Read's Tower

Last weekend Tom and I decided to attempt a hike we've been wanting to do for a while: Read's Tower/Sparrowhawk Tarns... but we only ended up doing the Read's Tower portion, so will have to go back to explore the Tarns.  Read's Tower loop is about 11 km round-trip with 1125 m of elevation gain.  It starts from the Sparrowhawk Tarns parking lot on the Spray Lakes Road, but quickly branches off for a slog up steep scree slopes.  We still managed to reach the summit of the Tower in about 1:45 of moving time, so a respectable pace.  We started losing some people when we got back down to the bottom of the saddle and informed them they had another scree slope to head up to get to the pass... from there it's a dryas meadow slope down to the Sparrowhawk Tarn trail.  Because it was getting late and some of us had enough we just took the pleasant rolling, well-packed dirt paths back to the trailhead rather than ascend into the tarns.

Read's Tower Hike profile

Tom on the ascent.  Read's Tower is the triangular feature on the right, Mt. Bogart to the left.

Tom above Spray Lakes.  It was a bit hazy out because there was a controlled burn going on just south of us along Buller Creek.

Xavier & Anka

Duncan & Breanna

There was a lot of scree on the way up to Read's Tower... we ended up cutting across to the far right or the slope (going up) where there was more exposed rock and vegetation, making for more stable footing.

The shutter-bug... snapping a photo of me setting up for the group shot.

The group shot

Panorama view from the top of Read's Tower... Spray Lakes in the centre, Mt. Bogart on the right, Buller Creek is the next cirque over the mountains to the left (where the fire was).

Read's Tower from the saddle between it and Mt. Bogart.

Having a bit of a rest in the saddle.  After coming down ~300 m of the Read's Tower there was another disheartening scree slope to ascend to get to the saddle... but well worth it because heading out on the Sparrowhawk Tarns side is much easier on the knees!

View of the Sparrowhawk Tarns side (Read's Tower centre, Mt. Bogart just to the right of it, Sparrowhawk Tarns is the valley in the centre, Mt. Sparrowhawk on the far right.  Exit out to the Spray Lakes Road is to the left of Read's Tower).

Galatea Lakes: revisited

A couple of weeks ago I managed to get out for a hike with Xavier and Anka.  I took them up to Galatea Lakes... Tom, Breanna and I did part of this hike last year - we went to Guinn's Pass and then as far as the first sighting of the Lower Galatea Lake.  This time I got to see both of the Galatea lakes!  It was a 17 km round-trip with about 580 m elevation gain.  I also had a quirky bit of luck on the way back down the trail... met up with friends Chad, Mandy, and their dog Duke at the outhouse at Lillian Lake.  Awesome day!

Lillian Lake

Lower Galatea Lake

Snowball Fight!

Upper Galatea Lake

Ridgeback - House of Pain - Sugar Momma - Strange Brew Biking Trails

Tom and I have been wanted to try out some hidden trails in the Bragg Creek area for a while... they're not really official trails, just kind of raked in.  We managed to get around to it when he was home in June.  We left from the West Bragg parking lot, headed up the 2wd road to the top of Ridgeback, the flew down Ridgeback to the turn-off to House of Pain. House of Pain was a pretty sweet, whipping descent that really would have been hurting if we did it in the other direction! Once we got down we jumped the creek and then headed up the other side... by headed up, I mean primarily pushed our bikes up (check out that nasty profile!). Apparently this trail is kind of uni-directional, but that would be a brake burner for me to do the other way! From there we spun up the ridgeline, past the turn-off to Fullerton Loop and then down Strange Brew to Sun Dog. Super awesome ride! It would have taken us about 3 hours to complete except we stopped a bunch to do some trail assessment along Ridgeback.

Trail profile with names

Slogging up Sugar Momma

What the hell?!

