Category: trip reports

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Hiking/scrambling Mount Lougheed

The plan to hike up Mount Lougheed was hatched after Alex stumbled across a few online trip reports that suggested it wasn’t necessary to do a terrifying ridge scramble to get to the summit. Indeed, it was possibly no more than a difficult hike.

We set off early on Sunday morning, planning to beat the heat (with a forecast of 30oC and a possible afternoon thunderstorm). The route we followed was roughly as described by Bob Spirko and discussed in the Clubtread forums here. There’s nowhere handy to park, but there’s a well-defined trail most of the way up to Spencer Creek.

The well defined trail eventually peters out, and then there’s a little bush-bashing and random route-finding and you’re suddenly beneath the imposing back wall of Mount Sparrowhawk. From there, it’s a simple wander along, either in Spencer Creek or in the meadows just above it. The terrain along here was unexpectedly awesome, and a trip just to this point would still be worth doing – especially given that we had the entire place to ourselves on a busy long weekend in the middle of summer.

Looking up towards the scree slope and seemingly impassable rock bands

Towards the end of Spencer Creek – well, the end of its life as a creek – you’re faced with the realisation you’re right in the middle of a rather enormous and very impressive cirque. From there, it’s onwards and upwards on the enormous scree slope of doom.

A short break on a little grassy bench, after the first 100 metres or so of scree

The scree slope was fairly straightforward, with a nice waterfall to wander over and have a look at. We found a little pile of snow, desperately hanging on to life just nearby. Then, just as things were beginning to appear impossible, and we were faced with increasingly impassable looking rock bands, a cairn appeared high and to the right, just by a notch in a high rock band. Making your way up to the notch involves a very easy scramble, and a little walking on steep scree.

I made it to the notch carrying the Moosling in the Ergo, but Alex didn’t fancy the exposure, so I found a comfortable place for the menfolk to nap in the sun while I screed it to the summit.

Beyond the notch, I wandered straight up the scree, and then up a weakness in the white rock bands. With hindsight, or an accurate trail description on me, I would have gone further to the right and gained a nice scree spur to follow to the summit ridge. Instead I was stuck on my slightly spicy weakness, hoping it wouldn’t get any less weak. When I hit the summit ridge, it was a tiny narrow thing too, with the huge wall of Lougheed 1 facing me on one side, and the dominating back face of Mount Sparrowhawk on the other – it was a very intimidating view, and I was half-inclined to high-tail it back down the mountain from there.

Where I arrived at the summit ridge – not knife-edge, but I certainly wasn’t dancing about up there – nice view out to Spray Lakes though

The false summit

But the real summit only seemed to be about a hundred metres away, so I carefully made my way across. Once there, I could see that I’d just reached the top of the scree spur, and the actual summit was just a short walk a little further along. I was just about on my one hour turn around time, but enough time to reach the summit, sign the log, take some photos and head back downhill again.

Aha, that one’s the real summit.

Views of Lougheed 1 from the summit (the summit is Lougheed 2). Some do the scramble between these two peaks – I find even the idea a little terrifying – look at that ridge!

You can see Canmore from the summit… as well as Wind Ridge, Pigeon Mountain etc

I was tempted to try and find the easy way down, but I didn’t want to risk getting myself in the wrong place and getting cliffed out, so it was back down my rocky weakness, to the happy scree slope, into the notch, and back to the napping menfolk in the sun.

The way down from the summit, back along the ridge (with Mount Sparrowhawk lurking off to the left, as it was inclined to do)

Obligatory summit self-portrait

There’s no nap like a mountain scree-slope nap

The rest of the scree slope down was a little interminable after that. My legs had already had enough down-climbing, and the scree was often unforgiving rather than enjoyably surfable. The Moosling did find scree surfing a fairly hilarious activity, and spent a lot of time laughing at us on the descent. Taking off shoes and dabbling our feet in the creek at the bottom of the slope was a blessed relief afterwards.

