Sunday, August 21, 2005
Moose Mountain
Thanks for suggesting this one, Nony.
This was not exactly last minute, as I had planned to hike Moose Mountain yesterday. But a gathering with friends in Priddis Friday night turned into a sleep over, as the wine bottles piled up (well, only three), so I delayed a day. And as it turned out, that was a good thing, as I'll mention later. Even so, I didn't get up and going as early as I would have liked, but that wasn't all that bad a thing, either. But I was at the trailhead at 8:00.
The path is an old road, either logging or for well access. The area is riddled with gas wells, being on top of a huge gas reserve. It's an hour or so stroll through forest, with lots of chattering squirrels and the odd small meadow full of wildflowers. And then you get a glimpse of the target through the trees.
The peak on the right is actually a little in the foreground, and it's the first climb. On the left is the actual summit, with the fire lookout.
Getting close to the treeline, there is a large open meadow, that goes from the top of the ridge downslope for maybe three hundred metres. It's the first really open area that you come upon.
And you get a good view of the first peak with the switchback path going up.
There is actually a path that goes straight up the middle, which is the one I took. It's a little steeper but much quicker.
Once out of the trees, the view improves quickly. This is looking back at the first meadow.
In the background are a couple of unidentified lakes. Left is a straight line of lighter green in the darker green. That's the Bragg Creek Road, and the patch of lighter green that it ends at farthest out is Bragg Creek itself. On the right, you can see parts of highway 68, the Elbow Falls Trail, which is how I got out here. And past Bragg Creek, not quite on the horizon, are the towers of downtown Calgary, which are totally invisible in this picture.
Once the first peak is crested, the goal comes into view
The ridge is on the east side of the peak, and the north east face is pretty formidible, being nothing but wicked looking cliffs. The path itself becomes fairly steep, but not overly so, certainly not like what I was on at Ptarmigan Cirque a few weeks ago.
Walking that ridge is hard, not for the climb or the terrain, but for the views on either side that pull your attention away from the loose rock. To the south is a ridge across a canyon that looks very accessible.
And it turns out that it is.
Climbing the last steep part up and left as it curls around the peak, I looked back and saw someone just smokin' up the path. And she caught up to me just as I got to the helicopter pad at the lookout. She was the only one up there aside from a couple of guys that were ahead of me from the parking lot, and who were just about to start down when we got there. So we chatted and signed the guest book that's kept in a tin mailbox by the lookout.
Being early on these excursions has its benefits. As I was finishing my entry in the the guest book, the gentleman manning the lookout stepped out and said good morning. We chatted for a bit, and I said that I was extremely impressed with his back yard. And then he invited us to come up and have a look around. The girl who caught up to me at the helicopter pad was Michelle, and Joe was our host, along with his wife Dale. (and I hope I got those names right, cuz I'm awful, simply awful, at remembering names).
He said we had picked the right day to come up. He said they get two or three days a year when the sky is cloudless and the air is so clear you can see all the way to Saskatchewan, and today just happened to be one of those days. We stood on his wraparound deck while he pointed out the sights, and introduced us to the neighbours. Here's a picture of the neighbour kids being rambunctious.
They tend to be rather bold, so Dale has a spray bottle handy when they attempt to sneak in the door of their home, which they did several times while we were there. It's very rare the bottle is used, and all it took to shoo them away was a clap of the hands. But they kept coming back.
This is Joe pointing out the sights to the east to Michelle
Check out that ridge to the south behind them. And this is what he was pointing at.
Quite a view. Then he brought us inside to show us how he does his job, including showing us the sighting circle, and all the maps that he uses to pinpoint the location of a fire.
