CR2012: Pocaterra Cirque and South Peak of Pocaterra Ridge

The next day, our first based at the Delta Lodge in Kananaskis Village, we hiked to Pocaterra Cirque and then climbed the south peak of Poctaterra Ridge. Last year I wrote about our hike to Pocaterra Cirque and partway up to Little Highwood Pass, so this post will focus more the new stuff in our jaunt up to 8,796 feet.

As this Gem Trek map shows, the route begins by weaving around a shoulder of Highwood Ridge, departing from a wide official interpretive trail.

Here is the first view looking up the valley towards the cirque, taken after having tramped through the woods.

The cirque is far back at the foot of the ridge. Today's goal is the top of the "hill"on the right, reached from the cirque. As you can see in the foreground, there are occasional avalanche fields and spring runoff gullies to cross. This terrain, kept clear of trees by the forces of nature, hosted wildflowers galore including these dwarf larkspur.

Spring was running two weeks late, and there were still a couple of snowfields across the trail.

Did I mention avalanches? We saw plenty of evidence of a harsher-than-usual winter, including the damage to these young trees at the end of an avalanche run. Some are bent and some are snapped.

One of our friends, the gray-crowned rosy finches, was hunting in a tiny patch of snow.

There is a brief level meadow where you can walk easily. This photo looks back from it.

The trail left the meadow and began to wind through rocks and across a small stream. There we encountered a mama ptarmigan,

who was calling out to her youngsters exploring the banks of the creek.

As long as we made no sudden moves she continued to stay out in plain view, on guard.

We reached the point where the trail for the south peak split off from the trail to Little Highwood Pass. The route to the pass, which we had taken last year and along which we had seen ptarmigans and pikas, was buried in snow. We crunched across the snow to the south peak trail.

The next few pictures are out of order, in the sense that I took them while descending rather than while hiking up. It's a steep climb, and one that led us to resolve to bring two trekking poles next year, for better balance and to enable us to use both arms as well as both legs. From the time stamps on the photos, it took us about an hour to climb the "hill."

At first the peak trail skirts the edge of the ridge, perched on a narrow strip of ground hung between the tangled woods of the hill and the valley of the pass below. Here is the first photo after we finally broke out of the trees. At this point the trail may disappear occasionally, but you still know the general direction. Higher up, you can't miss it.

I tried to not guess how far away the top was; psychologically I find it better not to tell myself "We're almost there," because it's often a false hope, an illusion caused by staring up from below.

For a while there is vegetation, but as the trail steepens there is less and less, making the footing less secure.

You might spot some figures on the trail ahead (click to enlarge). As I said, these pictures are really in reverse chronological order, having been taken going down. We had the advantage of an early start, and the many day-hikers from Calgary face a two-hour (or so) drive to the trailhead. We were the first to the top today!

Getting closer to the top ... but by no means there yet.

Zooming in on some of our fellow hikers, perhaps you can see how steep this trail can be.

Getting to the first bump doesn't get you all the way to the top. Where is the top, anyway? Are you sure?

Almost there now. Don't step on the trailside flowers in your oxygen-deprived state.

The top has two bumps. I took a picture of the south bump from the north. 8,796'. In solitude we took a half-lunch here.

Now for some pictures of the landscape below, taken from the peak and using the zoom of my camera. First, the parking area at Highwood Pass.

The meadow of the cirque.

The view over to Grizzly Col. Note the path in the center, and the keyhole in the upper right. With binoculars we saw the shapes of a large clan of mountain sheep to the left of the Col. Perhaps some other year we'll tackle Grizzly Col.

And the view to Elbow Lake, center, just a smudge peeking over the edge of the near ridge, and then up into the valley network beyond. In two days we would take this route up to Rae Lake.

Finally ... the video! A pan around from the peak.

360° View from highest (south) peak of Pocaterra Ridge from Ben Branch on Vimeo.

Then we went down, down, and down. At the foot of the hill and the edge of the cirque there is a boulder field, where we took the second half of our lunch.

Just before we reached the pond we were passed by some of the young and acclimated Calgarians who had been on their way up as we had been on our way down. Well, after all, we had stopped for the half-lunch and chatted with other hikers.

We encountered this photographer, who was enamored of all the wildflowers.

On arriving at the parking area we were almost giddy. We had successfully tackled the south peak of Pocaterra Ridge, and felt that we were finally getting in shape.

CR2011: Pocaterra Cirque and Mount Engadine Lodge

The next day was a transit day between Canmore and Mount Engadine Lodge. These places are less than an hour apart, but we took the long way around and hiked through Pocaterra Cirque and partway to Little Highwood Pass.

