Wasootch Ridge

Since it's no longer ski season, that must mean it's hiking season. With highs of 28° in Calgary, we decided to head for the hills. One of my best friends gave me a fantastic guidebook to the best hikes in Kananaskis; some were new to me, so for our first real hike of the season, we decided on Wasootch Ridge. The trailhead is only an hour from our house on Hwy 40 just outside Kananaskis Village. It looked like our kind of hike; close to home, to a great viewpoint, with the ability to hike as long as we wanted.

Okay, it also turns out to have several wickedly steep sections (especially at the start -- the first 30 min is worse than being on a stairmaster), the trail is in crappy shape (like walking on marbles), and it's almost always relentlessly uphill. We didn't make the entire length or height, but then we didn't plan to. The full hike is 8 km one way with 1,000 m height gain; we did a little less than half that in 90 minutes of hiking. But that got us home for cocktail hour...

This first photo is about as high as we got. Looking north to Mt. Lorette, the trail works its way up to the cliff at left centre, then hugs the edge affording great views up the Wasootch Creek valley below.



About 30 gruelling minutes up, you get to a nice flat lunch spot overlooking Nakiska. Note there is still lots of snow (mostly man made) on the hill, but tons on Centenial Ridge above it.



This next photo is looking up the east side of the ridge, with Porcupine Creek in the valley to the left. You can see that about 3 or 4 summits ahead, it breaks treeline. We didn't make it anywhere near that far. You can make the peak in the middle of the photo; it's about 500 vertical metres and 5 km from us at this point. We're too lazy for that, however.



Looking north from the "summit" we got to, in the photo below you can look up Hwy 40 and see the south end of Barrier Lake with Barrier Mountain rising above. Between the northeast outlier of Mt. Lorette (known as Mary Barclay's mountain) and Barrier through Jewel Pass, Yamnuska is visible. We thought about climbing Barrier today, but the reports said there was still snow in Jewel Pass.



This next photo is looking up the Wasootch Creek valley.



Here's proof we made it, at least made it as far as we did, up 500m from the parking lot.



Not a lot of wildlife on this trail, but we did run into a Golden Mantled Ground Squirrel guarding the entrance to his "burrow" in the rocks.



And finally, a panorama from the top, including the view from Wasootch Tower to Barrier Mountain.