Bow Summit Lookout & Even More Pikas!

It's a long haul -- 90 min from the West Wing -- but we like to get up the Icefields Parkway to see terrain & scenery we don't normally get to see. Bow Summit Lookout is an easy, short trail that leads to great views up and down the valley and takes you to the actual headwaters of the Bow River. The downside is that the Peyto Lake viewpoint where the trail starts is wildly popular with the tourists, so is typically a zoo. The trail itself is nothing special; a fire road without the trees. But the views! Ah, the views! Up the valley past Peyto Lake to the Waterfowl Lakes...




...and down the valley over Bow Lake and to the Crowfoot Glacier.



It wasn't a great day for weather; 8° and a little windy. We got caught in a rain shower, which hid Peyto Glacier for a bit...



...but enhanced the waterfalls.



The glacier itself was never anything better than murky to view.



But while the other tourists were ogling the glacier and the lake, I was watching the marmots, big and fat, full of attitude, surveying and waddling around their territory.




And I was watching my favourites, the Pikas. These ones today -- and there were dozens -- were not as friendly as yesterday's. Hanging out near their middens caused them to stay away, so Pika watching was more challenging, and only one wanted to pose for me.



However, I did get into a staring contest with another. He seemed happy to let me get within 10', but one step closer and he bolted. And boy, do they run fast when they want to.



Now it's possible it wasn't me. Right at the last moment, his attention was diverted.



Damn, they're cute.

Headwall Lakes & More Pikas!

The centre section of the Spray Lakes Trail is a treasure trove of great hikes. On the west side of the valley, north to south, are Tent Ridge, Commonwealth Valley with it's access to lakes and the French Glacier, and the Burstall Valley. The east side, north to south, features the two Buller Passes, then Rummell, Chester, Headwall & James Walker Creek. Chester & Burstall are the best known and most popular, but the rest are really good, too.

Headwall was busy today because Chester is closed due to grizzly bear activity. Here's an example of bear activity in Headwall Lakes: one front paw print from a large black bear, laid down in the last 48 hours.



Fortunately, that and some old scat was the only evidence of bear we saw.

The Headwall Lakes trail doesn't have the most entertaining start; 5 km of pretty (and easily bikeable) logging road, infested with chipmunks & ground squirrels.




Suddenly, the trail just cuts up into the forest at an unmarked intersection. Soon, cool views of Mt. Chester appear.



The trail follows Headwall Creek into some willow infested meadows.



Then you cross some scree, climb a cliff...



...and actually, I was worried about going back down some of this, but it was easy.

The valley unfolds in a series of steps, some of which are cool limestone full of holes with water running underfoot.



You end up at two lakes, a lower lake in a spectacular setting...




...and an upper lake in a sea of rocks.



That's Fortress Mountain in the background, and from here, it looked like an OK scramble on lots of scree.

Seas of rocks attract my favourite critters, Pikas. We saw dozens. Some posed. All were harvesting grass.





We also came upon a herd of Bighorn rams. At first we thought there was only two, and old one and a younger one.




Turns out there were 7. The oldest guy led them in single file across the mountain face.



And to round out the animal show, an Osprey flew over, too.



So Headwall Lakes is right up there with Rummell Lake in quality & interest. Both beat Chester by a mile.

My GPS Sucks

A few years ago, as a safety precaution for my time on the trails, I bought a Garmin Vista Cx handheld GPS unit. I've lived with it for about 3 years now. Way back when in 2007 in this post I complained about the stupid user interface and functionality problems. Over time I have grown even more weary of the device. Last weekend on Tent Ridge, just when I needed it most to follow a track to get off the mountain, it got confused and "lost me". It does that a lot.

Here, for instance, is the track from this hike up to Rummell Lake.



According to this track log, the hike is over 90 km long, and I managed to climb Mt. Galatea, and bore a tunnel through The Tower to get to the other side of the peak. Here's a track from this hike up to Paget Lookout and Sherbrooke Lake.



This hike was just over 80 km long. I apparantly repeatedly crossed the TransCanada, and crossed the lake (people have always told me I walk on water, now I can prove it). My favourite part is that you can't actually tell where Paget Lookout is, and yet that's the most exposed part of the hike, where I sat & had lunch for an hour, and where the trail ended.

The tracks the Vista generates are useless. They can't be followed. They barely even suggest where the trail might be. Making critical, life saving decisions based on them -- or the positioning the unit says while standing in the bush -- is potentially deadly.

