An excellent day in the flowers, and a nice horseshoe shaped ridge walk around Healy meadows. Lots of mosquitos down out of the wind.
We started from Sunshine parking lot a little after 10, wondering at the massive expansion of the restaurant/reception building. The walk up to the bottom of the meadows was uneventful. But once we stopped for a quick snack, the mossies attacked in force. So we donned our packs and headed up to breezier spots. The Healy meadows had lots of flowers, perhaps not yet quite in full flower due to rain the previous night.


anemones in Healy meadows

Even at Healy Pass there were significant bugs and so after a short lunch we headed up the bumps to the north. There we soon ran into Ginger, June, and Joyce and some of their friends, also seeking respite from the bugs. It didn't take very long to climb up to the high point of the ridge north of the pass.


Finally above the mosquitos

From there we could see that we had a nice ridge walk available that would keep us in the breeze and take us right around to above the bottom of the meadows. This turned out very well although it does make the trip an OT4. We thought of it as a "Mini-Monarch-Ramparts" with views that are comparable.


The Monarch, Ramparts & lakes

Egypt Lakes area from above Healy Pass

I had dropped my camera on Sunday, but it seemed to be working until we got part way around.


Carl fiddling with #!*?% camera, Mount Ball in distance

A cleared off Mount Assiniboine

Eventually we got around to the southeast end of the loop and could look back at our ridge.


Panorama of Healy Pass North Horseshoe

Bill has kindly provided the GPS track on a map.


Our route

We ended up doing a bit of bushwhacking to get to the Healy Pass trail, joining it a little below the meadows. One could also trend a little more right/west and pick up the trail in the meadows.
Many thanks to Aldis, Bill (photo/map), Jim and Ron (photos) for joining me, Carl (C/S).