An enjoyable couple of days in good, windless(!!??!!) weather in the good company of David, Arnold and Damian. We were not sure about snow conditions but thought the south aspect of the ascent route on Erickson would give us a chance to scout out the area on the first day. On our first day we had an enjoyable 9+ hour ascent of Erickson in, surprisingly, more or less windless and excellent weather. We did have Bob Spirko's usual good description as a source for what we might expect. On the lower slopes lots of flowers.


Arrow leaved Balsam root

Erickson I thought a nice ridge walk and, mostly, we could avoid snow.


Mount Erickson ridge (summit out of sight just beyond visible high point).

Cornices on Mount Erickson

Still remnant cornices provided evidence of the prevailing wind direction of the area!


Summit ridge Mount Erickson

From the summit extensive views including the huge coal mining operation in the Elk valley.


Arnold, John and David on the summit Mount Erickson

The Old Goats summit register had been placed by Boband the late Rick. For the second day I had hoped to try Coulthard which, with the aforementioned Bob, a few years ago, we were turned around by extremely strong winds that blew us over. From the ridge of Erickson we could not actually see Coulthard but could see Parrish, Andy Good and the Promised Land area which looked very snowy. The following day from Turtle we could see the other, still snowy, side of Andy Good etc. - including Coulthard.


Mounts Mcgladery,Coulthard, Andy Good, and Parrish

With this information we decided to switch the objective for the second day to Turtle mountain. Three of us car camped at Island Lake with the fourth member motelling it in Coleman. The campers enjoyed the eerie call of a loon on the lake in the late,still windless, evening - iconically Canadian. Less appreciated, though perhaps equally iconic of Canada, were the two or three grain trains that rumbled by 100m from our camp during the night! All of us had done the Kane ascent of Turtle so to change it up a bit we decided to try a traverse of Turtle. I had a book "Hiking the Historic Crowsnest Pass" published in 1992 which described the route. The route described started at the Blairmore end from a disused motel on highway 3 (not the Kane starting point) and finished on the east side of Drum creek in Hillcrest.For our ascent of Turtle we started at the Blairmore end from the Kane trailhead.


Damian and David enjoying rest stop on Turtle mountain

Turtle mountain

Weather remained great in the morning but as we were having lunch on the summit we could see cloud and rain showers to the north. For our descent on the east side we took down the edge of a gully.


Descent route we took off south end of Turtle

We could not find any signs of a trail higher up as mentioned in the description. Possibly the trail was under snow. It was steep and a few cliff bands had to be bypassed but we got down. Lower down the pre-1992 route description did not match up with new buildings, roads and private property so I am not sure if there is a good route these days. We did work our way through but did not end up where we expected to in Hillcrest. Fortunately Hillcrest is not very big and we were able to find Damian's car finishing the trip hearing thunder in a bit of light rain. Thanks again to my excellent companions. Thanks Damian for driving and David for the extra photos c/s John