Because I realize that I hike in the mountains, and a GPS is only as good as the unit's ability to see sattelites, I understand that it might occasionally have it's locating challenges. But when I'm standing on the top of a mountain, you would think that the Vista would actually be able to see the best. You would be wrong. Look at the above messes as proof.

The crappy reception does not result from how I carry it. I carry it clipped to the top of the shoulder strap on my daypack. The only thing blocking it from the skyward view is my big fat head. I am aware and accept that if I put my pack down the wrong way, it gets lost. But by contrast, I am always puzzled that if I forget to turn it off, and I lock it in the trunk of my station wagon, it makes a perfect track home every time.

I bought a bike mount for it. The $25 bike mount Garmin sells for it (with Vista Cx clearly marked on the box) doesn't fit the unit. Do you need one? I wrecked the packaging and tossed my receipt so can't take it back. I'm not sure exactly what it fits.

I'm a Mac guy. Garmin and Mac barely speak. To get a topo map into the Vista, you have two options.

The first is to buy a Garmin topo map SD memory card and put it in the unit itself. Great, but you can do no route planning on the computer.

The second option is about as convoluted as you can get. First, you need to buy the MapSource maps on CD and a PC (yes, a different computer). Then you access the maps in MapSource on the PC, and create an export file. Then you use Garmin's Bobcat software to import the maps into the Mac (where you still can't see them) and export them to the Vista. This is assinine. If you have access to a PC to use MapSource, why not just connect the Vista to the PC and be done with it?

Recently, Garmin tried to make it better. Last month they released BaseCamp, which is software that allows you to use certain maps on the Mac. The maps you can use for Canada? Topo Canada V4. All $155 of it. Covers the whole country. Great for those weekend getaways to Iqaluit (actually, I think my Vista has mapped me there already) or Trois-Rivieres. At least BaseCamp is free.

So to make the Vista useful with my Mac, I run a little free program called LoadMyTracks. All this allows me to do is upload and download .GPX and .KML files. Fortunatly, my friends at MMHikes have their files in .GPX format. Occasionally, I find other tracks in .GDB or other formats so use a little free program called GPS Babel to convert to .GPX format.

In short, I think the Garmin Vista Cx verges on useless. If you're a PC person who lives on the bald flat prairies, maybe. But for me, it's deadweight, and misleading deadweight at that.

Tent Ridge Horseshoe -- Scrambling with Celebs

The Tent Ridge Horseshoe has been on my list of things to do for a while. Gillean Daffern says:

This is one of the most enjoyable ridgewalks you'll ever do

While I'm sure glad we did it, it's not a walk, folks. It's a hand over fist scramble in places. I quote the following from Wikipedia. This is the actual classification system that brought you the 5.0-5.10 rating system used in climbing:

Class 1: Walking with a low chance of injury.
Class 2: Simple scrambling, with the possibility of occasional use of the hands. Little potential danger is encountered.
Class 3: Scrambling with increased exposure. A rope can be carried but is usually not required. Falls are not always fatal.
Class 4: Simple climbing, with exposure. A rope is often used. Natural protection can be easily found. Falls may well be fatal.
Class 5: Technical free climbing involving rope, belaying, and other protection hardware for safety. Un-roped falls can result in severe injury or death.

Tent Ridge is Class 3 scrambling with sections of Class 4, driven by the difference between scrambling & climbing, and that "fatality of falls" issue.

It starts with a couple of kilometers of trail with more sections of deadfall than open trail. Winding up in cutblocks, it's getting seriously overgrown -- the source of the first of my cuts for the day.

Then you start the scramble, There's a trail-ish, or at least a path. Climbing it takes you straight into the blinding sun, so it's a bit a challenge at times to find the route. The eastern ascent ridge is best seen in this photo from the western ridge.



Within the first few minutes you reach the first challenge. Again, Gillean says this:

"Above is the first step. The steepest.... After this, the route unravels beautifully, long grassy promontories alternating with scrambly rock steps"

The second, third, fourth and fifth rock steps are as steep or steeper, and several are Class 4, as the route for the fall goes straight down severely pitched rock avalanche chutes. To give you a flavour of the challenge, here's some shots of KC on her way up.





The first summit you reach has a very attractive bright red communications repeater on it.



The views from the first peak are pretty fine, to the east of Mt. Engadine, the Tower and Galatea...



