Home page Home page

Rocky Mountain Ramblers Association

Trip Report
Trip Date:
16-May-2022
Activity:
Off-Trail hike
Trip name:
High Noon Hills
Coordinator:
Carl
Report:

Finally--this was not an off-season hike! The grass was greening, the trees were budding, the flowers were blooming. It was that almost-forgotten thing called SPRING! The Rockies still looked totally Himalayan, but life is returning to the foothills after so many months of winter. It was a shorts, T-shirt and sun screen day in the toasty sunshine.

We had an odd experience as we prepared to hike to the High Noon Hills from our parking spots at the edge of the highway, when a spruce grouse suddenly came out of the ditch and wandered onto the pavement, holding its wings out like mother birds sometimes do to distract potential predators from its nest. Expecting vehicles to come along and squash the poor bird flatter than a tortilla, we tried everything to shoo it off the road, to no avail. We could shout and stamp our feet and even touch it with a pole, but it would not move. We came to the conclusion that it might have avian influenza and be mentally disoriented. Finally, it decided to walk away.




Spruce grouse on highway acting oddly ---maybe avian influenza?

During our hike other wildlife spotted included a deer and a mosquito, which was summarily dispatched.

There were quite a few flowers blooming--buffalo beans, shooting stars, violets, strawberries and "little yellow flowers." There were some nice large crocuses blooming inside one of those steel frames researchers use to measure the untouched vegetation compared with the grazed area outside the frame. "Somebody" ate all the other crocuses.




Crocuses still blooming inside steel research enclosure--somebody ate the rest

On top of the first hill somebody has erected a nice new bench.




Peter, Linda and Robert enjoy new bench on first hill




Enjoying the view the bench was built for!

We had lunch at the Sheep River (half of us at the top of the canyon and half of us at the river).




buffalo beans cling to the cliff above the Sheep River canyon




Robert and Peter at the natural dike waterfall on the Sheep River

The switchback horse trail down to the river has become so eroded that it is now a treacherous TL4 with loose gravel over slab on a very steep slope.

After lunch we climbed beside the boundary fence to the highest hill, then took a bee-line down through aspen and followed the lower path back to the cars. Back at 2 p.m. It was 18 degrees, on the way to the full 20 in Calgary. Stats: 8 km and 300m egain.