And most exciting, was an actual fire. While he was telling us which peaks were which, he spotted a fire to the east, what he called a smoke. This is the initial puff of smoke that comes when a fire starts. While Dale watched for more puffs of smoke with the binoculars, Joe took a sighting with the circle, and then hauled out all these maps and grids to locate it. It turned out to be on the edge of a new subdivision of Bragg Creek, outside of Alberta Forestry's jurisdiction, but he still has to report all such sightings, which he did by radio. It was very cool, not only to be shown all the stuff he used to do his job, but to also see him in action.
Later we stood on the deck and visited with the neighbours. Dale said they usually keep some unsalted peanuts for share with them, but Michelle had some cashews, so those were quite a treat.
We finally said goodbye, Michelle had to head back to the city right away, while I was ready to look around some more. Dale volunteered to take our pictures with our respective cameras, and posed us on the helicopter pad with Mt. Assiniboine in the backround.
Then I wandered down a path going to the north along a ridge to a lower peak. It was probably a kilometre and a half or so away. I didn't go too far along, just checking the path out. But I found a small memorial perched on the edge of a shear cliff, so I climbed down to check it out. It was in memory of a gentleman who used to live in Bragg Creek and was a frequent visitor to the area, and who died overseas.
A moving tribute and and impressive place.
I climbed back up to the lookout, intending to start down, and was met by Dale again who suggested that if I was looking for more hiking, that I should check out the ridge to the south. The southwest face of Moose Mountain turns out to be not terribly steep, which makes the ridge across the valley quite accessible. She also told me of a blast hole in the side of the mountain, likely due to lightning, that was an interesting feature to check out. I did spend some time walking down this slope a couple of hundred metres, and it was quite easy to climb down and back up, so I will for sure have to check it out sometime.
Then I headed back down to go home. It was a great hike down, and while the chill from the wind on the peak had me in my fleece, it got warm very quickly as I lost altitude. Traffic was also starting to pick up too, and I counted almost ninety people heading up while I was heading down. Joe said it was a very busy place on Sundays with this kind of weather.
They are special people and really blessed to be able to live in such a place. And because of what Dale shared about getting around to the neighbouring ridges, I will definitely be going back again. What an amazing morning!
This was not exactly last minute, as I had planned to hike Moose Mountain yesterday. But a gathering with friends in Priddis Friday night turned into a sleep over, as the wine bottles piled up (well, only three), so I delayed a day. And as it turned out, that was a good thing, as I'll mention later. Even so, I didn't get up and going as early as I would have liked, but that wasn't all that bad a thing, either. But I was at the trailhead at 8:00.
The path is an old road, either logging or for well access. The area is riddled with gas wells, being on top of a huge gas reserve. It's an hour or so stroll through forest, with lots of chattering squirrels and the odd small meadow full of wildflowers. And then you get a glimpse of the target through the trees.
The peak on the right is actually a little in the foreground, and it's the first climb. On the left is the actual summit, with the fire lookout.
Getting close to the treeline, there is a large open meadow, that goes from the top of the ridge downslope for maybe three hundred metres. It's the first really open area that you come upon.
And you get a good view of the first peak with the switchback path going up.
There is actually a path that goes straight up the middle, which is the one I took. It's a little steeper but much quicker.
Once out of the trees, the view improves quickly. This is looking back at the first meadow.
In the background are a couple of unidentified lakes. Left is a straight line of lighter green in the darker green. That's the Bragg Creek Road, and the patch of lighter green that it ends at farthest out is Bragg Creek itself. On the right, you can see parts of highway 68, the Elbow Falls Trail, which is how I got out here. And past Bragg Creek, not quite on the horizon, are the towers of downtown Calgary, which are totally invisible in this picture.
Once the first peak is crested, the goal comes into view
The ridge is on the east side of the peak, and the north east face is pretty formidible, being nothing but wicked looking cliffs. The path itself becomes fairly steep, but not overly so, certainly not like what I was on at Ptarmigan Cirque a few weeks ago.
Walking that ridge is hard, not for the climb or the terrain, but for the views on either side that pull your attention away from the loose rock. To the south is a ridge across a canyon that looks very accessible.
