More Kananaskis Hiking

After Black Prince, our next day's hike was to Chester Lake and the adjacent Three Lakes valley, which, depending on the time of year, may have two to four lakes as you hike up to the head of the valley. An easy hike from the road, Chester is a favorite among families and fishermen. The bears also enjoy it in the springtime for the glacier lilies (they dig up the below-ground bits) and ground squirrels (ditto).

The link at the beginning of this post has a great aerial view of how you hop over a slight ridge to the Three Lakes Valley, and how it's all laid out. Here's a July 2008 view from near the top of the valley:

This upper valley is fertile ground for fossils -- corals and crinoids:

The next day was a big hike, Tent Ridge, directly across from Mount Engadine Lodge. We prefer the Tryst Lake route; see the lake in the lower right? You follow an unofficial but well-used trail to the lake, and then make your own way cross-country up the ridge to the saddle:

but it should be noted that Tryst Lake is a great destination in itself, with somewhat less arduous hiking available on the ridge south, rather than Tent Ridge:

Others take a route that starts out, near the Mount Shark helipad, in a maze of cross-country ski trails, and eventually climbs a scree slope:

It was a Saturday -- the first good-weather Saturday in July, in fact -- and we had company climbing from the saddle to the ridge. Two years earlier, we had gone to the old communications station on the south knob,

but this time we followed two hiking groups to the north height:

And the view for lunch was pretty darn good:

The next day was our final Kananaskis hike. After checking out of the lodge, we visited Karst Spring. The route to the Spring starts out on boring forest-road/cross-country-ski trails, but then you take a boardwalk across a marshy border of a small lake, where you can spot carnivorous butterwort plants, and then a hike up to the spring. There's a lot of limestone in the area (karst topography) with subterranean waters that burst out of the side of the mountain at this most dramatic spot (low-res video):