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....
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