Sans pants creeking – the safest option when a toddler is involved

He thought the thick moss combined with the creek were pretty much the most awesome things ever (with the-vast-array-of-rocks-available-on-a-scree-slope in a marginal second place)

Return distance: 13.6km
Elevation gain: 1515m
Mount Lougheed (Lougheed II) summit: 3107m
Toddler rating: The Moosling was happily hiking some of the lower trail through the trees (with some hand holding help needed for steep or rocky bits), wandering along in the meadows, and even had a go at hiking up and down in the scree. Plenty of rocks to throw and a couple of streams to play in, and he was happy the whole day. He’s still travelling in the Ergo when he’s not walking under his own steam, and easily falls asleep back there.

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Wind Ridge: Toddler Hiking

We biked up from town towards the start of the Wind Ridge hike (about a 12km bike from downtown, out along the old trails past the end of Three Sisters) and then stowed the bikes and Chariot in the trees once the going started getting a little too steep. Then we pulled out the Ergo and hiking boots and hats, and started walking up.

From our bike-stashing point it was around 4km to the high point on the ridge, with 700m of elevation gain. And the wild Moosling managed to hike a fair bit of it.

In-between throwing off his hat and refusing to put it back on again.

We made it to the top though, and then sat in the shade and ate lunch, and watched the sight-seeing helicopter tours zooming past.

As we hiked back down again, the Moosling slept nearly the entire way (and kept his hat on). And then there was icecream.

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

Biking the Elbow Loop with a Chariot

The Elbow Loop is one of those rides I kept coming across in lists with descriptions like: “Classic K-Country Rides”. And in fact it is a classic – in the sense it comes from the days when mountain-biking was all about riding on rough dirt roads, back before the day when someone realised they could ride single-track, and that was actually a lot more fun.

With all that double track, we figured we may as well take the Chariot along. I’d never ridden the loop before. Alex had, but seemed to think it was worth doing again – and it was, in that it was one of the double-track rides around that’s possible to do with a Chariot. Otherwise, there are a lot of much more interesting rides in K-Country (although the scenery is quite nice, and maybe I’m just a little spoilt from living in the mountains now).

We headed out along the Little Elbow trail first, riding the loop anti-clockwise. After passing a few hikers we had the trail to ourselves for most of the climb up to Tombstone Pass. The climbing was pretty relentless, but we risked the perils of inertia and made one stop along the way so the Moosling could get out and throw rocks around (mostly at Mama).

The trail reports had threatened snow at the pass, but although there was a little hiding in the trees, the trail itself was clear. I’m increasingly having no faith at all in the trail reports out here.

Crossing Tombstone Pass

We didn’t spend much time at Tombstone Pass, but dropped down into the Big Elbow Valley, where the trail narrowed, and became a lot more like single trail (although still passable on the Chariot). At the same time, the scenery got a little more spectacular, and I could see why people would rave about the ride.

Descending into Big Elbow Valley

Some of the more interesting sections were found on this side of the circuit, and I was glad I wasn’t towing the Chariot – so I could zoom on the single track, and so I didn’t have to haul it uphill after the stream crossings. A couple of sections here the Chariot was walked, both uphill and downhill, but never for long.

Eventually we left the hills behind, and followed the river out along the flat. And along the flat. And along the flat. That interminable flat track, it eventually spat us out back at the carpark, and we were relieved, as we’d had enough of riding mountain bikes along flat rocky roads.

The Big Elbow River

Distance: From the campground carpark, the whole loop worked out to be a little over 42km
Elevation gain: About 850m of climbing. Basically it’s uphill for nearly 20km, to an elevation of about 2,230m, then mostly downhill for the 20km back home.
Chariot-ability: Mostly double track. A few sections narrowed to single trail, but it was always forgiving wide single trail that was easy to get the Chariot along. The creek crossings were numerous and interesting though, especially the rocky ones. And a couple of rocky downhill sections we opted to walk.
Rating: Nice views, fun if you’re bike packing through the area, feel the need to explore somewhere new, or have to pick an adventure that is Chariot/trailer friendly.

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bikes canada general moosling trip reports

A very bikey weekend

On Saturday, a plan was hatched to ride “Kananaskis 8”, a route described in one of the trail books. I’d never heard of it. After a few kilometres of riding, I had a fair idea why. Although the trails might have been great in the dry, as it was, it was a corrugated mess of sloppy, muddy horse track. Do not want! So we decided to bail out onto the Prairie View trail, and rode up Barrier Mountain (this was all Chariot and Moosling-free, otherwise the mud would have been even more fun).

