The weather was mostly quite pleasant during this trip except for a very short, light shower around 1:00pm. At the top of the hill going down to the road at the end of the hike, we rested for quite a while enjoying the sunshine and looking at flowers. No one seemed in a hurry to get home.

We parked at Nash meadows and started up the road at 9:30am then headed up the steep hill to the ridge top. In the future I will be sure to cross the cattle guard before heading up. That will eliminate crossing a barbed wire fence. The journey to the summit was easy to find and there we had our first lunch. The plan was to go further along the ridge to another section of the escarpment with a view north but that didn’t happen. Despite having easily found the way to that section three previous times, on this trip the route eluded me so we headed back to the summit and had our second lunch at the col.

The descent of the SW ridge was not as straightforward as expected. Despite four members having the route on a gps device, we missed a sharp righthand turn, kept going straight and eventually bushwhacked 300m across to the descent trail. The one person who knew we’d missed the turn thought I knew where I was going so didn’t say anything until any vestige of trail we were following petered out. Oh well, the diversion added some extra interest to this trip. I’ve missed this turn before so wasn’t surprised when I missed it again. Should have consulted the route on my cellphone. We were back at the cars by 3pm. Distance around 11km.

It was an enjoyable trip and I thank the participants for their good humour as we navigated the route changes.

Participants: Joe, Bill, Yolande, Aldis, Teresa, Lenard, Suzy, Jo, Donna, Marianne, Jozef.

Ascent to ridge from parking lot

The group after finding the trail again

The lookout above the Gorge Rd before descending

Townsendia

White shooting star