Hell's Ridge North looked like a good candidate for a 'shoulder season' hike. It's in the Mike Potter guide "Ridgewalks in the Canadian Rockies". In truth, it was an absolute git of a day out, with admittedly interesting views not quite making up for slogging through deep wet snow for several hours. It was our first outing using this guide, and initial observations are that the facts are not very exact. This isn't really helped by the Gem Treks sheet for the area. which contains errors in distances that attack your confidence right at the end of the route, as the daylight begins to fade, and you don't recognise the large animal tracks in the snow that seem to get more frequent as you start to turn 180 degrees away from the point where you know you need to cross a creek that may or may not be a rushing meltwater torrent.
Still, it all worked out in the end, and although the stark statistic of 8 km hiking in 7 hours looks bad on paper, my legs were killing afterwards, so all that high-stepping and step-kicking must have been to some effect. And by now I've finally got all the pine needles out of my underwear....
Full photo set for this hike
No comments:
Post a Comment