Looking west from South Baldy, Kananskis Country

Looking west from South Baldy, Kananskis Country

Sunday 18 September 2011

Quirk Creek / Wildhorse MTB

Again, we were too late leaving Calgary.....so we hit the trail in the middle of the afternoon, and paid for it with a snowstorm up on the final pass. The riding was great, but we did get a bit lost for a while up in the McClean Creek OHV area. The benefit of that was riding some interesting trails usually used only by powered vehicles. Muddy, but fun. If you're doing this one it's important to know that at around 9.7 km, the right turn is grassed over now, and not immediately obvious, especially if there's a herd of cows lying on it......Turn right as soon as you've crossed the second creek, and the road will appear in 100 m or so. Because of that, and the arrival of heavy sleeting rain that soon turned to snow, we didn't make it to Threepoint Canyon, but that's OK. We'll do this ride again for sure. The trail climbs on double track for ~10 km, then the remaining riding is on single track (19 km of it), which sometimes disappears into the grass. The final 2 km descent on a packed dirt trail through the forest is not to be missed. You do have to ford a few branches of the Elbow River though.

Lou saw a grizzly just off the trail while descending, and there was an obvious territorial marker tree nearby with deep scratches on the trunk, so keep an eye out, and make noise. More photos here. By the time we got down the Banded Group were plastered with snow....winter is definitely on her way again, but the forecast for Thursday is 27C, so we're not done with the bikes just yet....

Sheep River Ride

This is a great double-track ride that allows you to get a good look at Gibraltar Mtn. It's only an hour or so from Calgary, and is pretty quiet. Take spare clothes, as you have to ford the river and its tributaries many times during the day.

The ride is about 40 km in length, lthough being an out-and-back you can turn at any point. We stopped shy of the Sheep Pass, because it was getting late in the day, but that would be the logical turnaround point. From there you'd have views of Cougar Mtn, the Banded Peak Group, Mt. Rae, and various others. Our turn-around at about 17 km still required fording 28 creeks/rivers, plus numerous sizeable muddy puddles.

The ride is described in Doug Eastcott's guide to the Canadian Rockies.

More photos here.