Category: trip reports

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Not quite to Tower Lake (and definitely not to Rockbound)

This was another lesson in the “It’s quite hard to take a lot of photos when you’re the only one towing a Chariot and looking after an offspring” factor.

Rockbound Lake is just near Castle Junction, tucked in behind Castle Mountain. And I’d skied it before, pre-Moosling. At the time it had seemed like a fairly easy day-trip, a nice little easy jaunt. Towing a Chariot made the whole thing a lot more uphill. The hills! They didn’t stop! My legs! Ow ow!

It was a gorgeous blue bird day though, and lovely and warm (about 5oC in town), pretty much Spring weather. And we only came across two other people there the whole day! On a weekend!

Getting the Chariot up there was pretty easy, with a wide trail that wasn’t too off-camber. But then the trail swung around towards the west, and the skin trail became a narrow little winding path. Then I started to need help getting past trees and tree wells, and getting up some of the steep little rises. Do-able, but if I was to ski there with a Moosling again, I might use the Ergo instead.

We stopped for lunch in the sun. The sun had other ideas, and buggered off behind the peak about a minute after we sat down. And then half the party headed on to Tower Lake, while the other half went “blow this for a joke, snow-covered lakes are boring”, and started working the Chariot back through the trees (with only a few sideways Chariot on the snow incidents on the way) and stopping and chatting in any handy sunny patches they found.

We met up in time to do the fast descent together, flying down the icy track without incident to find the sun again in the carpark. Ow, my legs.

Elevation gain (to Tower Lake): About 650m?
Distance (to Tower Lake): 15.5km return

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canada general moosling snow trip reports

Skiing Skogan Pass

This was another of the “really local but never done it before” outings. Earlier in the year, in Spring, we’d try to bike up Skogan Pass from Canmore but got turned back by snow near the top. This time we were approaching from the Nakiska side on skis.

Once we skied through Nakiska and gained a little elevation the snow was in great condition, and almost untouched. It’s a really gradual climb up to the pass, no steep hills, just lots of weaving back and forth through the trees, then under the powerlines. We saw some cat tracks crossing the path at one point near the summit (maybe a lynx?)

After a really late lunch at the summit, we realised our late start was about to get the better of us – if we didn’t hurry the sun would be gone soon. And although we did have one headlamp between us, it would be dark and cold, and there were wolves.

Luckily the ski back down was just that (it went down), so we were back at the car in just an hour – barely managing the last section through the trees without a headlight.

We weren’t eaten by any wolves either.

Distance: 24km (I think?)
Elevation gain: 200m
Chariot skiability: Perfect for towing a Chariot up
We started at Ribbon Creek trailhead, although it would have been easy enough to park at Nakiska too. Full trail description here.

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canada general hiking moosling trip reports

Hiking Mount Bourgeau: Five stars

For some reason I’d always though that getting to the summit of Mount Bourgeau involved scrambling. It doesn’t. Occasionally you’re walking on scree (fairly tame and well behaved scree) or near cliffs, but it’s no more a scramble than the walk to the top of Ha Ling Peak – hands are totally not necessary. Also, it is an awesome hike, possibly the best one we did this summer, and everyone should go out and do it immediately.

waterfall fall

Thanks to a lovely sleep in, we started out pretty late – I think it was around 10.30am. Which was a bit late for a hike which some people quote 12 hours for. We fairly galloped along though, and even with a lunch break at Harvey Lake, we reached the summit within four hours. The climbing is pretty constant throughout – the elevation profile should make a nice isosceles triangle I think.

harvey lake

I didn’t actually get any good photos of Bourgeau Lake, as it was largely sitting in shade for most of the day. The lake pictured above is Harvey Lake (I think), one of three lakes between Bourgeau Lake and Harvey Pass. That’s Mount Bourgeau sitting to the right of the lake, looming in a cliffy fashion.

past the lakes to the pass

Harvey Pass is where a lot of people stop hiking. From there you can see out to Sunshine Village and Mount Assiniboine, and it would count as a fairly amazing view in itself if I hadn’t seen the summit view as well. It helped that it was a gorgeous sunny day (even if a bit on the windy side).

banff below

Looking down to Banff from the summit

 

the pointy mountains

The Sundance Range? from the summit

 

the boys admire the hardware

While I was busy taking photos of the view, the boys admired the hut and accompanying hardware

 

back down

Back down to Bourgeau Lake, just out of sight below the cliffs – autumn is here

 

Summit: 2930m (9613ft)
Elevation Gain: 1435 m (2,460 ft)
Return distance: 25km
Split times: Bourgeau Lake: 1hr50m, Harvey Pass: 3hr, Summit: 4hr, Descend from summit: 5hr, Back at Harvey Pass: 5hr38min, Back at Bourgeau Lake: ~6hr10 Back at the Car: 7hr45m

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canada general hiking trip reports

Read’s Tower (a.k.a. Read’s scree slog)

In front of Mount Sparrowhawk in K-Country, there sits a little jutting lump of rock, covered in scree. I didn’t know beforehand that it was covered in scree, I just knew it was called Read’s Tower, and we were going to hike up it instead of Mount Sparrowhawk as it was supposed to lack the slightly dodgy-with-baby scrambly sections.

Spray Lakes views from Read’s Tower

 

It was completely lacking in dodgy scrambling, but the trail had plenty of steep and unpleasant dirt sections, and lots of the slogging variety of scree. Not the worst track in the world, but I certainly wasn’t hiking up it thinking “Golly, isn’t this a delightful track, lets go and have tea over by that large rock.”

Having a tasty lunch of sunglasses

 

At least the views were good, and it was a gloriously warm day, and we had the entire area to ourselves – apart from those pesky scenic tours helicopters, the place seems absolutely infested with them sometimes.

Looking up to Read’s Tower on the right and Mount Sparrowhawk in the distance

 

Elevation gain: 920m
Round trip: 6.8km
Height: 2,663 m

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general travel trip reports

Jökulsárlón (Big fat glacier lagoon)

Jökulsárlón is the biggest glacier lagoon in Iceland, filled with giant chunks of glacier which have calved from Breiðamerkurjökull (jökull means glacier). It’s also filled with seals (well, a few at any rate) and boat buses full of tourists who don’t get to go life-threateningly close to the glacier, which is no fun at all.

After spending some time melting, the small glacial icebergs float out to sea and escape.

After having our fill of watching enormous glacier chunks and seals, we drove down the road to check out two of the smaller glacier lagoons nearby. Breiðárlón was so unimpressive that I’d suggest you could set up a similar attraction by throwing a few half-melted icecubes into a particularly muddy mud puddle.

Fjallsárlón on the other hand was quite cool. Still much muddier than Jökulsárlón, it had a lot of glacier chunks floating in it, and a calving glacier toe barely any distance away.