HIKING

 Smutwood Peak 50° 48' N, 115° 24' W Quite possibly the craziest hike of the summer for Sam and I. After completing the fairly lengthy drive to the trailhead, we started our walk around 8:00am. The only other car when we got to the trailhead was a grey Toyota with a Yeti SB 160 loose in the back - kind of weird to just leave it there. The approach to Smutwood peak begins with around 4km of flat low level walking through lush forrest. Even so, the views are incredible and there is lots to keep your eyes busy. Around 2km into the hike there is a pretty incredible falls that we stopped at for some water and a slight breather. One of the reasons this hike is spectacular is due to the fact that during the approach and even on the ascent you are exposed to some of the most spectacular peaks in this region of the Rockies.  On the right side of the approach, The Fist and Mount Smuts can be seen, menacingly looking down at you. Straight ahead Mount Birdwood is visible, a constant remin...

  Wasootch Ridge 50.97° North, -115.09° West Having been in Montréal for the past four months, this was to be my first major hike back. I would be joined by my buddy Sam for the attempt at the summit. Whenever Sam and I get together to hike, it is never a dull day, and today would be no different. I've completed Wasootch once before and reached the summit and dropped off onto the backside and retreated via the creek bed. Although it was a viable option, the creek bed is quite difficult to get down to off the backside of the final peak of the ridge, so today the plan was to avoid it and retreat back down the ridge. If you complete the whole ridge and manage to reach the summit, Wasootch is around 15km and 1100m of elevation gain; not a wee day out! We started our push for the summit sometime around 8:30 after some pre hike fuelling at A & W.  Our route, stopping just before the high point Other stats from our walk The day shaped up to be a beauty, marked by low level cloud ...

  Windtower (2nd Time)  This has somewhat become a tradition for my buddy Sam (another different Sam, I'm not talking in the third person) and I (we completed our first summit last year on January 1st). This year we were joined by Sam's buddy Joe, making a trio for the second summit attempt. Last year proved to be quite difficult as were were quite unprepared and were not expecting the length we encountered. The day was shaping up to be a good one as the skies were clear and just as we arrived at the trailhead the sky was beginning to brighten. The car thermometer was reading negative fifteen degrees, but it actually felt pretty mild as it was still outside with little to no wind. Our ultimate push was the summit, but our mindset was to get there in the most fun way possible and we weren't against turning around if the conditions weren't favourable. Joe and I were armed with Microspikes and a Black Diamond Raven ice axe each, while Sam was equipped with dedicated Petzl ...

Tent Ridge Loop Leaving the house around 6:30 am would ensure an early start on the trail and hopefully mean that we would beat the crowds out there. Little did we know that we would not even have to worry about any crowds because we were the only ones doing the loop starting with the north end of the ridge and traversing to the south (people were not afraid to tell us that the normal way is the reverse of what we were doing). The north end of the ridge starts in the trees and pretty quickly exits them on the way to the ridge. I think that the frigid sub zero temperatures at the start must have put pops and I into a zone because before we knew it we were on the ridge portion of the hike. This was my favorite part of the hike given the fact that you could still enjoy the views whilst being in the high alpine. The ridge on the north end leads up to a peak (the highest point on the hike) before going back down to a col and back up to a peak before finally going down for good. The beginnin...

 Banded Peak IT IS FINALLY DONE. I don't know how long I have been talking about this hike but I am sure it has been almost two years that we have been talking about it. One of the four major peaks in Elbow, Banded is something that my family and I have wanted to do for quite some time. The crew for today consisted of my brother Ben, Dad and Mom. The plan was set - we were going to use E-Bikes from Ben's work for the approach, stash and lock them and then do the actual hike. Anyone who hikes Banded from the Big Elbow parking lot has my full respect; just to the trailhead of Banded is 14.5 km. We ended up leaving the car around ten, after picking up the bikes and getting everything ready. For anyone not familiar with E-Bikes, they have 3 modes: eco, trail and boost. Given that we would only be doing 28 km total of biking we could use them in the boost mode the whole time (and thank god we could). It makes a big difference to be able to do this. The bike in itself is not hard, bu...

 Mount Ware A late start for Dad and I today meant that we would need to plan something fairly quick; we landed on Ware. Having done little Ware earlier in the month, Dad had a pretty decent idea of what to expect from Ware. We opted to complete the first 5km or so on bikes as it is fairly flat and that would cut down on time. Arriving to the trailhead sometime around 12pm we unloaded our bikes and got started. The portion of the trail we biked was fairly mellow, but do not be fooled into thinking it will not put you out of breath. The trail is pine covered double track that has a creek running parallel to it the whole time we followed it. It was quite evident the trail see's fairly regular use by horses, which made it slightly less enjoyable for dad and I. About 5km into the trail, after a brief mishap that led to an unnecessary creek crossing, we stashed the bikes in the forest and started the hiking portion of the day. The majority of the portion we hiked was trail that runs thr...