Category: moosling

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canada general hiking moosling

Wind Ridge

This is such an awesome little hike, and so close to town, I can’t believe I’ve never done it before.

Sudden views out to the spectacular Wind Valley as you leave the fire trail in the trees

We parked at the Pigeon Mountain carpark, along with hoards of others (after arriving there the first time and realising we’d forgotten bear spray, and having to go back home and pick it up). This was the first weekend since the Wind Valley seasonal closure had ended, so perhaps we weren’t the only ones to come up with the cunning plan to hike in this area.

Up steeply through the meadow to get to the ridge

There are two different options to gain some height and reach the start of the ridge. Both involve following fire road, and my preference is the shorter way – after crossing the good bridge and the dodgy bridge, as you’re heading uphill, there’s a turn off to the right. Hike steeply up there for a few hundred metres until you reach a cairn marking some single track disappearing into the bush – follow. Soon enough you’re on fire trail again, and you meet up with the original track higher up.

We came across bear scat, but no bears. Just a lot of squirrels, and ground squirrels once we reached the open meadows along Wind Ridge itself. As the trail climbs the ridge, there are more and more fantastic views, out towards the Wind Valley and West Wind Pass, towards Skogan Pass and Mount Allan, and out towards Calgary and the scenic Lafarge plant.

Descending Wind Ridge

As the ridge narrows, you reach a rock band (can’t go round it, have to go over it). Despite appearances, there’s just a metre of scrambling, then a short walk along a narrow ledge, then you’re back to grassy path for the ten minute walk to the high point.

Despite the weather seeming kind of ominous the whole time we were hiking, with humid heavy air, it stayed dry until we got back to the car. And then the rain came.

Back to Papa and the Moosling, left at the bottom of the rock band

Distance: 12.6km return
Elevation gain: 760m

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bikes canada general moosling

Cycling with the Chariot to a random point on Redearth Creek

It started raining as we loaded the bikes onto the truck. Thankfully, none of us are witches, and we decided the rain would probably go away again. After raining on us a bit, it did.

We’d skied the Redearth creek trail in Winter, but got bored and turned around. Biking it is much easier, and it was a lovely day once the rain cleared. Damp trail covered in red pine needles, and the flowing creek, and bright green mosses covering the forest floor.

It’s uphill most of the way, sometimes steep, sometimes gradual, but fairly constantly uphill. After about 7km of this, we reached the Lost Horse Creek campground and had a late lunch.

Then it was another 3.5km of flatter terrain, and we reached the “No bikes west of this junction” point. They even had little bike stands that allowed you to lock your bikes up. We decided we couldn’t be bothered walking the 3.5km up to Shadow Lake, or biking south on the Pharaoh Creek trail – which looked pretty narrow anyway.

Now of course, we’re wondering about the potential of camping at the Lost Horse Creek campground, and then hiking the Shadow Lake/Whistling Valley/Egypt Lake/Pharaoh Creek trail.

Turning around, we barely had to pedal on the way down. Weeeeee!

Trail conditions: Only a couple of puddles, and only a little snow to the side of the trail, the track is pretty clear.
Bears: None, but some scat and some prints.

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bikes canada general moosling

Nearly cycling up to Skogan Pass

A couple of weeks ago we went on a random cycle down an old mining road that led away south-east from the Three Sisters village in Canmore. On Sunday we decided to explore it properly, and see if we could get all the way up to Skogan Pass, snow permitting (for those in the Bow Valley, Skogan Pass is the one you see when driving away from Canmore towards Calgary, with the power lines leading through the trees up and over it).

After re-tracing our tracks of the previous week, we reached the fork in the mining track and opted for the lower, grassier, option. Studying a topo map had suggested it was the not-so-steep option. It wasn’t too steep, but it was certainly covered in lots of undergrowth, with branches overhanging the track, and fallen logs to lift the Chariot over. Thanks to the lack of traffic I was also collecting enough cobwebs to knit a tasteful spider-silk sweater.

Finally we were out of the awful overgrown track, over a couple of rickety old bridges, and turning off just short of the Pigeon Mountain carpark, along the track towards Skogan Pass. In the sun, beside the scenic buzzing power-lines. I was grateful when the track disappeared into the trees and away from the power-lines, which didn’t take too long.

After a pre-lunch break there was some relentless hill climbing, a lunch break, and some more relentless hill climbing. Streams were crossed, squirrels were eaten.

Finally we were getting a good view back down the valley, but it was then that we hit our first big pile of snow. We got the Chariot through it and rode along quite happily for a few hundred metres more, when we hit another huge road-covering snow patch. I scouted ahead and determined there was snow for several hundred metres, which there would be no getting the bikes and Chariot through (well, not easily anyway).

And so we had to give up on reaching Skogan Pass (within 2km of the pass too), and went flying back downhill again. With lots of heavy braking, so the Chariot didn’t get too much air over the rocks.

We didn’t come across any bears, but there was a huge bull moose standing in the middle of the trail at one point. We yelled out at him until he wandered out of the way a bit, then we scuttled past so as to not offend him. He didn’t look like the sort of moose you’d want to offend, even if his antlers were only quite small (he looks quite small in the photo, but he was a long way away, rest assured he looked much bigger when he was just ten metres off the track as we cycled past).

Back on the mining trail to Canmore, we took the steep track option this time. It was definitely clearer than the lower option, with less overhanging vegetation. There were still plenty of logs across the track though, and it had a few pitches so steep that it took both of us to push the Chariot up.

Covered in mud, we finally made it back to the civilisation of ground we’d covered before, and then to the Bow River cycle path, still busy with the weekend hoards.

Distance covered: 41km
Total ascent: About 1km
The list of interesting things we found to check out:
The single track that crossed the old mining road
The path up to Wind Ridge
The path up to Pigeon Mountain

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canada climbing general moosling

Cragbaby in training

We headed up to Grassi Lakes yesterday, with a 10 minute drive and 5 minute hike in, woe is us with our inconveniently far away climbing. It was my first time on rock in over two years, and it’s been closer to three years since I’ve climbed regularly outdoors. I remembered how to put my harness on though, and we just stuck to the easy wall. I almost wonder if I would have been better off jumping on something harder, so I could be so distracted by the fiendishly difficult climbing and forget how scary it is re-adjusting to lead climbing again. That plan probably wouldn’t work though, I’d just be exhausted AND terrified.

It was a nice day, apart from the rain. It can’t seem to stop itself from turning up at least once a day to taunt us. And we had to hike through a pile of snow to get down to the crag. There were hoards of chipmunks and golden-mantled ground squirrels though. And it was warm enough on the rock.

Finn ate his first rock, and had fun crawling around in the dirt and playing with my Nalgene bottle. He’ll be a fully qualified cragbaby in no time at this rate.

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canada general moosling

The Ninth Month

Featuring some newly developed crawling skills, plus a related “I’ve crawled under the coffee table and now I’m stuck and everything is terrible” moment.