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Showing posts from November, 2020

Bluerock Trail, Gorge Creek, India's Oil Trail and Bluerock's Knob

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  Great adventure before the road is closed for the season.. This is the third Sunday we are in the Sheep River Provincial Park running trails and bushwacking. Pete, Ken and I started a bit later this time.. around 9:00 we were running and done by 3:00 (28 kms with 1,500mts of elevation gain). The first 11 kms were fine, up but with a good pace. After that and after enjoin a nice view of Bluerock we had to do a bit of a traverse and bushwack for the next 10k or so..

Junction Mountain Fire Lookout, Sheep River near Bluerock

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With an alpine start of 6.30AM and low temperatures of -30c we headed out to summit the Junction Mountain Fire Lookout. With an overnight of more than 30cm of snow, it was a real challenge to keep our feet warm. The summit was at around 13km, mostly uphill from the parking lot. We were following some Cougar's foot prints for quite a while after km 5, but eventually stopped seen them.  The temperature went up during the day, but the fact that our feet were burred under the snow for nearly 6 hours didn't allowed the sun to warm them up. We made it to the summit in around 3:17:00 (close to 800mts of gain), and I thought that going downhill was going to be easier.. but, it was still difficult when the snow is so deep. Last 4 kms seem interminable... it was a drag all the way until I called it and said fuck it ! I am walking and the death march started... I was exhausted, poor footing, frozen toes, dehydrated, and wit aches and pains everywhere due to the deep snow. After that, we a...

Volcano's Ridge, Prospector's Ridge and Mount Ware

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 Another crazy adventure in the Sheep River Provincial Park near Turner Valley with Ken and Pete. We run/hike a loop counter clockwise to have the wind in our backs half way through, with the first objective been Volcano's Ridge where the wind was blowing at 100k-p-h or more. Temperature was all day at around -15c with with a 1,086 meter of elevation gained during the day we managed to stay warm. Second objective was Prospector's Ridge (on the map as Surveyor's Ridge). After a serious bushwhacking and stumbling on an outfitters winter camp we were able to conquer that second summit.  Third objective was Mount Ware (the most scrambled pick we did during the day), rocky, steep and windy ! Beautiful ridge walk despite low visibility. From there, we started to head down, more route finding and relying on GAIA App as GPS option of the day.    Bushwhack that wasn't that bad Carin at Mount Ware Ridge Walk at Mount Ware Surveyor's Ridge First Summit of three that day False ...