And it turns out that it is.
Climbing the last steep part up and left as it curls around the peak, I looked back and saw someone just smokin' up the path. And she caught up to me just as I got to the helicopter pad at the lookout. She was the only one up there aside from a couple of guys that were ahead of me from the parking lot, and who were just about to start down when we got there. So we chatted and signed the guest book that's kept in a tin mailbox by the lookout.
Being early on these excursions has its benefits. As I was finishing my entry in the the guest book, the gentleman manning the lookout stepped out and said good morning. We chatted for a bit, and I said that I was extremely impressed with his back yard. And then he invited us to come up and have a look around. The girl who caught up to me at the helicopter pad was Michelle, and Joe was our host, along with his wife Dale. (and I hope I got those names right, cuz I'm awful, simply awful, at remembering names).
He said we had picked the right day to come up. He said they get two or three days a year when the sky is cloudless and the air is so clear you can see all the way to Saskatchewan, and today just happened to be one of those days. We stood on his wraparound deck while he pointed out the sights, and introduced us to the neighbours. Here's a picture of the neighbour kids being rambunctious.
They tend to be rather bold, so Dale has a spray bottle handy when they attempt to sneak in the door of their home, which they did several times while we were there. It's very rare the bottle is used, and all it took to shoo them away was a clap of the hands. But they kept coming back.
This is Joe pointing out the sights to the east to Michelle
Check out that ridge to the south behind them. And this is what he was pointing at.
Quite a view. Then he brought us inside to show us how he does his job, including showing us the sighting circle, and all the maps that he uses to pinpoint the location of a fire.
And most exciting, was an actual fire. While he was telling us which peaks were which, he spotted a fire to the east, what he called a smoke. This is the initial puff of smoke that comes when a fire starts. While Dale watched for more puffs of smoke with the binoculars, Joe took a sighting with the circle, and then hauled out all these maps and grids to locate it. It turned out to be on the edge of a new subdivision of Bragg Creek, outside of Alberta Forestry's jurisdiction, but he still has to report all such sightings, which he did by radio. It was very cool, not only to be shown all the stuff he used to do his job, but to also see him in action.
Later we stood on the deck and visited with the neighbours. Dale said they usually keep some unsalted peanuts for share with them, but Michelle had some cashews, so those were quite a treat.
We finally said goodbye, Michelle had to head back to the city right away, while I was ready to look around some more. Dale volunteered to take our pictures with our respective cameras, and posed us on the helicopter pad with Mt. Assiniboine in the backround.
Then I wandered down a path going to the north along a ridge to a lower peak. It was probably a kilometre and a half or so away. I didn't go too far along, just checking the path out. But I found a small memorial perched on the edge of a shear cliff, so I climbed down to check it out. It was in memory of a gentleman who used to live in Bragg Creek and was a frequent visitor to the area, and who died overseas.
A moving tribute and and impressive place.
I climbed back up to the lookout, intending to start down, and was met by Dale again who suggested that if I was looking for more hiking, that I should check out the ridge to the south. The southwest face of Moose Mountain turns out to be not terribly steep, which makes the ridge across the valley quite accessible. She also told me of a blast hole in the side of the mountain, likely due to lightning, that was an interesting feature to check out. I did spend some time walking down this slope a couple of hundred metres, and it was quite easy to climb down and back up, so I will for sure have to check it out sometime.
Then I headed back down to go home. It was a great hike down, and while the chill from the wind on the peak had me in my fleece, it got warm very quickly as I lost altitude. Traffic was also starting to pick up too, and I counted almost ninety people heading up while I was heading down. Joe said it was a very busy place on Sundays with this kind of weather.
They are special people and really blessed to be able to live in such a place. And because of what Dale shared about getting around to the neighbouring ridges, I will definitely be going back again. What an amazing morning!
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Grotto Canyon
This is getting to be a habit, but I'm loving it. I was looking for another nice hike that would be fairly popular, so there would be people around. Nony suggested several, and one that stood out was Grotto Canyon. What a spectacular place!
