The Mumbling Guy told me that he wanted to go hiking with me, few weeks ago. I postponed it for a number of reasons. First of I didn't think I was ready for a hike considering the shitty job I have been doing for months now. Secondly I didn't think it was a good idea going hiking with a cheap asshole particularly because I had seen sides of stinginess. However I decided to take him because there are not many people that I have around and I need a few friends in case a reference is required or anything else is up. So after we met on a Sun. morning he suggested to take a hike in Canmore area. I, in turn, wanted to go somewhere else and I suggested Ghost Lake area and convinced him by an e-mail, using his own stinginess techniques! I calculated for him that if we went to Ghost Lake instead of Canmore we eventually would as much as $5 on gasoline! What did idiot didn't know, and possibly realized when we hit the gravel road(!), is that your car would consume more fuel when you're driving on a gravel road, particularly if it's a 4 x 4 which it's system kicks in automatically!
Anyways we got ourselves to Highway # 1A and the Highway # 40 and got ourselves to TransAlta Road, which by the way, in case you need to go there, is a gravel road which branches from Highway # 40 in the north part of Highway # 1A and goes west. This is the key point of the trip because you have to take the road, which goes parallel to Ghost River and go all the way to reach mountains. You first get elevation and then you go down and reach the river bed and based on the available maps you can choose whatever hike you want to do.
He obviously freaked out after a few kilometers on the road and decided just to park and have a hike there while our destination was Black Rock Mountain. I didn't want to argue considering he had brought his car. So we stopped, geared up and hit a nearby trail. It was a very beautiful day and despite a few showers and wind we enjoyed the scenery of the area.
I guess we had gone between %50 to %75 of the road before we get to the river bed and would have had another 15 minutes to reach but he didn't want to go further. He said that he only wanted to go for 1.5 hours of hike but after only 1 hour his nagging started! I even tried to get him up a boulder pile to get to a good elevation so we could take a few photos, he complained a lot over there and in one case ask for help(!) which I went back down and rescued(!) him. I had written it in an ae-mail the day before that he would need hiking boots but the cheap asshole had come with $20 Wal-Mart shoes which caused him to land on his ass(!) during the hike at least 3 times!
I eventually agreed to go back after nearly 01:25 hour. I didn't want to insist more considering he would get upset and although I knew he would most likely not go for a hike with me in near future, I didn't want to push him further as he clearly showed signs of fatigue.
That's all I can say about our hike. To add more about the region, which I had been twice before that (here and here), Ghost Lake area is mostly used by the cheap assholes who want to get high, drink booze, shoot a rifle or so and do stuff like that without being caught or pay a Penny! There's no entry or camping fee and there's no supervision but it has amazing scenery and beautiful mountain. I might get a rental and go hike Black Rock Mountain. it must be a 4 x 4!
(Photo; Ghost River in Ghost lake area from TransAlta Road. This is a road parallel to the river which branches from Highway # 40 in the north part of Highway 1A, as I mentioned earlier and eventually gets you to the river itself)
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