The shortening days and a week of cloudy overcast weather made me crave some outdoor mountain time. Getting up to go to work in the dark doesn’t feel good and even morning workouts and playing hockey 3 times a week does not fulfil the need to exercise outdoors. I managed to crank off a couple hours of skiing at Canada Olympic Park on artificial snow last weekend but still needed more. Not enough snow to ski tour so decided to hike Pigeon Mtn. Trip was about 12.5 km and about 1050m including 60 m for the lower SE summit. Calgary was raining and just starting a wet snow storm as we left but the mountains were fine and we even got some much needed sunshine. Summit was cold and windy with some snow pellets but we avoided the big squalls that seemed to hitting the higher peaks. We went down by bushwacking to the old ski runs but I would not do that without a GPS and it would have been better with more snow – especially for the boulder fields. As an alternative – there was a shortcut down trail/route that comes off the up trail about . 4 km after it come out of the trees – on the left/south of a bluff of trees in a gully. It would be steeper than the up trail but we saw a cairn and trail that came out about 2/3 of the way up the powerline.
Note that this mountain has closures from Dec 1? to June 15? for wintering and calving sheep herd.
Overall good late season trip to do with hiker friends. Weather not an issue although miss some of the views. I kicked or rolled a bunch of rocks off the trail on the way up in case I ever want to ski up to Skogan pass although I don’t know what is covered by the closures.
Pictures are here
