Youth Ice Climbing with the University of Calgary

Mack belaying his old man.

One of the dilemmas facing parents who want their teenagers to get off their butts and go hiking, is the lack of groups for teens that go hiking. Want them to go snowshoeing, rock climbing or ice climbing? Good luck.

When I was a teenager, I was lucky enough to belong to a Scouting group that was more interested in getting out to the Rocky Mountains than in earning badges, and that had Ventures and Rovers so we had a social group to go hiking, scrambling and even mountaineering with. But Scouts had already lost its cool back then. Today, the concept of a youth organization with uniforms and salutes and badges is, to put it mildly, not relevant to most teens. Just saying.

I'm fortunate that my sons, now 16 and 11, still want to spend time with their dad. Or at least they pretend to, which is good enough for me. Not only that, they genuinely enjoy going to the mountains with their old man. But what about other teens, and pre-teens for that matter, who don't have outdoorsy parents to take them out? Unless they have friends with the inclination to get out and a driver's license to get them to the trail, they're hooped.

When I saw the University of Calgary's Outdoor Centre offering Youth Ice Climbing lessons, and that parents could take it too, I jumped at it. First, I asked Mack, if he'd like to go ice climbing. Affirmative. Then I asked if he'd mind if I tagged along. He said he'd prefer it. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I'd get to share the brotherhood of the rope with my son, and maybe meet some other like minded parents.

I was a little surprised when we showed up and the other six participants were all teens. I was the only parent. But Mack didn't seem to care, the other teens didn't seem to care, so neither did I. And all six teens were keen to be there. There was no complaining about the cold. No complaining about having to carry the ropes to ice falls at King's Creek in Kananaskis. No complaining at all. They encouraged each other. They were excited by the beauty of the surroundings and the challenge of the ice.

A few of the teens were clearly interested in more than a one day ice climbing course could offer. They wanted to go again...but how? They didn't have many options other than paid ones. It's either talk their parents into shelling out a hundred bucks or more for a guided day in the mountains, or not go. Luckily, these kids had parents who were willing and financially able to send them. In fact, one kid's parents had shelled out for so many outdoor programs at the U of C that all of the guides knew him.

For all the talk and hype about the need to get youth, from tots to teens, out into nature, there hasn't been much action to make it happen. Thankfully there are a handful of organizations like the University of Calgary that are starting to run outdoor programs for teens. The six on the ice climbing trip may have to wait until the U of C's summer backcountry trips for teens, but at least there's something for them.

Hiking with Kids in Kananaskis: The Vaults of Mt. McGillivray

A giant vault blasted into the side of a mountain, then abandoned and almost forgotten. What's not to get excited about if you're a kid (big or small)?

The Trans Canada Trail

Back in the 50s or 60s, somebody blasted a tunnel and side vaults into the side of Mt. McGillivray in Kananaskis (you can read one theory of who and why here). When I was a kid in the late 70s, getting to them was something of an ordeal. You had to bushwhack to them from the Trans-Canada highway, and if you didn't know where they were you could spend the entire day searching for the narrow entrance and never find it. But if you did know, the short hike through the brush to treeline brought you a place custom designed to trigger a kid's imagination.

One of the washouts

Click here for more kids hikes in Banff, Kananaskis, Kootenay and other areas of the Canadian Rockies. 

Today, you park at the Heart Creek day use area, head west and the Trans Canada Trail takes you most of the way there. Luckily, the floods of June 2013 washed out a couple big chunks of the trail, reintroducing a bit of adventure and effort to reach the vaults. After negotiating your way across the washouts, it's almost impossible to miss the well-beaten path that now leads up to the vaults in a couple gentle switchbacks.

Although the vaults now lack the

Wolf track on the trail

exclusivity of being able to say you went somewhere that 99.9% of even the most experienced hikers have never heard of, they haven't lost any of their ability to spark the imagination.  And, as the wolf tracks we followed down the path, well beaten mountain paths are still wild. Try this hike from spring through to fall when you're looking for a fun, easy way to spend a couple hours in the mountains.

Distance: 3 or 4 km return
Time on the trail: 1-2 hours
Elevation gain: About 100 m

Driving Directions: Trans-Canada west from Calgary to the Heart Creek day use area across from Lac des Arc. Look for the Trans-Canada Trail sign on the west side of the parking lot across from the outhouses.
Click here for a driving map.

