On top of the world!

So This particular weekend, Tonya and I decided to venture the Kananaskis area to hike again. Most people usually go to Banff and such around this time of the year, so those hikes can be a little packed. I also just received this book online, "where locals hike". It's an opinionated guide, and ranks the hikes on difficulties, time, and worthiness. My other traveller's book gives me hikes in Jasper, Banff and glacier national parks, but this new book is good because it gives me hikes on the Kananaskis and Canmore region.

So on this particular day wed decided to go to the Kananaskis Lakes to hike to Rawson Lake and the Serrail Ridge. We left at 8am, nice and early, and got there around 9 something. Not too bad, considering we got lost a few times.

Once we got to the lake, we geared up in our hiking gear. I actually got these new hikers from my friend's mother. Apparently they didn't help with her arthritis, so she passed them on to me. They are a little big, but man they have great grip. Also, they have a gortex coating which kept me dry when I stepped into the lake a few times.



So here we are at the Upper Kananaskis Lake. We start our climb! It gets a little steep, but it's still managable. As we gain in elevation, we start seeing a bit of snow. Today was a good day for hiking. Down at the bottom it was 20-25 degrees, clear sunshine. Once we got to the top, it was snowing. We were in about 2-3ft of snow! Luckily my shoes had amazing grip. I could've easily twisted my ankle several times. Tonya was smart, she had hiking poles to provide her with balance. Look I even made a snowman!








Once we got to the lakes, there weren't many places we could hike to without falling into a snowbank, into the water, or walking to a tree. We found a spot, sat down, and enjoyed our packed lunches. By this point I already had blisters on the back of my heel. Yeah...it was painful! She then gave me a thing to put on the back to prevent further blistering (note: that moleskin band-aid is a b*tch to pull off a punctured blister). We hiked back down and once we were at the bottom, we sat by the lake. There were a ton of people fishing.




We decide we didn't want to go back to calgary yet. It was still relatively early. Why not try one more hike? Nothing too long and nothing too hard. We looked through my book is found one that was only about 1-2 hours long. The book called this "Easy". This hike was named Ptarmigan Cirque. So, not knowing what a cirque is, we decided to go for it anyways.

This hike was located just off of Highwood Pass. At 2206m, this is the highest road in elevation in Canada. Once we got there, we read the sign for the trail head: "Ptarmigan Cirque is a 1-2 hour strenuous hike...". Say what? We looked at each other...do we want to do this? Why not... let's just see where it takes us.

This trail leads straight into a forest. On a warmer August's day, it may have been easier to spot the trail and signs to follow, but at this time of the year, all we could go off of was foot prints. Some which forked off and lead to no where. I'm pretty sure people walked those and turned back creating all these dead ends. We met a family there while hiking. We decided it was safer for us 2 girls to walk with them. They kind-of seemed to know where they were going.




Eventually we found a "path" and tried to follow it until it, again, was snow covered. We got far enough to the top to see the cirque. (A cirque: A half-open steep-sided hollow at the head of a valley or on a mountainside, formed by glacial erosion; I didn't know what it was at the time). We saw a part of snow melting creating this little glacier river flow. I guess that was the run off that formed the creek near the base of the road.






While we were up there it was quite the blizzard. We started to turn back. We didn't make it all the way to the cirque, but considering we were expecting an easy hike and got about 90% there, I'm quite proud of ourselves. Final Elevation gain: 2206m + 230m = 2436m. Now that's being on top of the world!

I was exhausted by the time we got to the bottom of the mountain.

Final thought: Cover those heels with duct tape. It's prevent the formation of blisters.