Stegosaurus Mountain

The weekend before the last one's failure in Abraham Mountain did not discourage me. It was very hot and I had started started late. This past weekend, I made some changes to my plan which although did not result in summiting a mountain I had planned but made significant improvements. My failure in reaching the summit had other reasons which I will explain but first what I did to help myself to have a better hike, although it was barely a hike. It was a scramble 90% of the route! This mountain is called Dolomite Peak, and is located in Icefield Parkway I would like to call it Stegosaurus Mountain:

1) I started earlier. It was not because I left home earlier! It was because it was closer! In fact I had a hard time getting out of the damn bed when the clock went off but I did it anyway and after a long drive, shorter than the previous one, I started the hike at almost 08:20.

2) Left almost every damn heavy and annoying thing at home: It was including the mobile charging device, this is very heavy, bottles of water, crampons, I knew I wouldn't need them,  the very useless Valard backpack with its stupid straps. I made sure I left it at one of these donation boxes at the side of the street! 

Stegosaurus fossil. 

3) Took enough water! One might ask how I managed to do that while I was not carrying any bottles! I used my Coleman backpack which worked great. Light. distributes the weight on your back evenly and has three adjustable straps. 

With that said, I started at about 08:20, as I indicated. The trailhead is located shortly after you enter Highway # 93 from High #1, going north and is located next to a bridge over Helen Creek. You won't miss it. The temperature, at the time of the start, to my surprise was only 8 ℃ (~ 46 ℉) which is great for this time of the year. I could have started earlier but made a mistake by stopping at Lake Louise for a coffee where I saw the only coffee shop in the so-called village packed! I simply turned around and kept going. That easily wasted 10 minutes, if not more. The hike starts from a very beautiful trail which is very steep and might discourage many but then becomes flat and goes down and reaches a stream or creek where you need to cross. I wasted a little time over there as well but eventually got into the water and passed! the tree trunk was not much helpful to me! I then continued basically toward north and northeast, parallel to the creek where my map said to either keep going to the north end of the mountain or try to go up from a drainage of the mountain on my right. The northern path looked easier but longer and I chose that. From the it was all up at an angle of nearly 40° but very beautiful, carpeted in wild colourful flowers. I didn't mind it and kept going up with no hiking poll and no helmet until Bow Lake, at the south side of Highway #93 N could be seen. It was almost 3 hours from the start and I knew that I had at least 1 more hour to go to reach one of the peaks but It was very exposed and I was worried that I might fall and break my life to pieces! So I turned back down from there.

Bow Lake and its beautiful blue

It was a good exercise but I still am tired after 2 days! It's considered a hard scramble/hike which cannot be done by everyone but I will give it another try hopefully before the hiking season ends because know I know what I will have to do. The question remains about the name of the mountain. Here is how this name was created! I took a coupe of panorama shots from the mountain using my mobile phone as I have decided not to take the phone any more and used one of them as my desktop background. A colleague saw that and called it a dinosaur mountain. It really looks like the back of this specific dinosaur called Stegosaurus if you look at the picture on the top! So I have this plan to change the official name when I can. 

(Photo, top: The sleeping Stegosaurus from the valley, next to the creek. My approach was from the left side of the photo)