Then as none of us had ridden Razor’s Edge before, we thought we’d finish up that way, and then bike along the highway back to the car. It would have worked much better if it wasn’t so hideously windy. In a typically windy area, riding a technical trail along a ridge, on an especially windy day – well it was interesting. The last section of trail we walked, and the wind was catching at my bike and blowing it into the air.

Sunday was a family outing with the Chariot, biking from Canmore out to Skogan Pass (about 45km return, with 1300m of climbing). Instead of continuing out along the old road beyond Three Sisters, we turned towards the highway and followed a rough road that sits near the highway, and is a lot flatter and more sensible riding than the higher option we’d ridden before. There was still the big climb up to the pass, but at least we weren’t already exhausted from hauling the Chariot up and down a steep “road” with fallen trees across it.

There were still a few snow patches higher up, but nothing the Chariot couldn’t be ridden across. And then there were summit baguettes and scroggin, and flying back downhill again (briefly interrupted when we saw a cinnamon-coloured bear cub, and waited until he got off the trail and went back to hang out with his mum).

(Sorry for the slightly dodgy quality photos, I haven’t been taking my good camera out biking, so it’s strictly phone photos)

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canada general snow trip reports

Mount Gordon: The return

The last time we skied up Mount Gordon was just shortly after our Wapta Icefields traverse back in 2009. It was great, but we got clouded in at the summit.

This time round, I didn’t actually know I was going to Mount Gordon. I just knew that I was going skiing for the day, and a friend had kindly volunteered to mind the Moosling so Alex could come too – the first offspring-free ski trip together since… well, a good long while, especially if you count the times when I had an in-utero passenger.

We set off at a fairly decent pace, leaving the car at 8.20am, and making it to Bow Hut by 10.40am – with a few photo and sunscreen stops along the way. A brief snack stop, harnesses on, then onwards and upwards and onto the glacier.

I may have been inclined to lead at a fast pace, with the lurking worry about our toddler-minding friend being stuck with a screaming and unhappy Moosling, and no mobile phone reception so I could phone and check if they’d both been eaten by bears. But it was a gorgeous blue-sky day (perfect for getting the first sunburn of the year).

There’s only one brief steep section to get to the summit, and can be managed with skis on if you really want to, but we all opted for boot-packing and carrying the skis for a few metres.

I actually made it to the summit just before the clouds came along though, and these were the tracks of the guys who skied off just as I was arriving at the summit.

… watching the other guys approaching the summit.

By 1.50pm we were all sitting on the summit eating a late lunch, and admiring the clouds. The mountains had retreated into their standard afternoon shyness, so swathed in swirling cloud we sat eating our lunch and straining to catch a glimpse of view.

And then there was just the downhill to go! The snow was fantastic on the descent from Mount Gordon, and still pretty good on the way down to Bow Hut. The condition of my thighs by the time we reached Bow Hut -> not so good.

After dropping down from Bow Hut, there was the usual debate about whether with or without skins was quicker. No skins wins, but leads to a few frustrating climbs on the rolling terrain out.

Back at the carpark we thought it was all over. I was innocently eating my sandwich. And then I was swooped by a cheeky Whisky Jack, who tried to make off with the whole sandwich. He was pretty bold, and kept sitting a few metres away, waiting until he thought I wasn’t watching, and then swooping at my sandwich again. So we lured him into the car and cooked him into pie that night.

Dist: 24km. Elevation gain: 1280m. Max elevation: 3203m. Time: ~8hr10min

(Oh, and as you can see, posting is a little sparse these days – life was busy to begin with, and now I’m working full time as well. Or rather, doing standard, paid, turn-up-to-an-office, 9-5 kind of work. For another 2.5 weeks more anyway. As well as toddler-wrangling, and trying to keep making dolls, and getting into bike-fitness for the season on these awesomely dry trails, and attempting to train for a half-marathon that’s on in town this weekend.)