Upper Canyon Creek Peaks

Upper Canyon Creek
Peaks 427439 and 436425
Kananaskis, Alberta
June 2, 2018
Distance: 12.6 km
Cumulative Elevation Gain: 860 m

The north-north fork of Upper Canyon Creek offers four peaks to hike up; all have fine summits and all lack a name. Kananaskis Country Trail Guide calls them by their cumbersome grid references: Peaks 409435, 412443, 427439 and 436425. I'm inclined to abbreviate them to 40, 41, 42 and 43.

We set out to do the two eastern peaks, Peak 42 and Peak 43. Joining me were Zora Knezevic, Christine McNamara and Christine Grotefeld. The usual approach calls for hiking up a dry creekbed – Upper Canyon Creek – to ascend the west slopes, but the guidebook offers an intriguing route that uses logging roads and cutblocks to access the east slopes to reach the col between 42 and 43. It also suggests descending the slopes south of 43 to create a looped trip.

We parked at the trailhead on Powderface Trail and started up a logging road. After passing through one cutblock, the road reaches a second, larger cutblock. Here the road disappeared at a T-intersection. We turned north for our ascent but would return to the intersection from the south.

For a cutblock, navigation wasn't easy. Trees as tall as 20 feet made it difficult to get our bearing. So when we reached a rise, we decided to head directly to a creek we had to cross. We left the cutblock and hiked through an old forest. But travel was worse here because of the terrain and deadfall, and we ended up adding a little distance. We should have stayed in the cutblock.

However, after crossing the creek at the edge of the cutblock we were on track. Our next objective was in plain sight: a treed spur leading to the col. Leaving the cutblock and starting up the spur, we pushed through the deadfall on the lower slope to reach the easier crest. We soon welcomed the sight of Peaks 42 and 43 from clearings. We made our way to the col between the two peaks.

From the col, we turned right and started up 42, the highest of the two peaks. After the ridge levelled off, and aside from a brutally cold wind, we were treated to a delightful ridgewalk to the summit. I stopped to snap a panorama (above). While the two Christines hung back, Zora and I continued along the ridge to see the olistoliths, gigantic, weirdly-shaped rocks lying below 42. Afterwards, we turned around.

The four of us regrouped and set off for Peak 43. We returned to the col and went up the steep north ridge. But even aided by a trail, hiking was miserable in the soft scree.

After tagging the summit, we continued down the gentle south ridge to a notch bearing a small cairn. Leaving the rocky ridge, we turned left and started down a steep, treed slope. Unsure of which direction to take, we headed down and slightly left. We soon hit the top of a long, narrow clearing. We were lucky. Had we missed this grassy strip, we would have had to bushwhack a long way down.

We reached a big clearing at the bottom and keeping left, entered the forest. After some light bushwhacking, we came to a cutblock. Keeping left in the cutblock, we reached the road that leads back to the T-intersection. A short time later, we were back at our car. That would have been the end of our story, except for finding a flat tire. But we (actually me), put on a spare tire and were soon driving back down Powderface Trail, hoping we wouldn't get another flat.

Hands down, Peaks 42 and 43 offer a pleasant ridgewalk, but what’s the best way to get there? Neither the creekbed approach nor the bushwhacking approach is enticing. However, I think the creekbed is the lesser of the two evils. There is little that can go wrong when you follow a creekbed, but room for routefinding errors when you bushwhack up or down the east slopes.

KML and GPX Tracks

Setting off up the trail