Hiking Back Home: Powderface Outlier

It was stinking hot last weekend, and we deliberately planned to get out to our own mountains for a hike. The hope was we could avoid the 33° in the city. We did, almost. We opted to head to Powderface Ridge, but it was so hot, KC felt a little unwell part way up. Instead, we bush-bashed our way to an outlier on the north end of the ridge. This had the effect of shortening our hike by 45 minutes, and avoiding the crowds, as we were able to could 35 people on the trail we were planning to hike.

Part way up the Powderface Trail itself, you angle into a shaded forest, then emerge on a small saddle, with the Ridge on your left, the outlier on your right, and this view straight ahead.



At this point, you turn right onto a grass slope, and zig zag your way up. There's a rock band up top that's easily mastered. Once on top, this view awaits:



To your left is Powderface, to your right, Nihahi, in front, Outlaw, Banded Peak, Mt Cornwall and Glasgow.



In fact, it's a 360°, with views up to Yamnuska, Jumpingpound Ridge, Moose Mountain Prairie View Mountain and downtown Calgary.

You can wander a fair ways south and down the ridge, but the key word is "down", and the only way out isn't down. At least not down this way. But it's pretty...



There was a nice breeze at the top, with a bunch of ridge soaring gulls (gulls? weird...). But it was still 27°, so we didn't really escape the heat that much.