We had a “devil” of a good time at Devil’s Head and Johnson Canyon, a remote wilderness area in the Don Getty Wildland Provincial Park, surrounding this landmark peak which can be seen from Innisfail to Calgary. A rainbow in the morning promised success as we lingered at Tim Horton’s in Cochrane awaiting the end of the rain. Indeed, the weather proved to be great. The entire long weekend we only saw two (illegal) motor bikers.

The exploration road leads to swampy ground at Johnson Creek, where we found the trail west. We followed Gillean Daffern’s instructions to find our way into this obscure area, and only had to backtrack once.

The trail along the north bank of Johnson Creek offered a spectacular view of Black Rock Mountain.

We followed the ATV trail (the area is now a park with no motor vehicles allowed, but we saw fresh tracks, and absolutely no evidence of any more enforcement than a small sign) to this meadow, and realized we needed to go back a bit to take the ATV track into the creek valley.

Here we entered the inner sanctum of the fabulous Johnson Canyon.

We arrived at our intended camp, in a wild box canyon at the foot of the Devil’s Head, by 6:30. On our second night here we enjoyed a campfire, complete with singing “Ghost Chickens in the Sky", and a zambuca toast. On the second night we had some big tent-pole-bending gusts of wind in the night.

On Sunday we followed the canyon west to another box canyon. This canyon is an amazing entrance into the front range of the Rockies, very much like a grey version of the Utah canyon country.

Soon we were in position to ascend Gibson’s Ridge (to the right) and follow the ridge to the very northeast corner of Devil’s Head, here showing what Gillean Daffern calls its “stegosaurus side”.

We had lunch at the low spot on the ridge, sheltered by some rocks.

With a little light scrambling after lunch we made it to the top.

Johnson Canyon was now a stupendous gorge below us.

At the “corner suite:” Sharon, Stephen, Lupita, Andy and David.

We followed the goat trail around to the front (south) side, where we had a fabulous view right back to Calgary.

Of particular interest was a large area of eroded pinnacles reminiscent of Bryce Canyon. Two of us who persisted the last bit to see this were very satisfied with our exploration. We were back in camp by 4:30.

On Monday we enjoyed the clear view of Devil’s Head above Johnson Canyon which had eluded us on Saturday due to the residual cloud after the rainy night before.

The fall colours are coming on strong. Wildlife on the trip: two deer, a toad and two grouse.

The trip started and ended with the crossing of the Ghost River. Here coordinator and scribe Carl makes the brisk crossing. We were back to our two SUVs by 3:15, and very happy that we cut 6.5 km off each end of the trip by off-roading along the rough Ghost River track. We enjoyed a celebratory supper at the brand new Cochrane Palace Chinese buffet.