Day 5 - Bald Hills

Friday, September 19, 2008

Being our only full day in Jasper, we wanted to choose a good day hike. The Bald Hills are series of mountains that lie among some mightier brethren. This hike ended up being one of the most difficult ones we did during the trip. When we started out, we knew that it was a 500m climb up to the most popular Bald Hills lookout. As is the case with many hikes in this area, it seems that they make you work hard to get to the scenery, not allowing you much to enjoy along the way, only to reward you in the end.

Water break on the way up to Bald Hills

View from Bald Hills Lookout

Once we got to the lookout, we noticed the hill behind us and that some people were making the trek up to the top. We spoke to a couple that had just come from there, and they told us that the climb is a little slippery and steep, but the 360 degree view from up there is phenomenal. We were feeling pretty good, so after eating a quick lunch we brought, we decided to try it. Just to give you an idea of what we were climbing, if you click on the picture below and look closely, you'll see some people on the slopes. If we made it to the top, we would have done a total climb of 610m (2000 ft.)!

Onward to the top of Bald Hills

Getting to the base of that hill was fine, but the final climb to the top was pretty tough. The route was all made up of what looked like crushed shale rock, with snow on top of it! Not to mention how steep it was.

The steep ascent to Bald Hill

As usual getting to the top was incredible. There was a full 360 degree view of the mountains around us. Unfortunately, the 36o degree panorama that I took with our camera did not stitch together very well. Below is just a 3 segment piece of it.

Bald Hills panorama

Apparently, some hardcore hikers use this summit as a starting point to troll along these mountain tops all day. The picture below shows one of these folk off in the distance (the tiny speck on top of the adjacent hill). This is also supposed to be a popular spot to see some caribou, but we weren't so lucky.

Those who want to continue on can do so

The 6km back down the mountain was uneventful but still interesting. We took a different trail down, which went right through the forest instead of its outskirts, so it provided some interesting sights (including a variety of strange mushrooms).

That ended our days in the mountains. We were headed to Calgary the next day.

Posted by adit on 9/19/2008 08:44:00 PM  

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