This was an intense hike with a steep learning curve! (haha see what I did there? ) This place was a lot easier to find than I thought it would be, thank goodness! Basically head down Hwy 66 until you come to winter closure gates. When the gates are closed you can park on the side of the road, with several trailhead options right beside the road. They all meet up to the main trail so we took the one past the gates. It's pretty much like hiking Vancouver's Grouse Mountain - a ~700m gain thigh-burning grind of a ~3km climb straight to the summit! And being that we live in Alberta, I tend to forget mountains have an entirely separate agenda when it comes to weather, regardless of what season it currently is on ground level lol. It was spitting rain when we started our hike about 9:30am, which slowly turned to sleet after 20-30 minutes up the trail, until finally snowing a little further up Thank god I had a random poncho hiding in my car, because I was ill-prepared for snow! With leftover winter still gripping the mountains, it was a little difficult without spikes for traversing the snowy bits, but I managed with great trail runners haha. As we got past the tree line towards the summit, it turned into a complete whiteout of hard snow/sleet pelting against our faces! The flagpole at the top still stands though, with the little thrashing about in the strong winds! It's a great view from up there, as you can see from the pictures lol. I must say the way back down was ridiculous fun, sliding down snow, bouncing between trees for braking and running down the mud! I am definitely coming back to actually see the majestic valley view without snow! read more

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