The entrance

The "foyer"

Avalanche Awareness Days are Here! Check Out an Event at a Canadian Rockies Location Near You

It's winter and once again the Canadian Rockies are having a bad avalanche season that the Canadian Avalanche Centre thinks may get worse. As I write, the avalanche forecast for Kananaskis tomorrow is high above treeline, considerable at treeline and moderate below. I was going to lead a snowshoeing trip up Black Prince Outlier in Kananaskis, but decided to move the trip to the safer and relatively flatter Chester Lake.

You can never learn enough about avalanche safety, and it's never too earlier to teach your kids. Fortunately, Avalanche Awareness Days are coming to a number of Canadian Rockies locations. Each event has different activities, ranging from shovelling races and avalanche terrain talks to demonstrations of dog rescue teams doing their things.

For more information, go to the events section of the Canadian Avalanche Centre website.

Avalanche Awareness Days Dates

Banff--January 18-19, 2014
Kananaskis/Burstall Pass--January 19, 2014
Nakiska Ski Resort--January 18, 2014
Lake Louise Visitor Centre--January 16, 2014
Lake Louise Ski Resort--January 18-19, 2014

For more avalanche education information, read these posts:

Kids Outdoor Skills: Age-Appropriate Avalanche Safety Education
Kids Outdoor Skills: Avalanche Safety Video for Teens

3 Things to Rember When Your Kids' Sports Come Between Your Family and the Outdoors

There are many benefits to kids playing organized sports. They learn teamwork, discipline and how to operate within the defined framework of rules. They develop their fine and gross motor skills, get active, and build confidence and self-esteem. Organized sports can be a lot of fun, too.

There are also many benefits to taking your kids hiking, snowshoeing, skiing and an endless number of other outdoor activities. They learn self-reliance and reliance on the group. They learn through unstructured experience. They develop their fine and gross motor skills, get active, and build confidence and self-esteem. They also develop a relationship with the outdoors and the environment that connects them to the world around them, and that can ground them in hard times and good. It's fun. I could go on, but you get the idea.

As an outdoor dad and a soccer coach dad to my two amazing sons, I can personally attest to how hard it can be to balance the organized and the outdoors. Organized sports, exactly because they are organized and scheduled, all too easily take priority. Especially when you're the coach. And when one of your sons plays on Saturdays and the other plays on Sundays. A game at 1 p.m. on Saturday and another at 11 a.m. on Sunday makes it difficult to drive an hour or more to the mountains, get in enough hiking or snowshoeing to make it feel worthwhile, and drive home.

At my older son's last indoor soccer practice before Christmas, we had a parents vs kids game (the 12- and 13-year-olds let themselves get tied by a bunch of old men). Afterwards, a few of us dads got talking about how being a soccer parent changes your life. They know I take my boys out to the mountains a lot, and asked how I balance that with practices and games three days a week. I'm not sure I gave them a very good answer at the time, but it got me thinking. How do I balance the outdoors with organized sports? These are the three things I came up with and that I have to consciously remember to remember:

1. The drive is worthwhile

Even a couple hours in the mountains is worth the drive. Just like I can see the pride in my sons' faces after a good game, I can see how at ease and relaxed they are after a couple hours in the mountains. Just as importantly, I can feel how my own batteries are recharged.

2. You don't always have to drive far to get your kids out

I'm willing to drive a little further to get away from the more crowded and popular trails closer to the city. In Kananaskis and Banff, the further you drive, the more snow you find in the winter, as well. But if we've only got a few hours after a game, there are plenty of good trails 30 to 45 minutes away in West Bragg Creek, the Elbow Valley, the Bow Valley and the Kananaskis Valley. My boys and I have had as much fun snowshoeing down a snowless-but-frozen Canyon Creek in Elbow Valley as we have floating on a meter of fluffy powder another hour's drive west in Peter Lougheed Provincial Park.

3. Take what you can get, when you can get it

Some days, even that 45-minute drive to West Bragg Creek to snowshoe just isn't possible. But a quick and fun snowshoe or walk up Nose Hill, a five minute drive from my house, is. On those days, I have to remind myself to take what I can get. Calgary is fortunate to have a wealth of large urban nature parks to play in, as well as a river pathway system that provides lots of opportunities to play in nature. Even taking the dog to an off-leash park like Edworthy, with its trails through the aspens and ravines, provides a solid dose of Vitamin N when soccer makes a trip to the mountains impossible.

Hiking with Kids in Kananaskis: Chester Lake, the Elephant Rocks & Almost Golden Larches

Last weekend I scrambled Snow Peak, and on the approach up Burstall Pass I noticed that the larches were starting to turn gold. So I figured this weekend the larches should be well on their way to turning the slopes gold directly across Highway 742 at Chester Lake. I also thought the boys would have fun climbing on the aptly name Elephant Rocks a short hike above the lake.