I got there about 7:00, parking in in the lot by Grotto Mountain Pond, a lovely picnic area beside Highway 1A. Despite the forcast calling for a hot day, it was a tad chilly at the start. The path at the start is a cut line that follows the power line to the Baymag plant, an ore processing plant. I think the sign said it processed magnesium oxide. Noisy place, as what sounded like a truck load of rock was being dumped every few minutes.
But that was left behind fairly quickly at a dry creek bed that led into the trees and a gap in the rock. Not far in, it had narrowed quite a bit, and had picked up some running water, that trickled in and out of the rocks and gravel on the canyon floor.
What was really neat about the water, was how the sound of it changed. Every couple of steps it seemed like the sound was coming from a different direction, and the quality changed dramatically, too, from gurgling to babbling to sloshing to... and like that. I found myself taking a few steps, stopping to listen, taking a few steps, listening. Amazing.
The canyon suddenly stops at a rock wall, with water oozing from cracks in the rock and down the face.
If you look up, there are a few anchors left by rock climbers with various climbing things hanging from them. To the right is a short, and fairly steep path up to a waterfall, which is the source of the water that makes all those wonderful noises farther down the path. The path is on bare rock, worn smooth by who knows how many hikers climbing up there, and it's a little slippery.
The cave beside the waterfall is not quite big enough to stand in, and it only goes a few feet into the rock face, but it's dark in there, and hard to tell how deep it is, really.
There were a few ravens hanging around at this point, I took a couple of pictures but they didn't turn out well, as they were moving and the light levels were quite low at that time of the day. But here's an artsy shot of one flying across the canyon.
He's the small dark smudge in the centre of the, uh, big smudge.
But the quiet! Even these big birds made hardly any noise. There was a stillness in the place that was magical. I can see why the First Nations peoples considered this a spiritual place. Venturing past the wall with the climbing equipment, and continuing up the creek bed a couple of hundred metres, there is a sharp bend, and while the sound of the waterfall never quite disappears, the stillness is almost a physical thing. But it's not an eerie or spooky thing. I found it ... "comforting" is the only word that comes to mind. Neat!
And then a few more steps, the canyon widens out, and the effect is gone.
There are paths all through the trees along side the creek bed, but I mostly ended up going up the middle of the creek. The problem with the paths are the multitude of spider webs strung between every pair of trees. Bleah! So I clambered over the rocks and through the gravel.
The canyon stayed in shadow for quite awhile since I was there so early, but eventually the sun started to peek over the shoulder of the ridge on the right. I thought this tree looked kind of neat, backlit by the sun while the rest of the mountain side was still in shadow.
There are a couple of massive hoodoos, maybe a kilometre past the waterfall, one with huge cave in the side. These things reach several hundred feet up,
Check out the rock hanging from the side of the one ridge. It's probably the size of a small house.
After this, it was mainly scrambling up the creek bed over rock and gravel. At one point, where it turned rather sharply to the right, it narrowed a little, and the creek bed had this channel that criss-crossed back and forth between the rock faces. I imagine that's where the strongest current flowed when there was water coming down.
Eventually the canyon spread out again, and the bush started to close in a little. At the three hours mark, I decided to turn around and head back. Elevation 1784 m (5847 ft) The walk down went fairly quickly, and occasionally I would be accompanied by a chipmunk scurrying across the rocks. I played with the timer on my camera, so I could get into a couple of shots. This one was near the hoodoos.
I was back at the rock face with the climbing equipment at about 4 3/4 hours, and that was when I finally met other hikers. After that it got busy. Several people were coming up the canyon, and at one point there were rock climbers tackling a rock face that was about 30 metres high.
Back past the Baymag plant, and to a now full parking lot by the picnic area. The time was 5 hours and 25 minutes since I had started out. Then it was just a short drive down 1A to Canmore for a burger and a beer, and then home.
