August 30th Grotto Creek Canyon trail

Still at Spring Hill /Cochrane…….the search for a hike took us a little further afield , still in Alberta just slightly south of Canmore.

Grotto Canyon Trail …..be warned ..there are going to be a lot of pictures on this one…..

The area around Calgary itself is relatively flat (for anyone that has not been there..) which gives you this fantastic vista of the mountains as far as you can see to the north west…and to the southwest…..so as you drive west towards the mountains all you see in front of you is this spectacular landscape….

……..and sometimes the view behind can be quite interesting……we almost ran in to these loose horses…..

Grotto Canyon Trail

Starting out on the walk…..from a very busy parking lot…..we downloaded our Alberta Park pass for the day and set out with diminishing hope for the walk. There were so many cars and people in the parking lot, and the beginning of the trail was wide, smooth and followed the power line. Many people in sandals…….not a sign of a good hike…..!!!!

Once you get to the bottom of the canyon it gets a bit more interesting….

According to the reviews…most people walk up to the waterfall and then turn around….and indeed it is a very pretty walk. Before you get to the waterfall there are even some pictographs on the canyon wall.

The further we went up …the higher the rock walls became…and then…..there were fleets of young things scaling the rock faces…….fabulous climbs….if you like that sort of thing…!!!!…and you could see lots and lots of pitons driven in to a lot of the walls as we proceeded.

There is a corner you turn (as you climb ) that leads you into the inukshuk garden. Its a rock field where everyone seems compelled to build little figure with piles of rocks…..its strange moment of…actually a bit impressive to see so many ranging across the canyon…to a little bit creepy with all these little people-like things surrounding you…!!!

…and every corner we turned made the next one a little more compelling…as the view of the mountains behind just got better and better. It was a perfect day, low 20’s, no humidity, no bugs…..

Eventually we had to stop….as we decided we still had to get back down safely…and too tired legs might not do that too well…!!!!

So…..back down we go……..and just to illustrate how unprepared people are for this typ of hike…….not only were there people out on the early part of this walk with sandals…….but just below the waterfall we met a family with a weiner dog……three inch legs battling this rocky terrain……..Sometimes you just can’t acount for folk…!!!!

Al trails failed us a little in the middle of this hike and paused recording through part of it……Scotts phone measured us at about 9.5 km…..this was my favourite hike so far…we will see what the editor has to add…!!! Editors note. Fabulous place, we had the bulk of the walk to ourselves and around every corner a new vista, was difficult to turn around …. last corner…ok after this one we’ll head back.

Next trip….we have to go home and pack up to go back east a little to Patricia for the Patricia rodeo…….sooooooo excited……!!!

oh…and here is a little aside…..not sure where else to put this…..and be warned…its gross…..we had been having a little trouble with the bathroom sink draining (or not..!!) an getting steadily worse…..the longer stop over at Spring Hill let us do a few repair and maintenance jobs (like how I call it we…!!!)…….I did provide some assistance in this instance…by passing some rags to the worker…!!!

In my defense…this is NOT my hair…….!!!!

We are presuming the previous owners…or at least one of them had long hair……