A beautiful fall day for a lovely hike. We did the Mustang Hills loop plus a stretch on the other side of the Elbow Falls Trail north of Rainy Summit.

Daffern's new books describe a myriad of "new" trails. The area on both sides of Rainy Summit has a number of these. We parked at the Cobble Flats picnic area near the end of the Elbow Falls Trail (hwy66). From there we first followed the river and then headed up trail 27A to the Mustang Hills. I don't think that any of us had been on these trails, most of us weren't even aware that they existed. The route is at time indistinct but the going is easy even when off the "trail".

Trail from the Elbow River to Mustang Hills

We were on top of the two open crests of Mustang Hills in a little over an hour.


On the east summit of Mustang Hills (Banded-Glasgow in bkg)

On the centre (highest) summit of Mustang Hills

From there we followed Daffern's 27C down to a pullout a bit more than a km north of Rainy Summit. This involved some fairly steep sidehilling. We extended the tour across the highway climbing up to the summit of route 28D for lunch.


Lunch break near the summit of trail 28D

After lunch we continued west for a bit and then travelled south on game trails and old logging roads to Rainy Summit. It was hard to tell if we were actually on Daffern's trail 28F or not. From Rainy Summit we followed an old road alignment that is likely 27B/26B/27A back down to the cars. We were a little over four hours on the trail.

Many thanks to Carolyn, Deborah (and Honey), Aldis, Bill, Rosanne, Philip, Damian, Enrique, Harold, Joe, Kevin, Peter, Peter, Ron for joining me (and tying my record for participants), Carl (C/S).