Mt. Ware

I had a conversation with The Hope after we finished our easy hike of Bull Creek Hills to see whether he wants to do another hike before leaving the country for his trip to Down Under. He first said that he would like to do another one. Then he said he preferred to go bicycling and then he came back and said he would join me for another hike! I was going to say to him he should have made his mind but then I thought: What the hell! He brings the car. He drives and he's a good companion. So I don't care if he's moody!

Our plan was to go to Mt. Ware first and then he said he would want to see whether there was anything else available! I gave him the chance to check the other local hikes and then he came back with this message that he would go to Mt. Ware! So we set up everything for that! Gosh! It's just a pain in the butt to deal with someone who cannot make his or her mind up! I had The Lady as someone constantly changes her mind. Now this guy has been added too!  

We headed south toward Turner Valley in the morning and I have to add that I was not able to convince him to start earlier than 07:00 AM although he told me that he had woken up at 04:00 and was not able to go back to sleep! On the way from Turner Valley to Sheep River Provincial Park we were lucky that he missed a baby Deer on the road! He's generally not a good driver but this time luck was with us otherwise our trip would have been changed to a tragedy. Then when we entered the park shortly after the daylight was upon us we saw a pick up truck that as soon as we approached he put up his lights. A guy from Alberta Parks approached us and said that he was looking for hunters. We told him that we were going hiking up Mt. Ware and he said goodbye to us. I don't think Alberta Parks takes a good care of the Alberta parks because when we were out doing our hike of Bull Creek Hills we heard noises several times that to me sounded like someone was shooting rounds. Also when we went to Ghost Valley area, on the way back, we saw a guy with shotgun and the bastard gave us a fake smile but unfortunately we were not able to report the motherfucker. 

You have a 20 minutes of scrambling on a pile of lose rocks before you summit Mt. Ware. Some of the rocks are covered with a type of beautiful green moss

Finding the trail-head this time was not very hard. We drove to the end of a gravel road and parked in Gorge Creek trail parking lot. No one else was there at the time and I guess we started our hike around 08:30 or so. We simply headed west on the trail, parallel to the creek. It's a nice area but lack of snow and rail will have a significant affect in the wildlife and vegetation, if this goes the same for the next few months. It's now Nov.-01 and we have not had even one snowfall! After walking for a while on the easy trail we headed north this time to get ourselves to the foothills of Mt. Ware. Here The Hope believed we had been distracted from the main trail so we cut in to the trees and walked back toward east for a while until The Hope said that we were on the main trail! He has bought this application that apparently has many trail available to us and we can simply follow it although I have done all of the hikes without any map or tracker! 

The last half an hour of the hike or so was interesting. We had to climb up a pile of lose rocks to get ourselves to the summit. Before that we we walked up the mountain to get ourselves to the ridge on the east side. The view to the vest is nice and on your east or better northeast you have city of Calgary easily available to your view. North and south do not provide much. We had a short break, took a few photos and headed back down the mountain. 

A small pool of water in Gorge Creek from top o the trail looks like. It would have been of course much nicer, Had we seen it in early summer or late spring

There was nothing special on the way back to the parking lot. We saw a type of flightless bird, similar to what I had seen on The Wedge but he messed up the photo and I had sent my camera to Canon in Ontario so there's not a clean and nice shot of that available! No one was seen on the trail the entire time and just half an hour to the parking lot a light rain started but it stopped as soon as we reached the car. Generally Mt. Ware is considered a very easy hike with its half an hour just being fun. Gorge Creek is nice but nothing significant that wows you. Maybe its nicer when it has more water in it. Sheep River Provincial Park is not taken care of as good as other Kananaskis area parks maybe because its smaller and does not have as many trails as the other parks and not many businesses such as restaurants and cafes are available close to it. The only place that you can sit for a beverage or meal would be in Turner Valley or Black Diamond and I don't really know what is available in these two small towns but I know they are not as fancy as Canmore. Longview is a bit further and has a few famous restaurants and cafes but I haven't check those ones either. We headed back to the city directly after that. We sat for a latte in The Hope's favorite coffee shop Starbucks. I didn't particularly liked it. It was some $3.45 for a small cup. Maybe I should have added some raw sugar but generally I don't believe paying more than $3 for a small cup every time you want to have a coffee would be a good idea unless you have an income as much as The Hope's! 

(Photo: This was taken by my buddy on the summit of Mt. Ware looking west with Blue Rock Mountain in the back. You can see me behind the summit cairn with my back turned to the camera, taking pictures with my Sony Cypershot)