The day dawned with a colourful sunrise on the way to the meeting point:

and the weather looked favourable on the drive out. Numerous hawks were sighted along the road as were a couple of coyotes and, sadly, a dead small brown bear beside the highway near Scott Lake. As we started up the trail it was mushroom-o-rama, there were thousands of them along the trail all day:

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The air was cool but when the sun came out we could bravely hike in shorts:

Helen Lake was a little too cold to swim in but the views were great:

There had been a number of other hikers on the trail and we saw a bunch going up Cirque Peak, but we left them behind as we headed towards Katharine Lake:

There were lots of marmots and Columbian ground squirrels in this area, some of which let us get quite close:

There was also a prairie falcon skimming quickly over the meadows; the marmots didn’t seem too concerned but the ground squirrels immediately disappeared. Lunch was in the lee of some big boulders as clouds blocked the sun and the breeze felt quite cold:

Then it was up to the Watermelon-Dolomite col to access the back side of the circuit:

As we headed down the sun reappeared and it was quite pleasant to loll about for a while in this relatively sheltered area. There was quite a bit of water in the creeks and the meadows still had some blooming flowers:

Throughout this section of the trail we had nice vistas of Mount Hector:

With binoculars we espied a group of four trudging up the glacier to the summit. Back at the treeline we found an easy route for bushwhacking down through the forest to the Mosquito Creek trail, with mushrooms again in abundance. We arrived at the cars at 6:00 and after shuttling the cars, headed off to Canmore for dinner at the Drake. The drive back was slower than usual as it poured rain from the edge of the mountains back to Calgary. Thanks for a great day go to Carolyn (photos), Barbara, Mary & Nardi. Ron, Coordinator/ Scribe/ Photos.