...to the south, Mt Commonwealth, Pig's Tail, Mt. Birdwood, Mt. Sir Douglas & the Robertson Glacier, The Fist -- the list is long.



From this first peak, 660 m above the parking lot, you descend 100 m down a mild scree slope to a saddle. The Copelands in their book "Where the Locals Hike" would have you hike the valley straight up to this saddle. Think about that route for a moment. Here's a shot from the saddle.



From the saddle you climb another 250 m to the high point of the day. This is steep but non technical.



At this point, having climbed 825 m, we sat. We watched two falcons (probably Perigrines) argue with a hawk (probably a Broad Tailed). We watched scramblers tackling The Fist.

And we were joined by Malgosia and Marcin, authors of M&M Hikes. Malgosia shoots fantastic picture, Marcin posts excellent GPS tracks of their hikes (one of which I was following today), and if you like hiking in the mountains, you need to visit their website, MMHikes (a link is also available at the top of my blog). We had a nice chat about the subjective nature of trail reviews. You can be the judge about my subjective reviews.

At this point, though tired, one has to realize that this is about the halfway point, and for a while, it doesn't get easier. Here's the west ridge.



There's occasionally a trail-ish footpath, but where there isn't, watch out. There's two nasty downclimbing sections (note KC in the extreme lower right hand corner for scale)...



...and several places where the ridge is a true knife edge, a bootwidth wide and 1,000' down in both directions on unstable sharp scree, and it's not until the last half kilometer or so that the ridge broadens out and gets grassy. The redeeming part are the pretty views of Watridge & Opal Lakes, Cone Mountain, Mt. Assiniboine, Spray Lake (including views up to and including West Wind Pass to Grotto Mountain) and Mt. Nestor, where they are burning out the pine beetles.






The route down from the end is just that: down. First, one heads straight down a steep face on slippery gravel. Then comes a hard right turn to cut diagonally down along below the face of the peak to a junction with a well worn trail heading across the face -- neither direction of which is actually the correct route. We tried following the GPS track, but couldn't figure it out as my useless GPS was "lost" and couldn't tell me where I was. The topo map wasn't much help, and Gillean's book was unclear ("it helps to be familiar with the regular route up Tent Ridge"). We cut north about 50 m from the trail intersection, and found a weak trail made by humans heading down, and followed it down the slope. It petered out, then in another 20 m and slightly to the right, we found another weak start of a trail that turned out to be the correct one, but amazingly did not match the GPS track. The led us right back to the car without any difficulty at all, and was actually a pretty good trail if very steep in some sections of the forest. I think they call it Gawby Gultch, but then again, who knows?

So are we glad we did this? Yes. But if you're considering it, understand the following: Hands are required. Falling would have dire consequences. There is exposure, and while not on a purely vertical cliff face, certainly on something where the steepness is severe. Routefinding at the start, in spots on the up and downclimb, and on the exit is quite challenging; a good GPS (not my piece of junk) and a good track to follow (say, one downloaded from MMHikes) verges on essential. Do it clockwise as recommended in Gillean's book, as counterclockwise would put the nastiest pitches into bad down-climbing territory.

Having done it now, I would not call Tent Ridge "one of the most enjoyable ridgewalks I've ever done". Quartz Ridge at Sunshine Meadows is far superior.

But the views are nice.

C Level Cirque & Pikas!

Looking for a short day with scenery, we decided to head up to C Level Cirque in Banff along with a whole lot of tourists. We have been on this trail a few times; the trail itself isn't that interesting, but some of the views are. Half way up there's a great viewpoint on the old coal mine tailings which features Lake Minnewanka & Mt. Inglismalde.



It was pretty hazy (I suspect due to distant forest fire smoke) so views up the Bow Valley were limited.



It's the time of the year for cool mushrooms, and here's a monster (probably 8" across) of a type I had never seen before.



There were also a few nice birds, including this Wilson's Warbler.



The cirque itself is dominated by one whole heck of a lot of rock that used to be up on the face of Cascade.



All these rocks are full of some of my favourite critters, including Golden Mantled Ground Squirrels...





...and the bestest of all, Pikas. Pikas rate a 15 on the 1-10 cuteness scale. From great faces, to cute little furry feet, to their rabbit-crossed-with-a-squirrel look, they are just great to see and to watch, and are without a doubt my favourie animal to see in the wild. This on was happy to let me take his picture while he had lunch.







In total, we probably saw 8-10 Pikas running around the rocks. A real treat.