playing hooky

Friday (yesterday) was to be 26C in Calgary & 22C in Kananaskis. What better way to spend your work day but in the mountains! I was supposed to hike today as well but it was calling for cold & rain so we passed unless there was sunshine this morning (which there wasn't but it was before 7 o'clock in the morning). At the end of it all, there was very little rain today. That's likely ok, I'm hiking tomorrow & could use a day of rest.

Back to yesterday's hike. I have done 2/3 of the hike before. We started at Ribbon Creek heading up to Ribbon Falls (this part I'd done) then up some chains to get to see Ribbon Lake and hike Guinns Pass (this I had not done) which connects to Galatea Creek trail that I hiked just last weekend. Whew! I had NO idea how long this was going to take & we did start late (I did not go with my regular crew). The hike was 7.5 hours including all stops for photos, lunch & rests. The gain was also higher than I thought - I did not do the math ahead of time - 920m. This hike is not a difficult hike, just long. There was one spot where we lost the trail & were bush whacking which I do NOT like (I was yelling 'this sucks' when we were there). That part was short lived. Thankfully, I've hiked many times before when we have had to do that & I knew which way to direct the lead guy - down! I knew we would run into the trail sooner than later.

I always like trees that appear to be growing out of rocks like the one below.

I took this so the length of the root was showing. Very cool how things grow!

Here is Ribbon Falls - not the normal angle that everyone takes.

The chains that we climbed up to get up to Ribbon Lake. Very fun! I loved that.

Where we stopped for lunch after the climb.

Ribbon Lake

These shots are up Guinns Pass. Sometimes I want my 7d - in this case so I could shoot at f22 to get a starburst effect in the shot below. The last image is at the top of Guinns Pass.