Click here for more kids hikes in Banff, Kananaskis, Kootenay and other areas of the Canadian Rockies. 

The start of the trail

As it turned out, we were a week or so early for the larches. A few were starting to turn gold, but then again too few to mention (apologies to the Chairman of the Board). As a group of three dads and six boys, we weren't too disappointed, though. The Elephant Rocks were definitely the main attraction and they didn't disappoint.

The trail to Chester Lake is straightforward, even with the first couple hundred meters having been washed out by the June 2013 flood. What was previously a nice old road is now a tangle of fallen

You're getting close when you reach the meadows

trees and boulders, although a path through has been cleared and marked with surveying tape. Once past that, you rejoin the old road and follow its gentle incline for a few kilometers until it narrows to a path. From that point, a half hour or so of walking takes you through a few meadows and to the lake. Although there's a well marked trail from the lake's north shore to the Elephant Rocks, we tried a different path and ended up doing a bit of fun bushwhacking.

At the Elephant Rocks, drop your packs and climb! There's something about scrambling up

Warm enough for shorts, but cold enough for a toque...teens...

big grey rocks that brings out the kid in everyone. I couldn't squeeze into some of the caves that are formed under the rocks, but the boys found passages over, around, under and through. We spent an hour there and could have spent more. All three dads agreed a hike up to the rocks on a sunny summer day was in order, bypassing the lake entirely to give all of us kids as much climbing time as possible.


Distance: 10 km return
Time on the trail: 4-6 hours
Elevation gain: About 300 m to the lake, a bit more to the Elephant Rocks

Chester Lake with Mount Chester behind

Driving Directions: Trans-Canada west to Highway 40. Follow the 40 south to Kananaskis Lakes Trail and turn right. In a couple of kilometers, turn right again on the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail. In 22 kilometers turn right into the Chester Lake parking area.
Click here to see a map.

A little bushwhacking

 

September 2013 Update: Kananaskis Flood Damage and Repairs

What used to be McGillivray Creek is now McGillivray Log Jam

The floods of June 2013 in the Canadian Rockies destroyed roads, trails, bridges, buildings, campsites, the golf course and just about anything else made by man in Alberta's Kananaskis Country. At the time, I'd written off Kananaskis for hiking and scrambling for at least the 2013 season, but I've been amazed at how much and how quickly the parks staff, the Friends of Kananaskis and volunteers have been able to repair and reopen.

At the Kananaskis Trails Advisory Group, on which I sit, we learned some details on when some of the remaining infrastructure is scheduled to reopen. It must be stressed that the dates below are only estimates, however. Anything can happen in the mountains! Click here for links to up-to-date road and other status reports for Kananaskis and other parks.

• Peter Lougheed Provincial Park information center is expected to reopen in early December. It suffered damage to its foundations.
• Highwood Junction store won't reopen until summer 2014.
• Main bridge on Highway 66 won't be fixed until summer 2014, but the temporary bridge will stay in place until then.
• Not all x-country ski trails will reopen this winter. Check trail status before heading out.
• Forestry Trunk Road south of Highwood Junction should be open to Cataract Creek (but not across the creek to the parking areas) by early December.
• Highway 40 south of Highwood Meadows to Highwood Junction won't reopen until the middle of summer 2014.
• Powderface Road won't reopen until the middle of summer 2014.

 

2013's Top 3 Places to Watch the Larches Turn Gold in the Canadian Rockies

Ah, September in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. When the larches turn golden and the parking at Moraine Lake overflows for kilometers down the road, giving you and your kids the opportunity to get in a good hike before you even reach the trailhead for Larch Valley.

Personally, I'd rather poke my eye with a larch needle than fight the crowds that descend on Larch Valley this time of year. Luckily, there are other great places to see larches turn gold. Some are arguably better for experiencing larches, and all are less crowded. Here are my top 3 larch viewing hikes for families and kids this year.

1. It's all about the larches: Pocaterra Cirque and Ridge in Kananaskis

Although Pocaterra Cirque and Ridge in Kananaskis are gaining in popularity for larch viewing, the trail is nowhere near as crowded as Larch Valley. And because Highway 40 between the winter gates and Highwood Meadows only opened on September 9 after being closed all summer due to flood damage, a lot of people think it's still closed.