I got there about 7:00, parking in in the lot by Grotto Mountain Pond, a lovely picnic area beside Highway 1A. Despite the forcast calling for a hot day, it was a tad chilly at the start. The path at the start is a cut line that follows the power line to the Baymag plant, an ore processing plant. I think the sign said it processed magnesium oxide. Noisy place, as what sounded like a truck load of rock was being dumped every few minutes.
But that was left behind fairly quickly at a dry creek bed that led into the trees and a gap in the rock. Not far in, it had narrowed quite a bit, and had picked up some running water, that trickled in and out of the rocks and gravel on the canyon floor.
What was really neat about the water, was how the sound of it changed. Every couple of steps it seemed like the sound was coming from a different direction, and the quality changed dramatically, too, from gurgling to babbling to sloshing to... and like that. I found myself taking a few steps, stopping to listen, taking a few steps, listening. Amazing.
The canyon suddenly stops at a rock wall, with water oozing from cracks in the rock and down the face.
If you look up, there are a few anchors left by rock climbers with various climbing things hanging from them. To the right is a short, and fairly steep path up to a waterfall, which is the source of the water that makes all those wonderful noises farther down the path. The path is on bare rock, worn smooth by who knows how many hikers climbing up there, and it's a little slippery.
The cave beside the waterfall is not quite big enough to stand in, and it only goes a few feet into the rock face, but it's dark in there, and hard to tell how deep it is, really.
There were a few ravens hanging around at this point, I took a couple of pictures but they didn't turn out well, as they were moving and the light levels were quite low at that time of the day. But here's an artsy shot of one flying across the canyon.
He's the small dark smudge in the centre of the, uh, big smudge.
But the quiet! Even these big birds made hardly any noise. There was a stillness in the place that was magical. I can see why the First Nations peoples considered this a spiritual place. Venturing past the wall with the climbing equipment, and continuing up the creek bed a couple of hundred metres, there is a sharp bend, and while the sound of the waterfall never quite disappears, the stillness is almost a physical thing. But it's not an eerie or spooky thing. I found it ... "comforting" is the only word that comes to mind. Neat!
And then a few more steps, the canyon widens out, and the effect is gone.
There are paths all through the trees along side the creek bed, but I mostly ended up going up the middle of the creek. The problem with the paths are the multitude of spider webs strung between every pair of trees. Bleah! So I clambered over the rocks and through the gravel.
The canyon stayed in shadow for quite awhile since I was there so early, but eventually the sun started to peek over the shoulder of the ridge on the right. I thought this tree looked kind of neat, backlit by the sun while the rest of the mountain side was still in shadow.
There are a couple of massive hoodoos, maybe a kilometre past the waterfall, one with huge cave in the side. These things reach several hundred feet up,
Check out the rock hanging from the side of the one ridge. It's probably the size of a small house.
After this, it was mainly scrambling up the creek bed over rock and gravel. At one point, where it turned rather sharply to the right, it narrowed a little, and the creek bed had this channel that criss-crossed back and forth between the rock faces. I imagine that's where the strongest current flowed when there was water coming down.
Eventually the canyon spread out again, and the bush started to close in a little. At the three hours mark, I decided to turn around and head back. Elevation 1784 m (5847 ft) The walk down went fairly quickly, and occasionally I would be accompanied by a chipmunk scurrying across the rocks. I played with the timer on my camera, so I could get into a couple of shots. This one was near the hoodoos.
I was back at the rock face with the climbing equipment at about 4 3/4 hours, and that was when I finally met other hikers. After that it got busy. Several people were coming up the canyon, and at one point there were rock climbers tackling a rock face that was about 30 metres high.
Back past the Baymag plant, and to a now full parking lot by the picnic area. The time was 5 hours and 25 minutes since I had started out. Then it was just a short drive down 1A to Canmore for a burger and a beer, and then home.
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