The trail to Pocaterra Cirque starts at the parking area for Highwood Pass, 7238'. The more popular Ptarmigan Cirque trail, which we have traversed several times, most recently in 2009, is just across the highway. For Pocaterra Cirque, start on the interpretive loop trail and then follow a small path, but avoid tramping down the middle of the sensitive Highwood Meadows. After crossing the Meadows, the path begins to climb and split and intertwine; the ground has boggy patches much of the time, and hikers have gone different ways to avoid wet patches. The trail comes together again before you cross the shoulder of a ridge, leave the denser pine forest, and see the Pocaterra Cirque ahead.

Please note that this text is descriptive and not meant as a guide. One excellent hiking companion is Kathy and Craig Copeland's book, Where Locals Hike in the Canadian Rockies.

In the next photo, the trail is heading onward on the far left. The cirque is nestled below the barren high ridgeline on the left, while the greener mountain in the center is the start of Pocaterra Ridge. The valley to the right of the ridge goes down to the highway. One scenic hike is to climb to the top of Pocaterra Ridge and follow it north, up and down intermediate peaks, until the trail mutates from "unmaintained" to "suggested route" and you pick your way a final 2 km down the ridge and through the woods to the road. Our GemTrek map -- and I cannot praise these maps enough, they are the gold standard for hiking maps, and the waterproof ones are worth every penny -- has the notation "Enjoy bushwhacking here!". We did not intend to do this.

A while later on the trail, there is a meadow split by Pocaterra Creek as it runs down from the cirque. This picture looks back the way we had come.

Passing by a side trail up to Grizzy Col (8550'), we arrived at the cirque, and chose to go up towards Little Highwood Pass, rather than climbing directly up the side of the ridge. Here is the view from shortly after making that decision, looking back down to Highwood Pass. If you click on the photo to enlarge it, you might see the direct trail climbing out of the creek bed.

The vegetation vanished as we walked up the draw towards the pass. Widely scattered snowbanks still persisted up here, at about 8000', despite the intense sunlight.

And then, although we were at Pocaterra Cirque, not Ptarmigan Cirque, Joan almost stepped on a ptarmigan. This is not a colorful turn of speech, for she almost stepped on the ptarmigan. She did not spook or startle (the ptarmigan, that is. Joan, however, was quite surprised).

She called out to her babies, telling them to stay still where they were, partially hidden and protected by the rocks.

This pika paused in his foraging to observe the tableau.

We lunched short of the pass, which is at 8348'. We considered this a good escalation of altitude -- our Grotto Canyon walk reached perhaps 5400', and the Barrier Lake Fire Lookout hike the next day reached 6600'. Reaching 8000' was a good workout for a pair from Ohio. In some other year we plan to climb to the top of that ridge and float in the view.

Coming down, we encountered ptarmigan again. Some were the ones we had seen before, but there was one youngster who had stubby wings and a lot of baby down.

Then we made our way back down to Highwood Pass, and drove to Mount Engadine Lodge. We have stayed at this lodge,  an excellent base of operations for exploring the Kananaskis Country, several times before, as I wrote about here and here.

One important factor in choosing hikes out of Engadine at this time (end of August 2011) was the prescribed burns in the area, ignited an attempt to limit the damage caused by pine beetles. The lodge itself was close to the Buller Pass and Rummel Lake burns:

The map comes from the Government of Alberta website linked to by "prescribed burns" above. You can see how close the lodge is!

The fire professionals had prepared the lodge and cabins against any blowing sparks. In need, a pump would bring water up from the creek, and sprinklers were on the roof of each building. You would be right to expect me to have pictures of this, after two years of blogging, and you will be right to be disappointed that I did not. However, there is this picture of the lodge in the late evening:

I was out in the driveway to see if I could get a decent picture of the fire. It was not the wall of flame that you might expect, particularly because it was towards the end of the operation. Occasionally a tree would ignite and flare up like a piece of paper, burning brightly for a moment or two and then guttering out. The fire, perhaps not as hot as an uncontrolled burn, seemed to strip the trees of leaves, needles, and small branches, but not consume them entirely. (There is one photo of this in the middle of this blog entry I found on the web.) Here is my best picture of one of the candle trees.

Another factor was bears. The always-popular Chester Lake trail was closed due to bear activity. Just across the road from the Chester Lake trailhead parking is the Burstall Pass trailhead parking, as can be seen at the bottom of the burn map, and that's where we were going the next day. With our bear spray, as always.

Burstall Pass, to which we had been only once before, years ago, was our "must do" destination for this segment of our trip. We had three days of training behind us, and the weather forecast for tomorrow was good.