The real reason to go to Pocaterra Cirque this fall are the larches, though. In my opinion, they're at least as good as Larch Valley. If your kids are a little older (maybe 12 and up) and your family is fit, you can do the Pocaterra Ridge walk, where

you'll find larches on the north end that are decidedly better than Larch Valley.

Last September when we did Pocaterra Cirque, we even walked past a herd of big horn sheep on the way back to the cars.

For details and my full post about Pocaterra Cirque and how to get there, click here.

2. You want to see golden larches, but the setting is just as important: Tryst Lake

That yellow stuff on the edge of the lake is fallen larch needles.

Note: Since I wrote this post last week, the Tryst Lake area has been closed and reopened due to bear activity. Check it's status in the "Notes" section at the bottom of the Peter Lougheed and Spray Valley Provincial Parks trail report.

A week too late. All the larches have lost their needles.

Tryst Lake isn't known for its larches. It's known for being a beautiful alpine lake in a beautiful alpine setting. Its larches don't rival those of Larch Valley or Pocaterra Cirque, but its lack of people--you may have the trail and lake to yourself--and setting more than make up for any lack of golden needles. As with Pocaterra Cirque, many people think the Smith Dorrien/Spray Trail is still closed due to flood damage, so there may be even fewer people at Tryst Lake, if that's possible. An added bonus is the high likelihood that you'll see one of the area's resident moose at the parking lot or the old road that the trail starts out as.

For details and my full post about Tryst Lake and how to get there, click here.

3. You'd like to see a golden larch, but the rest of the scenery is the main attraction: Burstall Pass

Looking down at Burstall Pass, the unnamed glaciers, alpine meadows, Mt. Sir Douglas...

The landscape of Burstall Pass is amazing, fantastic, sublime. There are also some larch trees mixed in with the other trees.

Nearing the pass. The larches are the lighter green
trees, some starting to turn gold.

So if you're looking for a good September hike and like to see a few larches turning gold, but that's not the first priority, Burstall Pass is a good choice. That's not to say the larches aren't impressive, just not as impressive as Pocaterra Cirque or Tryst Lake. The emphasis of Burstall Pass is definitely on the views of unnamed glaciers, alpine meadows and the surrounding mountains, Snow Peak, Mt. Birdwood, Commonwealth Peak, Mt. Sir Douglas....We hiked up and over the pass on September 14, 2013, on the way to Snow Peak, and the larches were just starting to turn, so the next couple of weekends they should be prime larch viewing time at the pass.

Having said all that, this is a trail for older kids, maybe 10 or 12 and up. If you top short of the top of Burstall Pass, you can see the larches and the rest of the scenery, but it's still around 14 km (roundtrip) and a couple hundred meters of elevation gain.

A lone larch on top of the pass

Starting from the Burstall Pass day use area, follow the trail (it starts as on old logging road before narrowing to a true trail) for about 4 km. At that point you'll come out of the trees and find yourself in an alluvial plain covered with low bushes and braided creeks that you'll have to find your way across. Roughly follow the trail signs, which can be easily seen above the brush thanks to orange reflectors on top. Before re-entering the trees on the other side, make sure you look left to see the Robertson Glacier. Once in the trees, another 3 or so kilometers will take you to the pass. From the parking lot, the top of the pass is an elevation gain of about 450 m.

Distance: About 15 km return
Elevation gain: About 450 meters
Hiking/Exploring Time: 4 to 6 hours
Driving Directions: Trans-Canada west to Highway 40. Follow the 40 south to Kananaskis Lakes Trail and turn right. In a couple of kilometers, turn right again on the Smith-Dorrien/Spray Trail. In 22 kilometers turn left into the Burstall day use area.

Click here to see a driving map.

Larch needles in spring on the Wedge

Post-Mortem of a Prematurely Ended Kids Hike: Why We Didn't Get Very Far Up McGillivray Canyon

Just before the turn-around point.

In January, I went through the 3 Ds of how I pick a kid-friendly trail:

• Discovery--The realization that I'd found something that could be a good trail for kids.
• Due Diligence--Researching the trail for hazards and anything else I missed that might rule out the trail for kids.
• Decision--Whether the trail is suitable for kids or not. 

The approach through the trees

Last January, I thought I'd found the perfect kid-friendly trail in McGillivray Canyon. It was a tight canyon with lots of fun twists and turns, chains and ladders to climb up, and a big choke stone at the top to marvel at. The question was: Would what I saw as Indiana Jones and the McGillivray Choke Stone turn out to be a kid-size remake of 127 Hours?