Chilling at the top on the stone lounge chairs

View from the top of Sugar Momma

Mount Indefatigable: 2010

Still working on getting caught up on posting.  This was a hike from July 17 with Duncan, Steph, Breanna, and Andrea.  Even though it was relatively late in the season we weren't sure what conditions were going to be like since there were still reports of snow in the mountains... so I decided to march everyone up one of my favourites: Mt. Indefatigable (aka Fatty).  It's about 920 m elevation gain, 7.6 km round-trip (see previous trip here: http://bekham.blogspot.com/2009_06_01_archive.html).  This time there was less snow so we got to explore further, but we still opted not to take the ridge-top back down - although we there was still enough snow to boot-ski part way down!

Upper Kananaskis Lake was beautiful and I couldn't help taking a few pans of it on the way up.

View of the Goat Ranges and Upper Kananaskis Lake

Cirque below Mt. Indefatigable

Panorama from the Mt. Fatty outlier

View from up the slope of Mt. Fatty, down towards teh saddle and the northern outlier

Mt. Lady Macdonald: Winter Version

Tom and I have done this hike before back in November 2008 (http://bekham.blogspot.com/2008/11/mt-lady-macdonald.html), but since it's 6.6km round-trip with 917 m elevation gain it seemed like a good one to do back in March when Duncan and I were helping Breanna get ready for Nepal.

Canmore: I can't remember if Duncan was throwing snowballs or fending them off here...

This one had a cool ending... just as we got back to the parking lot there were cheers all through town! ... might have had something to do with Canada winning hockey Olympic Gold though!

Prairie View Trail

Way back in mid-March Breanna, Tom, Uma, and I decided to get an early start on the hiking season and head up Prairie View Trail from the Barrier Lake parking lot. This trail is only ~ 5km round-trip and ~500 m elevation gain - so a good starter! The wind blowing of Barrier Lake was pretty frigid, but fortunately only lasted until we made it across the dam and into the trees.

Keep in mind this is an over-due post and back in March there was still a bit of snow on the ground.... but not as much as May this year!

Tom's beard hadn't fully recovered at this point either...View from near the top of Prairie View (we still wandered up to the top of the rocks on the right... the web-site is just being difficult and not letting me load the pic I took up there).

I just liked this picture of B...

Leseur Ridge

Last weekend we attempted to go out for another snowshoe... but really not that much snow in or around Calgary. We took at stab at a new location for us in Ghost Valley, north of Morley. Leseur Ridge was about 8.2 km round trip with 290 m of elevation gain (although lots of little ups and downs on the way. This time we had Duncan & Steph with us as well as the usual suspects of me, Tom & Breanna. We opted to leave Uma at home because the car was packed and we were worried it was going to be chilly there again like the last snowshoe... although it ended up being a gorgeous day and she would have loved it! ... still a bit steep for Kali's elbow though.

We had about 10 minutes worth of snowshoeable snow... then gave up and stashed our snowshoes.

The trail was muddy in places, but overall well-drained. Beautiful hiking conditions! There were a few snowy patches still, especially in the trees...

Great views from along the ridge... looking towards Devil's Gap (I hear it's an awesome hike and will probably be on the books for this summer!).

70 Buck Loop

I'm a bit behind in my blogging, but thought I'd share a few photos. A bunch of us went snowshoeing back on Jan. 9 (the day before I had to head to Houston for 3 weeks of training). We chose 70 Buck Loop, one of the more obscure trails in upper Kananaskis. We were fortunate to have enough snow and got to break fresh trail the whole way! I forgot to save the track, but it was relatively easy. Here's Tom, Uma, Breanna, and James and the trailhead.

The snow was pretty bare towards the top of the ridge... and it was windy up there too.

Kind of lost the trail at this point... and Uma was starting to shiver and cry.

I bundled here up in my wind breaker and down vest to warm her up (I took this shot after we headed back down, not while she was freezing at the top!). She warmed pretty quickly once we got out of the wind and moving again.

Even though we didn't quite get over the top of the ridge it was still pretty scenic. The hill directly ahead is Eagle Hill (biked in previous blogs).