Ben's Hill to Prairie Mtn Off-Trail hike on 29-Jul-2020

Or if you like East to West Traverse of Prairie Mtn.
This report set up to NOT show up to the public, due to Yolande's concern about it becoming too popular. That would not be too surprising given how quickly the west descent off Prairie has become well worn in the few years since the latest edition of Daffern's book came out.

We went up the Loamzilla mountain bike trail to the top of Ben's Hill then down a bit of Pistolero to the col between Ben's Hill and Prairie Mtn. We found a bit of flagging that had been reported by Brian P and Yolande and apparently placed by the Dafferns. But we lost that route fairly soon and picked our own way up to Prairie Mtn, meeting the normal route (from the south) about 200 m shy of the summit. The climb up was steep (gaining 300 m) but hardly a bushwhack. Much of the time we were on lightly used game trails. I did try to go back and forth in search of ribbons but found none.

Prairie Mtn from the Stone Circle on Ben's Hill (our route basically the middle of the photo)

Carl and Sim on a small rocky bluff between Ben's hill and Prairie mountain

Looking at Ben's Hill from the east shoulder of Prairie. Pistolero Trail visible upper left

John and Sim on Prairie Mtn, now with an Alberta flag!

Learning to work with the PeakFinder app

We were two hours car to summit, had lunch in the shade a little way down the west ridge trail off Prairie and back at the cars after 4 1/2 hours. (13 km. 760 m.). On this hot day we were happy to be in the trees for almost all of the trip, and had concern for the Ramblers on Mt Burke today.

Many thanks to Sim, and John for joining me, Carl (C/S).

There are several mountain bike trails on Ben's Hill. They might make for several viable trips that are fairly modest (400 m vertical), but conveniently close to Calgary.