My biggest worry was that the pools of water that were frozen in January would be too deep in the summer. In fact, that turned out to be the case when Mack, Michael and I tried McGillivray Canyon today. Although helmets aren't strictly necessary on this trail, we all put on our hard tops as a matter of principle. Safety is a habit, and I want to instill that habit in my sons. Then, before we even reached the canyon, we had to deal with a hazard that wasn't there when I'd done the trail in January: massive log jams that had been swept down the canyon and deposited in the stream bed by the floods in June.

Navigating the results of the June flood

After navigating through the dead fall to the mouth of the canyon, we made it either around or across the first few pools. But after only a few hundred meters we were stopped by a deep pool the width of the entire canyon, which was about a meter at that point. A couple meters up on the right was a cable strung the length of the pool that we could have used to get around the water, but the boys would have had to hold the cable and lean back over the pool to press their feet into the steep rock wall. They weren't too keen on that, and I wasn't about to make them, so we headed back.

That's when I noticed how well they were hopping

Having fun in the canyon

across the boulders that lined the bottom of the canyon. All the outdoor stuff their crazy dad took them on was having an effect! So I commended them on how well they did to get as far as we had, and casually described how the pools were frozen in the winter and you could just walk over them. "We should come back in the winter," Mack said. Then Michael added, "Yeah, I want to find the ladders you have climb up."

That's my outdoor family!

Hopping over one of the first pools

The pool that stopped us. You can just see the cable in the upper right.

The traditional post-hike ice cream cone in Canmore makes up for everything.

Hiking with Kids in Kananaskis: Watridge Lake, Karst Springs & Wild Strawberry Fields Forever

There's nothing like eating a wild strawberry that you just picked on the side of a mountain trail to ground you. And yesterday I needed some grounding.

The trail to Watridge Lake and Karst Springs in Kananaskis isn't what I'd typically pick for a kids hike. An old logging road for the first TK kilometers to the lake, it lacks the rocks, stream hopping and other things I look for to add some adventure and fun for the kids. Only from the lake to the springs does it turn into a "real" trail, with half-log boardwalks across a boggy area and water falls so beautiful that even kids think they're cool. But three weeks before I'd scrambled up Mt. Shark, the approach to which is the trail to Watridge Lake and Karst Springs. I'd never seen so many wild

strawberries in one place. They lined the sides of the old logging road for almost its entire length. And the tiny strawberries packed the most intense strawberry flavor I'd ever tasted.

Click here for more kids hikes in Banff, Kananaskis, Kootenay and other areas of the Canadian Rockies. 

I expected the 3.7 km hike to the lake to take about an hour. It took almost twice that long. A few minutes after leaving the Mt. Shark parking lot I pointed out one of the wild strawberry bushes beside the trail, and the kids were engrossed. So we

shuffled along in a half crouch on the edge of path, eating the tiny red bursts of flavor as we went. Besides being a grounding experience, it was also a great bonding experience for Mack, Michael and myself. We shared strawberries that we picked, compared the flavor of one with that of another, and truly connected.

It was after 1 p.m. when we finally stopped for lunch beside Watridge Lake. Maybe they were full from the strawberries or maybe they'd found the experience grounding and energizing like I had, but Mack, Michael and the

two other kids in the group barely ate anything before they were off. From the lake, a narrow boardwalk made of a single line of logs that have been cut in half leads over a small boggy area for a couple hundred meters. At the end of the boardwalk, you find yourself in the cool shade of the forest, with the roaring of the falls somewhere ahead of you. In a couple minutes we'd reached the falls. Ten minutes after that, we were at Karst Springs, where the water literally appears from nowhere out of the side of the mountain.

Barely10 minutes later we were off again and headed back to the cars. Mack said the strawberries had made it his favorite hike yet. For me, the strawberries were definitely tasty, but more importantly they brought all three of us closer together at a time when we really needed it.

Oh yeah, the grizzly that walked across the road in front of us on the drive home was pretty cool too. And thanks to Shulamit for the "Wild Strawberry Fields Forever" line!

Distance: 7.4 km return to the lake, 9 km return to the springs
Time on the trail: 4-5 hours
Height gain: 60 m to the lake, 150 m to the springs
Driving Directions: From Canmore, take Spray Trail south to Mt. Engadine Lodge. Turn right on Mt. Shark road, continue past the lodge, keeping right at all intersections, until you reach the Mt. Shark parking lot. The trailhead is behind the information board near the parking lot entrance.

Click here for a driving map.