relative depravation in our lives.  The hike to Chester Lake is not one of discomfort, as the elevation gain is 1013 feet over a very gradual trail and the round trip is only 9 km.

If we were not trying to get our legs in gradual shape for hiking we would have taken on a trail up to other lakes from Chester Lake, as was recommended by our hiking book.  The fact that we didn’t do this gnawed away at us, but we had to stay lazy.

We met some really nice people from Red Deer while walking around the lake, I told them their kid was a mountain goat as he was charging up the rock slope and they had to tell him to stop going, the Chester Lake hike bored him.  I handed them my instructions for getting to the upper lakes, I don’t know if they decided to hike it or not. As usual, click on pics to enlarge....

Spruce Grouse on the trail to Chester Lake

Grouse are very tame, this is how close they come

Chester Lake sits below the wall of rock

Chester Lake

Our lunch companion - a Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrel

View toward our lunch spot on far side of lake

Route down from Chester Lake

Burstall Pass

August 10, 2016

The trail to Burstall Pass begins on an old road through the forest and then breaks out into an alluvial flat with numerous small streams flowing through.  The water level is low but it involves hopping across channels and walking across improvised foot bridges of fallen trees.  The trail then ascends through dense forest and then breaks out once again into a gorgeous subalpine meadow.

Alluvial Flat

View of glacier from alluvial flat

We met a few hikers who told us that it is very beautiful up on the pass and there were lots of neat areas to explore.  We reached the pass in about two hours, the elevation gain is 1542 feet, the round trip is 15 km, so it was a really good walk.

Rain on the way

View of the meadow from the pass

Trail to the pass

It looked fairly socked in, so we decided we may as well head down since we couldn’t see the view from the pass toward Spray Valley, which was unfortunate.  It started to rain so hard that the trail turned into a small river and our boots got soaked.

We whipped down fairly quickly and the rain tapered off on our descent.  The pass is a wonderful area, it would be a place to spend some time on a fine day.

On our drive back to our campground on the gravel road known as the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail, a bobcat darted across the road and was gone in a flash.  We were quite happy to see a bobcat, as neither of us had ever seen one before.

Back at our campsite that evening the tarps we had erected proved their worth, as it poured rain for a few hours.  However, we were able to have our tea and heat our dinner while tucked under our tarp out of the rain.

Kananaskis Country

August 8, 2016

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.