The Head's Not Dead

Fall in Calgary means snow anytime with the odd day of summer thrown in. Thursday night was a wicked storm that put 15-20 cm of snow down in the Foothills and Canmore. This usually means the end of hiking (or at least the good hikes). But it cleared Saturday and was sunny; Sunday called for a high of 18 and sunny, too, and that sun and temperature at this time of year melts snow pretty fast on the lower elevations. Fearing at least snow covered trails, we decided to hike one of our favourite bush-bashing hikes, up the North Fork trail to climb a mountain that some call Mesa Butte (a name in use for at least 3 mountains and a campground in the immediate vicinity), others call the Big Hill (for a road that goes up it's side), or our favourite, Death's Head. It's a nice mountain, only 1,720 m at the top, and the hike takes about an hour or so and only climbs 350 m.

Fall hiking is frequently an exercise in trail finding. Trails in the forest become a carpet of gold.



Fortunately, this trail is heavily used by horseback riders and cows. Yes, cows. At this time of year, cows roaming in the grazing areas all come down to low meadows, and there were cows everywhere, just like last week on Windy Point.






In any case, the trail skirts meadows/pastures as it rises up the mountainside, with really nice panoramic views of the Ware Creek Valley.



The North Fork trail isn't all that interesting, so at the peak what you do is turn up the mountain and bush-bash your way up to the summit, another 120 m above the trail. You have to zig zag up through the aspens, which are pretty thick, actually.



I usually follow game trails when I'm doing this, but game seems to go across mountains, not straight up them. Worse, at the top is a small band of sandstone you need to find an OK crack in to work up the last 5 m. At the top are good game trails leading along the ridge.

The view at the end is what you go for. it's a 300° panorama which goes (from right to left in the photo below) from the City in the east, past Square Butte, the Threepoint Creek Valley & Maclean Creek OHV area, to Moose Mountain, Powderface Ridge, Nihahi Ridge, Forgetmenot Ridge, Allsmoke Mountain (the big one that's all trees), then to Mts. Glasgow, Cornwall and the Highwood Range.



Now here's some details. Square Butte with the City in the background...


...the City...


...Nihahi with snow on Powderface...


... and the Highwood Range, with Mt. Glasow (I think) on the right.


It wasn't a great day for wildlife other than cows, at least not live stuff. We found a part of an antler and a bone...



...and a couple of red tails soared overhead...


...and we found a number of porcupine lunch stops...


...and the Old Man's Beard in the trees was very interesting.



Hiking season is nearly over, but at least that means ski season's about to start. This wasn't a bad hike to end the season. Not a bad one at all.